Cars aren’t rational, which helps explain why automotive icks exist. You know, little turn-offs that make our skin crawl. A car could be perfection on four wheels but as soon as one of these icks shows up on it, you can never see it the same again. I’ll start things off by sharing one of my automotive icks, because it’s on an excellent car.
The Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing is spectacular. It’s a supercharged, manual, rear-wheel-drive love letter to the traditional super sedan, an encore for a classic recipe. It’ll break the 200 mph barrier, beat up on supercars of a decade ago around a track, and do it all with Cadillac luxury. It’s absolutely brilliant, but it also has a design element that I just can’t wrap my head around.
See, the CT5 has a swooping fastback greenhouse plucked from the fabulous Escala concept car. Not only does the roofline that comes with that make the car look lower than it is, it helps with visual length. Unfortunately, one big corner was cut with the shift to production, as the quarter window is entirely fake.
Yep, what looks like a piece of glass on the c-pillar is actually shiny black plastic that will acquire swirl marks and fingerprints like nobody’s business. What’s more, it means less light for rear seat passengers than if there was a window there, and potentially larger blind spots. It just feels so repugnantly cheap for a thing on a luxury car, especially when the current Honda Civic has a similar greenhouse treatment with real quarter windows.
So, what are your automotive icks? Whether styling elements that ruin cars for you or user interface choices that cause your eyebrow to twitch, let’s hear those turn-offs in the comments below.
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Might get banned for these, but:
And…I actually like red indicators – gonna go duck for cover now, please don’t delete my account.
When the window sill is so freaking high I can’t put my arm on it.
Solid fail for me.
My Miata NB had this perfectly sorted. The S2000 did not. We wound up with the Miata because of that as well it didn’t seem as high strung and frantic as the S2000.
Good point. Highly annoying.
Been a whole lot of for fashion things I’ve seen come and go and sometimes come back. I remember when double wiper blade setups were common and popular, especially the faux chrome ones. I also remember the fake car phone antennas back in the 1990s before cell phones were smaller than bricks.
Nissans. With maybe 2 exceptions, Godzilla and the newish Z.
What did Nissan ever do to you?
Nothing. They do nothing for anyone without bad credit.
Super bored of black wheels on every damn thing.
Burble tunes.
Fake dual exhaust on 4 bangers.
Remember all the wings on the back of cars in the 90’s? I always thought it was pretty much a fool poser move, but eventually pretty much every car had them, probably stock. And the stupid after market wheels everyone had to have, all of them ugly and expensive. After a while it got normalized in my brain and I didn’t notice anymore. But looking at pictures from then, they look just as silly as I thought at the time.
I really dislike it when a vehicle a dip in the window line at the beginning of the front doors.
I know the reason why it’s there – for better side mirror visibility for the driver – but it I think it kills the styling.
I’ve said it before, and it’s definitely irrational and dumb, but two-piece floating calipers on an expensive performance car. A lot of Audi’s, Mercs, BMWs are guilty of this, where they have gigantic front calipers that look lovely, but the rears look straight off a Civic.
Second, fake exhaust tips. Especially ones where you can peer inside and see the real exhaust tips right behind them. Bonus points if they’re not even lined up, a la Lexus ISF.
The early Hyundai Ioniq 5 for the international, not US, markets with high tech “matrix” LED taillamps and separate amber turn signal indicators mounted on the bumpers and illuminated by low tech incandescent bulb.
Factory chrome rims 1990s-2000s. For when you’re trying to get VD;
BBS rims 1980s-1990’s – you already have VD.
Laugh now, but they’ll be back. Exhibit 1: Radwood.
Ricky Gervais had a perfect retort as to fashion: they showed a picture of him in the early 1980’s, with a Flock of Seagulls hairstyle. He was asked “aren’t you embarrassed by how you looked then?” His response was “No, back then that was really cool. I’m embarrassed by how I look now!”
I’d have to say pop-ups. I think they ruin great designs… including the F40.
The manual superiority complex is also a massive ick.
