Redundant (adj). See "Ford".

Long-time readers of my site or this blog will know I'm not one for nanny cars. So it should come as no surprise to find that I'm appalled by what I found when looking through the Acura brochures recently. Specifically, 2010 Acura MDX is able to use its GPS to determine the location of the sun in relation to the car, which it then uses to adapt the climate control to blow cooler on the sunny side of the vehicle. Tell me: how much extra technology (in terms of motors, sensors, processors etc) did it take to make this happen? What's wrong with an analogue heat control and a knob to tell the system where to blow the air?
It's like adaptive cruise control, auto brakes, blind spot sensors, auto windscreen wipers and auto lights - all technologies designed to prevent the driver from having to use a consistently high level of attention to pilot their 2 ton weapon. Instead, people are being coccooned from the outside world and pampered to in the worst way possible. Why do none of the manufacturers understand that this causes more accidents? The more people are isolated from the act of driving, the lazier and more dangerous they become. Or is this the backdoor way of "proving" that we all need autopiloted cars? Make cars so dangerous and people so irresponsible that the only option is to take all control away from us to make us "safe" again? Puh-lease.
But the award for the most retarded and redundant car accessory this year? Well that goes to Ford with their 2010 Mustang GT. Sports car it certainly is not, but to make it sound more like a sports car, they've added sound pipes - an extra pipe from the exhaust that is routed up around the inside of the dash to bring engine sound into the cabin. Umm. Surely if they hadn't added all the extra sound deadening in first place, they wouldn't need the extra pipe so you could hear the engine? Plus the weight loss from throwing away the extra plumbing and sound deadening would lighten the car significantly and make it more sporty to drive, and more sporty to listen to.
Insulating you from the engine noise, then deliberately adding complexity to bring the engine noise into the cabin. Genius.

You've got a big engine - use it!

One of the things that really irritates me about our local drivers is that on the one hand they complain constantly that they need big cars with big engines because small, fuel-economic European cars are either unsafe, too small, or the engine isn't big enough. On the other hand, these are the same people who drive at 19mph in a 40mph zone in a car on their own. Why post a blog entry about this? Obviously because this is what happened to me this morning. I was forced to endure one of the worst commutes of recent months because I got stuck in roadworks behind someone who was driving a Saleen-modified Mustang. Normally you wouldn't think that would be an issue, but this joyless driver was doing 14mph in a 55mph work zone. Every bump in the road, every construction cone that was slightly out of place, and every corner caused the brake lights to come on. He was either nervous, talentless, or too stupid to own a car of any sort.
But here's the point - if you own a 5.4l V8 that is capable of putting out over 500bhp, damn well use it! Most American drivers don't need most of the cars they own. A 32v Northstar engine is a complete waste of time - so is a Hemi - so is anything modified with a supercharger or a turbo unless you're actually going to benefit from it. So instead of bitching about why you need a behemoth of a car riddled with 1950's 'technology', why not buy something modern? A Smart car, or a Fiat 500, or a Ford Focus, or a VW Polo Bluemotion. These are all respectable cars (well - in European form anyway) that are perfectly safe, perfectly roomy, and perfectly fuel economic. And they're all still capable of going faster than 14mph in a work zone.