Cars Where The Reality Failed To Live Up To The Expectation

[Jazoli]

Saab stuck the ignition by the gearbox, so that in the event of a crash, the ignition key doesn't go into your knee or thigh, or other bodily part.

Its still a stupid idea, I've had mine a year now and drive it most days and without fail I go to turn the ignition off where the key in a normal car is, its not helped by driving normal cars regularly I guess but still a stupid idea.

[paulplom]

The A8 was keyless and I'd still try and start it with the key in the ingnition nearly every time. Other times I'd get in and have to think about what I had to do to start it. Genius.

[SubPar]

The spaceship Civic I very briefly owned had a silly hybrid design of starting it.

It had a key you put in the ignition, and turned it to turn on the ignition like any other ordinary car. Yet, to start it, it had a start button instead.

Derp.

[brandersnatch]

My Civic is like that.
My “runner” cars at work are three generations of Audi. The A3 has a normal key. The A4 has a fob that goes in a hole in the dash and gets pushed in to start. The A6 is a key stays in your pocket button start job. I always get it wrong and that’s without all the customer’s cars.

[mercrocker]

I have always hated ignition switches on steering columns. One of the things I liked about my old Mercs was the facia location of the ignition switch. Yanks of that era also had a neat trick where the switch had a finger-and-thumb plate around it so you turned on that once unlocked instead of a bendy pot-metal key.

I also hate gopping great plastic keys you get these days, too. I could carry about 15 FS/FP keys on a ring and still not impale my inner thigh when I sat down with keys in pocket.

Everything to do with starting up a car these days seems five times more complicated than it need be.

[paulplom]

Renault got it right with that credit card key thing they had. That never/always went worng.

[Warren t claim]

Renault got it right with that credit card key thing they had. That never/always went worng.

No, because there was no way to put the card on a key ring.

[Guest]

I had thought that this had never happened to me (my expectations are not that high), but there was one.
A Volvo 240GLT estate. I like Volvos, I have had quite a few, especially the 240 estates. I didn't need it as transport, which was just as well.
I bought it out of the Autotrader from Stoke on Trent. It looked great, it drove ok back to South Wales, but did misfire a couple of times.
It never ran right again. It went into a couple of Volvo specialists, but after spending quite a lot not resolving the intermittent misfire I stopped driving it. It was an automatic and would sometimes cut out in dangerous places.
The sight of it on the drive got on my nerves and I sold it for spares/repairs on Ebay. I got less than half what I'd originally paid for it. The bloke who bought it couldn't believe how nice it was, especially as it started up and ran perfectly when he tried it around the block and put it on his trailer. I did warn him that was a fluke, but who knows, perhaps it just hated me.

post-3477-0-95303100-1384694230.jpg (178.49 KiB) Viewed 1028 times

[AutoshiteBoy]

Rover 75. Rover bores wax on about them like they’re the second coming, especially the diesel powered one. It’s a BMW engine, don’tchaknow

Granted the one I had was baggy but it was just so… meh. Slow as fuck, horrible gearbox, comfortable-ish I suppose.

It hardly seemed like a huge leap over the 800, but I suppose it was.

[paulplom]

I've never drove a 75, I'd love to though. They reckoned it was a cracking car back in the day.