You only say that last part because it’s only been in the last decade or so where the superiority complex was not rooted in actual, verifiable superiority. Automatic transmissions shift and find gears better than they ever have. Of course, they also burn out and blow up easier than they ever have as well, but I hope they’re working on that part.
I’m a recurring driver in the Brawndo Cup aka a native to Florida.
Driving has turned anything that’s not high end performance has turned into an “ick” because I’ve seen how morons can turn the most civilian transportation appliance into a medium for dickhead behavior.
Honorable mention goes out to the piece of shit popping wheelies as he filtered (illegally) between cars on his Ninja, zero protective gear on, while his daughter/son/child (?) hung on for dear life in a helmet that was clearly not sized for them.
Hybrids. I can NOT get past two motors that only get used interchangeably. To my mind you’re always making one motor carry the other unnecessarily. Either use a fuel efficient ICE motor(yes I’m aware that potential efficiency gains may be reaching their limit) or use an electric motor.
For me, having both is a perverse compromise in a big picture kinda way. You have restricted benefits of an electric motor with all the complexity and wear of a ICE engine(albeit reduced).
I know they’re a necessary evil to compensate for the lack of charging infrastructure. I think the new Prius is a truly stellar vehicle, and David’s evangelizing for the i3 had me easily converted. I know I’l probably be buying one eventually, but man…I’m gonna die a little inside when I do.
I love my hybrid maverick. It works seamlessly and the fuel economy is unrivalled for a vehicle of its proportions. As the the complexity or whatever people always cite when railing against hybrids, I think that’s fairly well sorted at this point. It’s no longer a new technology.
Hybrids a similar to Porche 911’s in that they are brilliantly engineered but are based on principally flawed design.
Transmissions where you select gears with buttons, looking at you Bolt EUV. I had so many issues where I wanted to pull the parking brake small lever to stop the car rolling backwards after pressing Park but the only thing I accomplish is selecting again Drive and rolling the car forward, an inch from the garage door ugh.
Autos that can be shifted with buttons or dials seem like such an intuitive and practical idea. But it just doesn’t work. I don’t know why but it just isn’t right.
Modern Lincoln’s implementation is pretty solid.
I love the shifter buttons on early Darts and Valliants. Though you sure can do some damage if you’re rolling when you pull the park lever.
My automotive ick. Low-mounted blinkers on newer cars. Why would you put them on the bumper instead of the taillights were you can see them!? If you’re driving an SUV and you come to an intersection, chances are you might not even see their blinkers blinking! To me, it just seems unsafe and makes no sense.
Also lifted trucks with donk wheels. It’s just wrong on so many levels.
Low-mounted turn signal indicators and brake lamps on the bumpers are more or less due to the Australian Design Rules for the SUV with spare tyre mounting outside in the rear. The left side must be visible at certain angle from the right side and vice versa. If not, the separate taillamps must be mounted in the space below the spare tyre. Mercedes-Benz G-Class have them close to the bumpers for this reason.
I’m talking about those Hyundais with low-mounted blinkers, and how a person driving an SUV might not see them.
An automatic trans /s haha not but seriously I hate those really low then signals on some new Hyundai’s and Kia the ones that are all the way down on the bumper cover they just look dumb also saw a new santa fe yesterday and the taillights were hideous they looked like dog bones. Also I cannot stand cambered wheels where guys are running on the side walls or giant lifted trucks with the either oversized rims with rubber band mud tires or tiny baby wheels with tiny mud tires I just dont understand the purpose of any of those and they are scare me because they are not safe and I would value not dying by getting hit by someone who has catastrophic failure because of bad decisions they did with their wheels/tires.
A transmission with gears
Carlos Ghosn is this you?
EV all the things?
Even CVTs have gears inside them, even with the primary belt drive.
Red turn signals. Double the ick if they are using the same lights for braking.
Truly can’t comprehend why the US and Canada allow such a basic safety feature to use a design proven to be less safe, which has been obsolete everywhere else for like 60+ years. And now not just American cars but also most high end luxury cars go out of their way to have them.
Lifted trucks. Can’t stand ‘em.
Even stock trucks these days are insanely tall. The hood on most 2500/250s these days are like 5 ft tall. It’s insane and unsafe!
