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It's (I think) fly by wire as well. So as I've said a fair few times before... try pulling out into a tight space in traffic or a roundabout - that an old car would make easily - and it becomes a terrifying flirtation with death as the car thinks about moving for a few seconds, and then responds to your desperate foot trying to persuade motion, by spinning the front wheels uselessly at 5000rpm. Very clever. I prefer a pedal that's mechanically attached to a good old basic throttle and when I press it, the engine is forced to do something. I really don't want a super-fast computer calculating what's best to do under the circumstances for 5 seconds before doing it. New for family travel though. We have a Toyota Rav D4D at work. It does exactly what you describe and is truly a horrible car. Earlier this year we did a family road trip of over 4000 km in my daily 29 year old Falcon wagon. We can't afford a new car and I wouldn't buy one even if I could afford it.
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Oct 23, 2019 13:47:02 GMT
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It's (I think) fly by wire as well. So as I've said a fair few times before... try pulling out into a tight space in traffic or a roundabout - that an old car would make easily - and it becomes a terrifying flirtation with death as the car thinks about moving for a few seconds, and then responds to your desperate foot trying to persuade motion, by spinning the front wheels uselessly at 5000rpm. Very clever. I prefer a pedal that's mechanically attached to a good old basic throttle and when I press it, the engine is forced to do something. I really don't want a super-fast computer calculating what's best to do under the circumstances for 5 seconds before doing it. New for family travel though. We have a Toyota Rav D4D at work. It does exactly what you describe and is truly a horrible car. Earlier this year we did a family road trip of over 4000 km in my daily 29 year old Falcon wagon. We can't afford a new car and I wouldn't buy one even if I could afford it. I had exactly the opposite with a VW Tuareg, vw’s own demo car so you’d expect it to be perfect, with the auto gearbox you could not come to a smooth stop in, say, a traffic queue, the brakes always grabbed at the last moment jerking it( and passengers) to a sudden stop, of course you couldn't let off the brake at the last second, its auto, it picked up again. After a while in traffic i truly hated that car!
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Oct 23, 2019 16:42:13 GMT
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the only elements i like from "moderns" are , (generally) more reliable fuel and ignition systems , more eficient heaters , remote locking (user controlled not autonomous) and my favorite , the lights on alarm.
no nanny state , no prat-nav , no abs , no gizmo's...pure K.I.S.S motoring.
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'80 s1 924 turbo..hibernating '80 golf gli cabriolet...doing impression of a skip '97 pug 106 commuter...continuing cheapness making me smile!
firm believer in the k.i.s.s and f.i.s.h principles.
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Oct 23, 2019 19:41:28 GMT
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The item I must have in a modern, and accept it is an improvement on anything retro, is dual climate control. In winter I take my coat off when in the car and use the car heater. (As my Old Mum used to say, "Take your coat off indoors or you won't feel the benefit") SWMBO keeps her coat on, then complains she's hot and turns the car down to near freezing. My Escort isn't a problem as she refuses to drive it as she says it scares her, and is seldom a passenger either, so another plus for old cars.
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74 Mk1 Escort 1360, 1971 Vauxhall Victor SL2000 Estate.
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Oct 23, 2019 20:36:29 GMT
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Modern cars are better than old cars in just about every single measurable metric. But love for classic cars isn't about logical decisions, it's about emotion. yup, and if you measure old cars using the same "metric", the reason we like old cars seems to be that they are terrible, or just terrible enough to be interesting but not want to scrap it. weird isnt it!
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gryphon
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 330
Club RR Member Number: 157
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Oct 24, 2019 10:20:48 GMT
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I've been commuting in a mix of cars this/last week for various reasons. For the last few days I've been in the 944 and a lotus elise ('03, but not much modern about it!).
Dark, wet, foggy mornings.
This morning I got my 'modern' back off my partner. Heated windscreen, quick demisting, auto wipers/lights (that I can actually see with), heated seat, good NVH and a good sound system. Luxury! And this is a '09 Mazda 3 sport coming up on 190k miles. I've had it for 5 years/90k and other than needing a new cam chain shortly after I bought it I've done nowt but general servicing. For A-B driving, especially in poor weather, I'd take the Mazda any day.
On a more general note I think modern cars are objectively better, but at the cost of higher complexity. Higher manufacturing tolerances, better sealing, better efficiency (generally, and considering power output and emissions), better handling and control (again, generally). Also often far higher reliability, at the cost of far more expense when something does go wrong.
