> Sadly marketing drones think everybody wants a Tesla-style "everything is a screen" design whereas a 1999 Toyota pretty much had it right.

they also had to redesign the door handle and people have gotten stuck in the cars because of that and died. not just one isolated incident... more than one case of the car door not working because it's electrical only and the backup physical release mechanism is under a door panel you need to pop off and reach inside to pull after you just got into an accident and are physically disoriented.

What the fsck possessed manufacturers to come up with that stupid recessed door handle? I think I might actually hate that more than touch screen climate controls.

Chasing very tiny fuel (or battery) efficiency gains.

Airplanes have had fully manual flush door/hatch handles for decades, and a handful of cars have imitated them. The electric retracting handles are pure gimmick.

1990 Citroën AX Sport - https://assets.dyler.com/uploads/cars/406167/9080414/medium_...

Look at that door handle. Fully flush, NACA profile scoop in the bodywork to insert your finger behind the trailing edge of the door and flick the little lever up to unlatch it.

Give me that, please. I wish I'd never sold my 1991 Citroën AX GT, it was so quick and quiet. Hardly any wind noise, so it must have been very aerodynamic.

1969 Pontiac Grand Prix - maybe not actually aerodynamic, but it does have flush door handles:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/1969_Pon...

Super clean. We need more cars that look like that, and I bet we can make them reasonably safe too.

Apparently some engines now have a solenoid-operated shroud that pops up to surround the water pump impeller, so if the coolant is still warming up it doesn't circulate. This is supposed to reduce the parasitic load on the engine from the ancillaries.

I can't help but think that the water pump must require about 3 brake gerbil power to turn, and the weight of the solenoid, plunger, spring, shroud, and extra cabling - not to mention more seals to go hard and leak - probably takes more power to haul around.

I don't really care about a car's 0-60 time or fractions of a mile per gallon. If you want to save fuel, lighten your right foot.

I want the car to be simple enough to be reliable and repairable when it eventually does go wrong.

I agree with everything you said, but I believe the pump shroud is for faster engine warmup, not saving a fraction of a horsepower. Cold engines run rich, producing more hydrocarbon emissions, and the cold startup phase emissions are heavily penalized. There’s also additional wear on the engine due to cold oil and looser tolerances, which affects nearly every aspect of the engine.

It might be, yeah. But why wouldn't the thermostat solve that problem, since it won't let water through the rad? And wouldn't the faster warmup come at the expense of the heater taking longer?

If you really wanted to not run the coolant pump until you'd got the engine a little warmer I would have thought a magnetic clutch like an aircon compressor would have been better. Although these days, maybe even an electric pump could be more efficient.

The thermostat bypasses the radiator when cold, but not the engine. The coolant has to be allowed to flow in order for the hot coolant to fully open the thermostat. Being electronically controlled means there just needs to be a sensor near a known hot spot to trigger flow from the pump.

I’m not familiar with the impeller shroud you mentioned, but I looked it up and the description seems to agree: “This pump includes the shroud and control valve to restrict flow while the engine heats up.”

Whether or not it affects the time required for the heater core to be operational would depend on how they decided to route it, and if the solenoid offers variable positioning. I imagine it is variable, otherwise they’d create thermal shock every time the engine heated up and the pump suddenly started flowing colder coolant through the block, so technically it should be possible to fully replicate the general functioning of the thermostat and heater core. Now that I think about it, it’s most certainly variable and it’s why they didn’t go with a clutch system.

It's not variable, it just pulls in and out with a solenoid, either fully surrounding the pump or fully retracted.

I hadn't thought about the thermal shock thing but I did wonder how it could possibly help the coolant warm up if it's not circulating at least through the block. The engine doesn't warm up evenly.

Oh wow, it’s upsetting that it’s not variable. The total system might hold 2x (or more) of the amount of coolant in the engine water jacket. When the coolant around the engine gets up to ~200 degrees and the pump suddenly snaps to 100% it’s going to flood the engine with coolant at ambient temperature. Imagine getting the engine up to operating temperature then dropping it into a swimming pool; even in the kitchen you find out that’s what causes pans to warp and glassware to shatter, and the engine is just a funny shaped pan with bolts.

My only other guess is that it’s not 100% on/off, like maybe a bit is still allowed to flow when “off”, but then it would still need to bring the entire coolant mass up to temperature so I’m not sure how that would be a benefit for faster warmup. Either there’s some clever engineering I’m not seeing, or you’re buying a few points of regulatory compliance for them by needing to replace head bolts and gaskets sooner.

c_w

(mostly design clout though)

> Analog tach and speedo with idiot lights for critical alerts (there is literally an ISO standard for this) should be mandated by law. Substitute tach for a battery monitor in an EV.

You don't need a tacho. Some people add them in, like the Mini dashboard in the pic below, but they are absolutely not necessary. We managed fine without them for long enough.

https://treasuredcars.com/public/uploads/2019/10/22/mini_cla...

There you go, 1970 Mini, it's a 1275 version so it has an oil pressure gauge and an aftermarket rev counter.

Does your modern car actually *need* anything more exciting than that?

Compare these:

1982 Volvo, like I bought after I passed my driving test in the early 90s:

https://autopecas.norsider.pt/content/images/thumbs/136/1365...

2004 Range Rover P38A similar to the '97 I drive now although this is a NAS-spec cluster (like with the "unleaded fuel only" placard):

https://www.rangerovers.net/attachments/smartselect_20210517...

Notice something? Both have the fuel gauge, Volvo has a clock but posh models had a tacho, Rangie has a tacho, then both have the speedo, then the temperature gauge.

The Volvo has the idiot lights along the top, the Range Rover has them along the bottom - and in the middle a 20x2 LCD (which in that one looks a bit worse for wear) which shows the odometer, gear selection, and occasionally lies about fault conditions.

Doesn't it remind you a little of how aircraft have a standard "Six Pack" layout for the flight instruments?

We should do it this way.

See also Mercedes W115 and W123 240D. Even the ones with a manual transmission had a clock where the tach would go. The speedometer had a series of dots at particular speeds that indicate the shift points for each gear (e.g. 1 dot for 1-2 shift, 2 dots for 2-3, 3 dots 3-4). I'm not sure whether a tach was even an option. The higher spec models had them, though.

My W123 230TE definitely had a tach, and also the shift point dots, and a 3-speed thirstymatic.

I wish I still had it.

Yeah my 300TD did as well. As you well know the wagons were super fancy though they had all the bells and whistles (except the sunroof, which was manual--and awesome!).

But that latch mechanism, the solid click when you pulled the handle down and twisted it to unlatch!

So many of the mechanical controls of that car felt like working the action of a very, *very* expensive shotgun.

Fantastic machine. I drove mine without a power steering pump for about 6mo. The giant steering wheel helped a lot. Having individual V-belts to all the accessories instead of one serpentine belt saved me a tow and a repair bill more than once. My 1995 80 series Land Cruiser is built very similarly--it's a system that's designed to take battle damage and keep on going, but in sublime comfort the entire time.

EDIT: I just remembered the shock absorbers in the front bumper. IIRC in the owner's manual it said you can crash into things at up to 5mph with no fear of damage. I never tested that.. A Subaru did run into one of my fenders, though. The fender was bent in at the wheel arch maybe 3". The poor Subie suffered a punctured A/C condenser, radiator, and the plastic bumper shattered. I yanked the dent out of the fender (more or less) with a prybar and drove away. The Subaru went home on a rollback.