Yeah my buddy lifted his truck and now it drives horrible. Stock wheels with better tires and leveled is perfect for most modern trucks as they’re tall enough already. Plus I think it looks better that way.
Quit compensating for yourself and be a normal truck person! Don’t do lift kids.
If they actually go into the dirt or off the road, I’m fine with it. If they are covered with that dirt, I’m 100% in full-throated support of it.
If they look like they were built for the SEMA show and never have left the pavement nor ever will, they can go straight to hell.
I’m looking at this Caddy thinking this thing is pretty damn cool, and quite desirable, but an IS500 would be significantly cooler and way more desirable, even if it’s in a different realm of performance.
Then I remember that the IS500 is auto only.
So that’s my #1 automotive ick, cars like the IS500 only having a slushbox.
Tires that stick out past the fender drive me nuts. This actually started when I was a kid and would go to car shows and see these really cool looking street rods, except they’d be equipped with “big and littles” and those big rear tires would stick out three inches past the outer edge of the fender. No, stop that. It looks weird. Go ahead and pull them completely off for the highboy roadster thing, but don’t have those rear fenders end up pointless.
This of course has manifested itself in present-day car culture as those goofy smaller/different sized wheel/tire combo with spacers sticking out well past the point where the body and fender would do anything at all on the local bro-dozers I see cruising about. I don’t mind the backlit wheels, the skyscraper lift, the giant exhaust, and any other odd-ball shit that adorns these monuments to chicken-fried whimsy, but for the love of being young and dumb and full of…, please keep those wheels and tires tucked in enough that the body and fenders do some damn good.
Nobody wants a rock-chip in their windshield because the latest cleavage-text from Becky caused the now-distracted driver of one of these monstrosities to drift into the shoulder.
The tires sticking out bothers me cuz I grew up in small town where cops had nothing better to do than hassle teens in cars. They strictly enforced ‘illegal mods’ such as not having tires covered by wheel flares, bumpers too high off ground, blacked out windshields, blacked out head/tail lights, doing 3 over in a 30, etc. Now, they don’t enforce shit.
I have a chip in my windshield from rock thrown off an ‘offroad’ Jeep on interstate.
I’ve got a chip in the windshield of my Spark and the Volt from similar circumstances. The one in the Spark was simply a rock thrown from a lifted pickup, I don’t actually remember if the wheels were sticking out the sides or not. The one in the Volt though, that was a doosey. That happened back around the time rolling coal on Priuses was the “in” thing to do. I think the moron that sent the rock into my window was trying to do something similar. Driving a truck matching my description above, he came flying up behind me in the four line, sat on my tail for a little while, then flew around and cut me off, trying to get as close as possible to the front of the Volt.
But he overshot – the dumb-ass went flying into the shoulder spraying rocks everywhere and for a second I thought he was going to lose it which would made for a spectacular wreck as we were quickly approaching a bridge. He recovered though, and likely had to return home for a change of underroos.
They don’t even have to hit the shoulder to chuck rocks. Gravel gets stuck in the offroad tires and doesnt let loose until hitting 70 on the interstate…whack! Thanks a F’ing lot on my otherwise pristine car.
Heh. The whole “absurdly tiny tires backspaced out past the fender lip” craze hit while I was in high school in the late 1900s. I thought it looked dumb as hell. As The craze went on, I noticed that many of those same cars were starting to go bowlegged, with wheels accidentally at “stance” angles, years before “stance.” I knew a guy who had put them on his mini truck, then took them off about a year and a half later. I asked him why. He said, “Because I got tired of doing all four wheel bearings about once every 90 days.”
awd – completely ruins a car for me: more weight, more complexity, understeer, and little to no tail out shenanigans.
drove my first rwd car ten years ago and i could never do awd or fwd again.
If you ever start chasing lap times in loose conditions you might change your mind. Otherwise I’m with you.
good point!
A little tree air freshener. “You’ll find one in every car, you’ll see.” – Repo Man.
One of the cars bought for one of my kids came with the little tree air freshener. Promptly threw away….5 years later, it still smells like that damn air freshener!