Author: Antony Ingram
We know it can sound a bit old-farty to reminisce on relatively small and insignificant details that don’t actually have a huge impact on daily life, especially when in some cases the modern equivalent is meaningfully better in some ways. But damn it all, who doesn’t love a good cathartic grousing now and then?
Certainly not you lot, who filled the comments section of our last piece on 20 old car features we miss, though what became clear is that we’d missed some old car features that plenty of readers used to appreciate too.
While we’re not including the likes of a choke lever or unassisted steering here (there’s missing old features, and then there’s actively seeking out ways to make your life more difficult), you’ll find a few of the more popular suggestions below, along with a few that have come to our attention in the last few years as they’ve disappeared from the very latest vehicles. And as ever, feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments below…
Gear levers
No, not the manual gearbox, though naturally we’ll always be partial to the control and tactility you get with a good manual shift. In this instance though, we’re talking about the lever as an entity, especially in automatic vehicles where even that interface is becoming a thing of the past.
For whatever reason, a prominent shift lever is becoming a thing of the past, replaced instead by buttons, steering column-mounted controls, or a deeply unsatisfying little plastic switch for selecting drive, reverse, neutral and park. The one you get in a Porsche 911 or a VW Golf right now looks more like something you’d use to trim your bikini line than a device for controlling your car.
No longer do you get a tactile clunk moving a lever fore and aft, nor the ability to find the desired control without staring at the centre console to make sure you’re not changing the volume or opening a window or something instead. The action of the switch is little more satisfying than either of those, too. We’d not mind if you got some decent centre console storage in return, but you’re lucky if the resulting space is more than a few inches deep.
Dip switches
By far the most-requested old-car feature on our last list was the dip switch – the floor-mounted button used to switch between main beam and dipped beam with a quick prod of the toes, and which seemingly went extinct some time between the 1970s and 1980s, never to be seen again.
Unlike some other old features that have since become extinct, it’s difficult to know why exactly the dip switch vanished from use. It still seems like a thoroughly sensible idea, given it allows drivers to keep their hands on the wheel at all times, and that your left foot, even in a manual car, doesn’t tend to be doing much during the majority of driving.
Perhaps it was rationalised into the column stalk by one manufacturer and all the others simply chose to follow suit – it was certainly more popular on British cars than it ever was on say, German or French ones, and as the British car industry declined through the 1970s, perhaps the dip switch went with it. If nothing else, we rather miss that tactile click felt through the sole of your shoe.
Analogue Dials
Last time round we included “clear instruments” among our most-missed features but we’re going a step further this time because much like physical buttons further down, dial design has only got worse in the last four years.
Not everything needs the ornate and beautiful cluster you’ll find in a Bugatti Tourbillon, but the Bugatti’s most prominent interior design feature is a big middle finger to the industry trend towards replacing analogue instruments with screens. It is very vocally demonstrating that the mechanical still matters, and is worth the extra money.
Let’s face it, whatever fancy graphics you put on a screen, your fancy six or seven-figure supercar or opulent S-Class basically has an instrument cluster no more desirable than that of a £15k Dacia Spring. If that’s the image you want your car to project, then so be it, but we won’t be surprised when high-end manufacturers begin installing proper dials again to differentiate themselves from the bland screens of their competitors.
Round Steering Wheels
It would be patently silly if your car’s road wheels were anything but round, and if you’ve ever whacked a pothole hard enough to bend a rim, you’ll know the downsides of when a wheel isn’t correctly wheel-shaped. Somehow though, car designers seem to think the wheel with which you steer the car is fair game for faffing with.
Now not everything needs a round wheel, granted. F1 cars and dragsters put cockpit space at a premium and their drivers rarely need to turn the wheel far, so a more yoke-shaped device is fine. But a squared-off wheel in a family car, which might need to be parked or navigate Tesco’s car park, is just a nuisance.
Tellingly, the likes of Porsche, Mazda, and until very recently BMW in its M cars have all persisted with a completely round wheel, and all market their cars as being more driver-focused, but actually end up being nicer to use day-to-day too as a result. But flat-bottomed wheels, and increasingly hexagonal ones, are becoming increasingly prevalent.
Short Dashboards
One of the underrated pleasures of getting behind the wheel of an old Beetle, or a Saab 900, is the unique view of the world that comes from having your nose pretty much pressed up against the windscreen, especially with the wraparound feel you get from the Saab or later Super Beetles.
Key to that is a dashboard that’s seemingly just a few inches deep and relatively upright glass. The combination confers excellent visibility, because even with thicker screen pillars it’s easier to peer around them if you’re close, and equally in poor weather it’s easier to focus past rain droplets than if the screen is miles away. You can also give the screen a quick wipe with a cloth if you need to.
