Gee by the number of responses, I thought this was ten years old. Cup holders are very important to me. The more the better. Our Acura only has two. That means one for each and nothing for the phone. I don’t even go down to the hardware store without a cup of coffee in the holder.
My old Cutlass didn’t have any so I’d put my cup on the dash-hey it was an Olds with a smooth ride. Then I’d use the litter container also. My Rivieras didn’t have any but I actually made a couple to fit over the council and look OEM. That '86 was a $23,000 car and they couldn’t figure out a $5 cup holder. Since then it has become a competitive thing. No cup holder, no sale. Who cares about lane monitoring and thumb drives? Give me a place to hold my coffee.
About 15 years ago my neighbor bought a new riding mower. What sold him on that particular model was the cup holder. Now - pretty much all rider mowers have cup holders.
The very, absolute, last thing I consider when buying a vehicle is its towing capacity, yet that feature is mentioned in many car reviews. If we apply your “reasoning”, then I should rant about the inclusion of any mention of towing capacity in auto reviews, simply because I have no interest in it.
The principle here is essentially self-censorship. If you’re not interested in reading about cup holders–or anything else–just skip-over that particular information in an auto review.
I think there are two types of people: 1) those who buy the car that fits their driving style; 2) those who adapt their driving style to the cars they buy.
To some, cup holders are important. To others, the cupholders aren’t a big deal.
I am really not concerned about things like cup holders, trip odometers, etc.
What I have noticed over the years is that features in high end cars creep down the line to be standard features in low end cars.
Good friend of mine was all set to buy a new car. But the day of the deal…he brought his golf clubs and cart with him to make sure they’d fit in the new car. They didn’t. No deal. The salesman couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t buy the car because the clubs wouldn’t fit.
Heh heh, When I bought mine it didn’t have a cup holder. First thing I did after adding an hour meter was make a cup holder for it. One thing though is you have to have a cover on your drink or it gets full of clippings.
Mowing our 1.5 acre lot for future development in a gated subdivision with a lake, I exaggerate, but it was hard enough to keep my fillings in my teeth, much less coffee in a cup, maybe I just drove too fast.
I have had to adapt my driving style to the vehicle I own. My doctor wrote on his prescription pad that for my mental health, I needed a Mazda Miata. Mrs. Triedaq offered to get the prescription filled. Unfortunately, she had the prescription filled and a generic substitution was made and she brought me a minivan.
Normally I wouldn’t be wasting my time here in the afternoon but it’s snowing and blowing like crazy with up to a foot on the way tonight, so I can’t go out and play.
My neighbor on the one side of me has about 5 maple trees and the roots on my side are pretty well exposed and getting worse every year. Its like driving over about 5 speed bumps. So I have to slow down and raise up off of the seat or it is very painful if you know what I mean. I don’t know where I put my old clothes for gym class which might help.
Cupholders get a lot of attention from the makers of my Chrysler minivan. Here’s how to clean the front drawer/cupholder, from the owners manual:
“Soak the drawer, with the drawer front facing up, in a mixture of medium tap water and one teaspoon of mild dish soap. Let soak for approximately one hour. After one hour pull the drawer from the water and dip it back into the water about six times. This will loosen any remaining debris. Rinse the drawer thoroughly under warm running water. Shake the excess water from the drawer and dry the outer surfaces with a clean soft cloth. Let the drawer sit in a dish drainer overnight to allow the inside mechanism to dry.”
It is a very well designed and functional cup holder, and has room for my flip phone between the cup holding arms. Cutting edge stuff for this 2007 minivan!
What can I say? No wonder the manuals are 500 pages long. Or in my case you get a 300 page written manual plus a DVD with the rest of it in. (You can get a full paper manual if you read the notice in time and ask for it within 6 months.) It’s been four years almost for me to notice it. Maybe the full manual has cup holder washing instructions too.
@jtsanders. I’ve owned and driven minivans since 1991. I really can’t remember which ones had cup holders and which ones didn’t or how many cup holders were on each of the five minivans I’ve owned.
Two features that I have to have in a minivan are rear heating and air conditioning and power sliding doors. Our first minivan, a Ford Aerostar Eddie Bauer had rear heating and air conditioning and I realized how valuable this feature is for rear seat passengers. Every minivan since the Aerostar has had this feature. The other feature is power sliding doors. Our 2011 Sienna had this feature and I realized how much easier it was for my passengers to enter and exit the vehicle, particularly those who had smaller instruments.
One useless feature for me was a DVD player with a screen for the rear seat passengers. My 2006 Chevrolet minivan had this option. I never used it, but our four year old granddaughter knew what it was and how to use it. Two years later, when we would visit my son and his family, she would sit in the very back seat with a reading light on and be reading a book. She is now driving that Chevrolet minivan.
I must say, I can relate to the OP’s point. I want a couple of cup holders, sure. I use cup holders, yes. But cup holders aren’t a factor when I purchase a vehicle, as long as it has some. I mean, sure, I’d miss them if there were absolutely zero. An auto review mentioning an ingenious cup holder design or the fact that a vehicle has 10 cup holders vs 6 in a competing vehicle does seem kind of silly, though.
I think my wife’s Highlander has ten cup holders and seats 6 passengers, 7 tops. You could have a party in there.
Now they just need to invent plate holders. Maybe just fold out trays on the back of the seats like on an airplane…
