Growing car trends and gimmicks that we would all be best without.
Trends come and go, a truth for virtually all industries but there are some trends that we wish would go a little quicker.
Cars have changed a lot in the last decade, with large touch screens becoming the new standard, styling getting sportier even for the slowest of cars and technology playing a much larger role in how consumers decide which car to buy. Some of these new trends are welcomed, whereas others are shunned.
One example of a trend or ‘gimmicks’ that has been widely accepted may be artificial noises made by EVs for safety reasons. Back when the BMW i8 launched in 2014, now eight years ago, its fake engine noises were ridiculed as pompous and laughable but now, many EVs make (often futuristic) noises either just at low speeds or at all speeds and some cars even let the owners upload their own sound of choice!
On the other hand, we have some gimmicks that simply need to stop existing.
Fake exhausts
If a Kia Picanto that easily costs under £15,000 as new can have a real twin-tip exhaust, why do luxury cars like the BMW X7 (£74,000) and the new Mercedes-AMG SL (£100,000+) have fake ones? It may be forgivable to have fake exhausts on an SUV or a moderately priced hatchback but for a luxury performance car to lack solid, connected exhaust tips is a sin!
Imitation ‘grilles’ on EVs
The beauty of electric cars is that they don’t have combustion engines. This is why they don’t require petrol or diesel, don’t need oil changes and most importantly in this context, don’t need grilles!
The purpose of a grille on a combustion car is to allow air to flow into the engine bay to cool the engine. With electric cars, there’s nothing under the bonnet and therefore, nothing that needs cooling!
Weird steering wheels
Tesla made a statement, as per usual, by giving the new Plaid Model S a ‘yoke’ steering wheel that looked more like it belonged in an aircraft than a car. Sure, it looks cool but at the end of the day, a nice round wheel is tried and tested and works best.
The BMW iX also has an odd-shaped steering wheel and we hope that this doesn’t become too common of a thing!
Fake engine noise
With emissions regulations getting more and more stringent over time, sports cars have had to adopt some changes in the way their engines and exhaust systems work in order to reduce how much pollution is dumped out. A result of this is often that the car sounds less hearty and performant, even if it still is very fast! To counter this, manufacturers have started to pump in engine and exhaust notes into the interior speakers so that the driver believes that the car is louder than it actually is!
SUVs
SUVs have benefitted from an upwards trend in the last ten years, with larger and higher-riding vehicles becoming mainstream whereas twenty or thirty years ago, SUVs were largely reserved for those that live on a farm or actually needed the extra utility. Nowadays, the SUV is one of the first ports of call when it comes to buying a family car. They’re big, inefficient, mostly unreliable and less safe than smaller car types. They roll easier, block the views of pedestrians when parked and if crashed, will cause on average more damage to the people or the car that it crashes into when compared to a saloon or a hatchback.
The motoring industry is ever-changing, so let us know if you have any recent car trends and gimmicks that you wish didn’t exist, in the comments!
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SUV story is half a story