Safety (because you’re further from the front of the car) and aerodynamics (for a more raked screen) mean there’s no such joy in most modern vehicles – a dash top like an aircraft carrier deck means it now feels like you’re driving from the back seats, have to lean around steeply raked pillars, and most of the screen is totally out of reach. And it makes even sports cars feel like MPVs.
Dipsticks
That’s not an insult to our fine readers: no, we’re asking for the return of a slim bit of metal you can pull out of your engine to check its oil level. Seems like a simple request, but one that a surprising number of cars no longer grant you.
In those vehicles the reason for its absence is that the tech in modern cars is now smart enough, in theory at least, to monitor the quality and level of oil with reasonable accuracy, and warn you if it needs changing or is a little too low. You’ll get a message on the dash letting you know your car needs a service, and that’s that.
We know that a huge number of motorists never check their oil anyway, but some of us do, and along with checking tyre pressures it’s probably one of the simplest yet also most effective ways of ensuring your car is in good health. And a dipstick is still the best way of doing that, even if it’s just for peace of mind.
Narrowness
As much a concept as a feature, but it probably hasn’t escaped you that cars are wider than they used to be – all you need to do is squeeze one into a parking space, or your garage, to feel the difference: there’s not as much room around cars as there used to be.
While length can be problematic for parking too, width is arguably more an issue in most everyday situations. It renders every road narrower, a problem that compounds with other traffic, and further when cars are parked alongside the road. London streets that used to be free-flowing when lined with Minis and Beetles are now choked by lines of SUVs whole feet wider.
Some of the width has come from the much thicker body sides needed for side impact regulations, though extra equipment, sound deadening, and wider cabins also play a part. The upshot is that while a 1980s family car like a Peugeot 405 was 1.7m wide sans mirrors, its modern equivalent is another 15cm broader, while the ubiquitous Tesla Model Y is 1.9m, and big SUVs like the BMW X5 are now more than 2m wide. Breathe in…
Unpainted Bumpers
When Dacia arrived in the UK in 2013, a lot of attention focused on the bare-bones Access versions of both the Sandero supermini and Duster SUV, which proudly wore white paintwork and big, unpainted plastic bumpers – a look absent from most modern cars for well over a decade before they hit the road.
Naturally, customers snubbed these versions in huge numbers and bought fancier trims instead with colour-coded bumpers, but while not everyone is keen on the unpainted aesthetic, they still make enormous sense for vehicles that might live a bit of a rough and tumble life – be that city use in a supermini, or some light off-roading in an SUV.
When done well, it can even enhance the car’s styling – we still reckon the mk1 Ford Ka looked best in original form with unpainted bumpers, and they shrug off scrapes far better than the obvious parking damage left on painted equivalents. It works on more prestigious models too though; we’re quite partial to the most basic E36 BMW 3 Series variants, which look rather handsome with the wheel trims and black bumpers combo.
Obvious Hazard Light Switches
It makes sense for a button you might need to use in an emergency to be incredibly obvious and in an easily-accessible place, yet over the last couple of decades, the humble but important hazard warning lights button has in most cars, for some reason, turned from a prominently-positioned bright-red lozenge on the dashboard or steering column, to a button no more obvious than the air recirculation or heated rear screen controls.
While your author does hop in and out of a lot of different cars, so few controls are ever exactly where I left them, that shouldn’t really matter when it comes to a safety-related item. You wouldn’t hide the headlight switch in the glovebox or put the brake pedal on the side of your seat, so why has the button you might need during a breakdown or when motorway traffic rapidly slows ahead become a game of hide and seek?
No doubt aesthetics plays a part, car interior designers aghast at the notion of placing a bright red button in your line of sight; ironic, when most give you ten inches of glowing screen instead. But even those that put the button somewhere useful (Skoda, Hyundai, Honda and more stick it between the central dashboard vents, which is easy to find) now paint it black, with just a small red triangle to denote its presence. Give us the bright red lozenge style any day.
Please, for the love of all that’s holy, actual buttons
We can hardly believe it’s come to this, but since our last list just four years ago, where we were already asking for a return to switches, industry momentum has carried this simplest of controls further out of reach, almost literally. Just a handful of manufacturers before were making the unwise transition to cram as many controls as possible into black shiny rectangles but now the sensible ones seem like a minority.
Tesla remains one of the worst offenders but the likes of Ferrari binning tactile controls for touch-sensitivity is arguably even worse. The Italian manufacturer is already back-tracking, ditching its touch-sensitive steering wheel controls on future models, but a whole generation of its cars have been needlessly hobbled by a deeply unsatisfying and distracting user interface.
Get into one of the few holdouts which does things properly – a Skoda Superb, the new Renault 5, or of course plenty of older cars – and it’s hard to believe how much easier it is to operate basic functions with little to no need to glance down to the button, knob, or switch in question.
Which classic car features do you miss the most? Let us know in the comments below.
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