Today, I was sent a link for one of the stupidest articles I have seen in my entire life. A whole article in the New York Times, devoted entirely to some prick bitching about how this car came without power windows and door locks.
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/27/power-windows-and-door-locks-sorry-not-available/

Is our society so f-ing lazy that we can't roll down a freaking window in our car?

The media is just astounded when anything slightly unusual happens and feel it's their duty to make a lot of noise about it.
I wouldn't mind crank windows, then they'd probably work.

That’s a great article, its show one's stupidly about the car. It clearly says the car is a special model made for boosting mpg. So of course it probably won’t have the extra goodies. The main goal of the car is to be fuel efficient (nothing wrong with that in my book)

There is a saying that "less is more" – and I believe it to be true (and it doesn’t apply to just cars either)

I could do without power windows. While they may be convenient, they are certainly not necessary. But, power door-locks (with keyless entry) on the other hand, are somewhat helpful in today’s world. They help add a level of protection and safety to the driver and/or passengers.

Wow, that is stupid! let's hope that a roll-down lever would provide at least some excersize for the fatty-fried amatuer independent lazy car owners!

Did anybody notice the link to the 2011 Chevy Cruze? This car could be an interesting compact car. Looks stylish and doesn´t seem to be oversized.

It reminds me the article about the Saturn Astra which was saying that the European origins of the car was clear because of the lack of cup holders

As the other famous quote says "sophistication is simplicity itself"





I have posted a whole seperate topic about that already
http://forum.imcdb.org/forum_topic-3858-Goodbye_Cobalt.html




But that actually makes sense though I suppose, this is just some jerk's stupid, uninformed opinion. But do cars in Europe really not have cup holders at all? And moreover, does the US-market Saturn Aura really not have cup holders either? That would be a mistake on Gm's part.

Of course some European cars have cup holders (I have no idea how many models on today's market have them, maybe lots of them do), it's just that perhaps cup holders are traditionally more common in American cars because of food-obsessed America

It's not really beucause of "food" in general so much as it is fast food. People much more commonly use cupholders for McDonalds cups than for a glass of coffee from their house...

You've hit the nail on the head, America has much more of a Drive-Thru/fast food culture than Europe.

Its also because people are in such a rush these days. They want everything now. The faster the better. Its so easy when your hungry to run by, say Taco Bell (just an example) and grab something to eat (right then, right there)

I (as well as my kids) eat here at home more often that not. I view fast food restaurants as unhealthy.

It was the Astra, not the Aura, so just a rebadged Opel, built in Europe.
It was maybe not enough cup holders (article was posted somewhere on this forum or on the site I think, but I could not find it)
My 206 does not have cup holders, and I do not see what I would do with that. I never drink in my car. This may be useful for long trips though. And usually US people make longer trips than people in Europe, due to the distances between cities. This also explains why they have this "cup holder" culture that only appears here now, copied from US, rather than being a need

Oops!

People are like that in Britain as well, except here it's ready-meals (which aren't very healthy either), ready-made meals in plastic containers you buy from the supermarket and stick in the microwave. But we don't have a lot of the American fast-food chains, we just have McDonalds (which is everywhere in the world), Burger King, KFC and Subway (I've never had the pleasure of eating a Taco Bell meal). And those usually tend to be in town centres, British towns are a bit different to America, where in some places you drive down a main road and there's a string of restaurants and fast-food places by the roadside.

European car-companies have to create cup-holders (at least one for the driver and one for the fronnt passenger) in their products, if an export to America is planned. I don't know, which car it was, but some months ago one company has forget them - and the US-dependances were getting mad about this fault. So they had to repair their mistake.


But cupholds in European cars are mostly a joke. You should never use them! So the older Mercedes, W 124 and so, had just two round places in the inside of the glove-box.
And European cupholders, are CUPholders, not big enough for the large McDonalds-drinks or even 0.5-liter-bottles.

