Amen brother!!!
My favorites:
- Build-in forward and rear-facing paintball guns
- Coin sorter
- Headlights that rotate into turns
- Standardized/interchangeable/modular parts and easy change body panels!
- More space under the hood to do it yourself
- Standardized mount for in-dash navigation screens
- No more codes, the onboard computer knows what is wrong, let it tell you!
- Adjustable cup holders
- Auto-off headlights
Boy, you want to take all the fun out of owning a car, don’t you!
I love the sliding sun visors I had in my PT Cruiser. Those really rocked for getting sun off my face on the side window since you could slide them back. Why the rest of the car world doesn’t employ these is beyond me. Seems like such a simple fix for a common and annoying problem. I think I’ll go to pick and pull and get a pair for my Nissan Frontier which has lame visors that let the sun blast the side of my face when I drive north in the late afternoon.
I thought of a feature, or rather take-away a feature…
New cars should be designed so that all cell phones will not operate in the driver’s seat, while the car is running. Not even any hands free or Bluetooth reception. Also, this no-reception zone should extend to theaters.
TA DA, your engine, transmission, brakes and tires should talk to you too, to tell you when they need your attention and why.
They already do.
Perhaps you aren’t fluent in their language?
Any valid safety feature, other than for the driver, they can be optional.
Good Gawd…I hope that if this ever happens, we get something better than windows! I remember radio shows that used to go off without a glitch. Now that everything in the radio studios goes through a computer, there are all kinds of stupid problems that occur.
ABS seems very popular on this thread. My Odyssey (or however the hell you spell it) has ABS and I’ve found that I can’t come to a complete stop down hill in snow unless I back-off the brakes and modulate them myself without kicking in the ABS. I wonder how many people relying on ABS have plowed into stopped cars! My Odyssey also has traction control and the first thing I do when going out in the snow is turn it off! It annoys the hell out of me and I drive better without it. I’m not saying these things aren’t good, but one does have to know the limits of these devices.
“It’s okay, go ahead”! No! I believe in following the rules of the road. If it is someone
else’s turn to go, they should go and I refuse to go even when they wave. I feel validated
about doing this as a few weeks ago a national news service, (CBS/ABC/NBC, whoever) did a
thing on drivers that wave you on, then pull out as you go through and hit you, claiming
you went out of turn (other drivers at the intersection will backup the fraud). My wife saw the half dozen filmed events they had and said she would never complain again about me not going when others waved me on.
OBD II reader and display. With large displays for GPS, etc, there’s no reason for obscure codes. Display the actual message for the problem that triggered the Check Engine light.
Manual transmission. All cars should come with a manual and let those that can’t drive pay for the auto.
I thing standard feature for all cars should be a manual transmission. This would eliminate
cellphone use, eating, shaving, and applying makeup.
As for the boys’ list - you’ve got to be kidding me. We are trying to safety police ourselves into oblivion. What a couple of paranoid nuts (I listen to the show too so I already know this about them) - why not move into a plastic bubble and avoid cars and the world altogether.
Instead of trying to find technological fixes for poor driving, why don’t you advocate for better driver’s ed requirements. The fact is that there are a lot of people out there who simply don’t understand what the heck they are doing - either in terms of the laws or in terms of operating the equipment. Adding more equipment that operates for the driver pushes people farther toward reliance on machines rather than themselves. I think that once we get to the “standard” car that you want we’d have been better off to have gone to re-development of our neglected public transport systems - the traveler doesn’t have to take any responsibility there either.
All I want is a full OBD interface for all modules - PCM, TCM, BCM, and any other CMs installed. I want to be able to easily access the car’s computer system for basic operational parameters & error codes.
Really like the idea of a “sorry button”, but you don’t need an audible warning for oil pressure 'cuz nothing makes a more audible noise than an engine blowing apart (except maybe a transmission blowing apart) 
Seriously, though, I don’t need an automatic tire inflator, seatwarmers, dual climate control, genuine silverdust highlights hand-rubbed into the interior or any of that other stuff. What I’d like to see is just one more button on the factory-issue keyfob. I can now lock and unlock all the doors from a distance, can accidently set off the alarm in the church parking lot in the middle of the service just by reaching into my pocket, and could even open the hatch if that mechanism hadn’t quit working. You know what I’d LIKE to be able to do with the fob is roll up the car windows. Seriously. If you forget to put the windows up and it starts raining wouldn’t it be nice to be able to get them up in a hurry without having to run to the car in a downpour and go through the whole routine; by the time you get the key in the switch, turn the car on, and sit there holding all the window buttons down until the windows are up, the rugs and seats are already soaked and so are you.
I’d like to see a return to a means to securely attach and detach a roof-top carrier from my car. Since solid rain gutters are no longer palatable to manufacturers (which is why I’m still hanging on to my '93 Plymouth Voyager), I’d like to see a return to the way Peugot and others filled this need. There were permanently attached (i.e. welded on and then painted) small, about 3/16" thick pads with a largish threaded hole (5/16" - 3/8") at the four corners of the roof. There was probably some bracing present underneath these things, inside the roof. Dealers used to sell accessory roof-top carriers that had large, hand-tightened thumb screws built into them that matched the spacing of the threaded holes on the roof of the car. The result was a strong, sensible, removable roof-top carrying ability, instead of the pretty, but useless, permanent carriers the US manufacturers offer on SUVs and minivans that are attached to the roof with “Welnuts” that cannot withstand the aerodynamic lifting force of a single sheet of plywood. I know this is not a sophisticated, programmable widget, but it’s a damn sight more practical than cars that come with one inch thick owner manuals that few people read, with radios that are so complex that the average owner can no longer set the clock to the correct time.
I would like to see day light running lights standard. Ford and Chrysler have missed the boat on this one. I will not purchase a car without day light running lights. They have it in for their cars sold in Canada
Which vehicles don’t come with turn signals already installed?
I want a car with a paint job that is not peeling off after 5 years.
Have you tried waxing your car on a regular basis?
I want a car with a windshield and dash board that doesn’t reflect the damned sun right into the driver’s vision, virtually blinding him/her.
Have you tried buying a car with a dark colored dashboard? They do exist. If your cars have light colored dashboards, you could buy dashboard covers.
Well, aren’t Glen and Tim vicious little dictators.
Most of us believe in free markets and majority rule, which is why so many cars have automatic transmissions. Forcing people to drive cars with features they don’t want would require us to give up our freedom of choice. If you want to give up your freedom, that’s fine with me, but I’ll keep mine, thank you.
I prefer manual transmissions myself, but I would never force them on people who don’t want them or can’t drive them because of physical limitations.
A device that would render cell phones inoperable when the vehicle is in motion.