New Car? Used Car? RANT!!

MSN, a reliable Lefty outlet, published an essay by another young twerp who is "expert" .....because.......reasons.  (No 'expertise' is shown in the article he wrote here.)

Anyhow.  It seems that buyers--in his telling--are shying away from new cars, preferring used.  He passes over the high-cost/high interest-rate roadblock as though it were merely a pebble on the road, and then gathers as much Superiority as he can and tells his readers they should just go EV immediately.

Sure, kid.  Whatever.

But he does find good reasons that people avoid the New Hotnesses.

...Used-car intenders reserve special loathing for the touch screen displays and capacitive switches that are now ubiquitous in new cars, regardless of price. The virtualization of once simple, reachable controls into phone-like menus has left many exasperated.

“I rented a brand new…Kia Sorento last week and it made me love my last-gen Tahoe that much more,” said John W. Lindsey, an attorney in Davis, Calif. “The UX completely confounded me to the point where it was more distracting than useful.”

“Recently my wife bought a new Toyota Highlander and it comes with a semester at MIT to learn the turn signal,” said Dan Barkin, a retired newspaper editor in Clayton, N.C....

True.  While the insurance industry mandates all sorts of safety devices and equipment (some of which are very good), the Detroit designers create control-screens which are not just 'distractions'; they are serious safety risks.  A driver looks at that damn screen for a long, long time, trying to find "make it warmer in here" instead of looking at the road.  30 years ago, you glanced, found the heat-control knob, and turned it or slid it to the right while looking forward.  This is an improvement?  Tuning the radio meant turning a knob, not going through 4 "voice command" steps while changing lanes at 75 MPH.

(And--by the way--Detroit designers watch each others' products.  When GM comes out with a touch-control 4X6" screen, Ram trucks come out with a 6X9".  It's the Detroit version of "I have the longest.....")

Anyhow.

...Speaking “as one of those grumpy old guys,” wrote Brock Yates Jr., organizer of the annual One Lap of America road race, “new vehicles are overladen with intrusive nannies and technologies designed for the lowest level of unskilled and distracted drivers, which sadly, seems to me most drivers we share the highways with.”...

The kid writing the article is so damn green that he doesn't even know what Brock Yates is REALLY known for:  the Cannonball Run.  The kid might have heard of the movie.  Or maybe not.

In the next 5 years, some automaker will come out with a car that has a tune-able radio, a 6-speed mannytranny, a super-quick turbocharged 6-banger, and room for 5 actual adults.

They'll clean up while the EV drivers wait for a charging slot to open up so they can begin their 8-hour Do-Nothing-While-Charging period.

Heh.