Why don't use them? Easy explanation: the European ones are mostly placed close to the stick-shift, inside the glove-box, or it's a push-out-holder in the middle of the dashboard - so if you make a harder brake, have to go in sharp curves or are on bad roads, your drink will be splashed into the dashboard, the glove-box, on the switches in the middle-console, over the radio and so on! Pure bullshit!

Even if I' driving a car with a cupholder (my K 70 doesn't have one, the Opel Omega only the rounds into the glove-box), I never use them (except last Februrary in our US rental car, the 2008 "Town and Country").
I usually have bottles with me, never cups or these wobbling McDonalds-drinks. I put my bottles on the passenger's seat and fix them with my jacket or a bag. If someone is with me in the car, I put them on the back seat, in a way, that I can reach them while driving.
In my K 70 I avoid that place, because it has light beige seats. There I put the bottles on the ground in front of the passenger's seat, fixed also with a jacket - but on the door's side, because i nthe middle it's geting warm by the exhaust underneath. Warm Diet Coke, lemonade or juice is worst!

I reckon Alec Issigonis had the right idea with the original 1959 Mini. He claimed he had designed the bins in and behind the doors to hold 27 bottles of gin and one of Martini

My '94 Plymouth Voyager had crank windows. So did my '91 Toyota Corolla. When I was buying the Voyager, the dealer tried to give me a "warning" that it didn't have power windows, and I let him know in no uncertain terms that I really didn't give a rat's-ass. I've also driven cars that run out of power steering fluid, and never thought it was as much of an inconvenience as you might assume a member of the baby-bust generation would.

Most of the ones in the US are push out ones in the dashboard or ones nxt to the shifter too, and those work just fine. Though that does bring up another thing I hadn't thought of (and is probably one of the biggest reasons why Europeans don't have/use cupholders)... stick shifts. I can imagine that trying to hold a cup and drink while driving a stick shift must be a nightmare! With an automatic it is very simple, in fact with an automatic you can do almost anything. Eat a sandwhich, read a book, put on a shirt, anything!

And ingo, if you are driving hard enough to cause the drink to splash out on to things, than you are a very bad driver and shouldn't be driving in the first place Besides, with fast food cups (which is 90% of what I drink in the car), that isn't a problem at all, becuase it has a nifty little plastic cap to hold the drink in

Eeeh, this is possible in stick-shift-cars, too. It's just a question of training
I've done all these things, too, also changing a jeans while driving. There are hundreds of thousands European parents, who have been able to slap their nasty children on the back seats while driving stick-shift-cars.

And if you are trained better, you can use the stick-shift with the left hand (in RHD-cars with the right one). funny to see the faces of your passengers, if you grab through the steering wheel to use the wiper-swith with the left hand or the indicator-switch with the right one.

More tricky it's to use the gas- and brake-pedals with the left foot. This is not easy.



At my army-time, on a long-distance-tour along the Autobahn with my famous Bundeswehr-VW T3-Transporter (Diesel, 55 hp, max.speed 103 km/h) I used a kind of "mechanic" cruise-control, founded by the German-WW II-soldiers in the desert-war in Northern Africa, also used in the Russian steppe: just lay a brick on the gas pedal.

@Max: you must think about, that European roads have more curves (and traffic either) than the long straight US-highways.

And the European way of driving is a bit more dynamic than the sleepy US-people are doing.


I remember, how I've shocked half-a-dozen of people at my US-autodriveaway-trip in 1993 - I was so crazy (in US opinion) to pass three cars and one truck in one way!
Reason: the very slow truck was driving with 3/4 of it's wide on the emergency-lane, left of it everything was free. There was now traffic from the other direction, passing was not forbidden - but these stupid idiots in front of me, weren't able to pass this truck!!
This has sucked me, so I made a pull-down (it was a 3.0 litre-6-cyl-Buick, smaller than a Park Avenue) accelerated (very lame car for a 3.0-litre-car, but anyways) and have overtaken all in one time.

By passing I saw panic in the other driver's faces, all of them have used their horns and flash-lamps behind me.
It happened on a dual highway somewhere in the Midwest.