Safety wise there's no comparison - the inverse tardis effect and poor visibility is driven by NCAP... I don't particularly like it, but I'll happily put up with it for the vastly increased chance of walking away from a crash that could easily be fatal in the 944 or MX5. Watching NCAP crash tests is an eye opener.
Stricter legislation has vastly commonised the design requirements between all manufacturers, and areas such as aero are better understood so instead of different manufacturers having different ideas, designs are proved out with CFD and a lot more wind tunnel time... and cars designed to common requirements and aero end up similar!
My exception to this is the new active safety aids which can be horrible, but it depends how well they are implemented to a large extent. I haven't liked active lane assist in any car no matter how premium. I had a rental Jeep Renegade a while back with autonomous emergency stop that was downright dangerous with false activations causing the car to do a couple of full on ABS stops around town. The same feature in Volvos and Range Rovers I've driven has never had a false activation and is probably not a bad thing to have. It's early days yet and these features will get better with time. Active cruise control and queue assist are lovely features and actually make me quite tempted to get an auto!
On the complexity front, a modern car is a metal frame with wheels built to carry the electrical system. A large proportion of the advancements are driven by an increase in electronic complexity and overall integration of all the separate systems, including electronic control being integrated into most traditional mechanical systems (from dampers to door handles), which makes the cars hell to debug, repair and modify. Give me an older car for that any day! I can't see modern cars ageing the same way <'00's cars have as one dead ecu that's no longer available, or if nobody has the diagnostics kit to reprogram a new one to your car, that car is toast.
I do love my older cars. I can play with them, I can understand them (well, some of them!), they have a lot more character and are simply more fun and cooler looking/sounding. I also accept that most modern cars do pretty much everything better.
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Oct 24, 2019 11:17:04 GMT
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Safety wise there's no comparison - the inverse tardis effect and poor visibility is driven by NCAP... I don't particularly like it, but I'll happily put up with it for the vastly increased chance of walking away from a crash that could easily be fatal in the 944 or MX5. Watching NCAP crash tests is an eye opener. I agree so much with the point about visibility. My normal daily is a fiat Panda- big widows, high seating position = good all round visibility. I sometimes borrow my parents late model Corsa and I hate reversing in it because the rear views are awful. So then car makers and dealers make more money selling people parking sensors and reversing cameras. I see so many cars with the same profile of upward sloping window line and thick rear pillar so assume they have the same claustrophobic feel.
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Oct 24, 2019 11:54:32 GMT
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Only ever owned three new cars, all autos, two diesel, one petrol. Well, only one was mine, the other two Madam's. I reckon they are as diverse as older ones in their differences, taking aside safety stuff. Had an Isuzu D-Max in Malaysia. Thoroughly competent off road (it got a lot of that), frugal, comfortable on long journeys, i.e., Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok on several occasions and felt very solid. However, the marriage between the 3.0L turbo diesel and autobox was not a happy one. There was huge lag between foot down and any sort of action, making roundabouts and junctions fun. Downshifts were uncomfortable at low speeds as well. Definitely more a cruiser/offroader (strange combination) than commuter, I was also never a fan of the 4x4 and low-box buttons on the dash. It took an age to shift. Madam's first new car here was a Toyota Fortuner, 2.5L diesel. Did I hate that thing? I hated it with a passion. On/off brakes, turbo lag measured in days and suspension that just couldn't live with Manila roads. Inside felt cheap and tacky and the seats were only good for short journeys, just not a nice place to be. To sum up, curse word! Now she has a Mazda C3 (petrol/auto) which in all the above Toyota ways is far superior. It feels well screwed together, the cabin is a nice place to be, if small. It manages Manila roads a lot better, despite the "sporty" wheel/tyre combo and, it goes like a stabbed rat as soon as you floor it. Brakes are still a bit switch-like, but not as bad as the Toyota. However, the real killer for me is that I like to drive with the window down, elbow out. Those of you that have driven one, will know that the Range Rover, certainly Classic and P38 have this position down to a T. The Mazda doesn't. The side windows are that small that your arm is canted up at 45 degrees, followed shortly after by pins and needles! Still, I suppose this is a pretty subjective opinion. And the 24-year-old Range Rover? That engine/gearbox combo is a treasure, silky smooth and plenty quick enough. With air suspension and 16" wheels with 165/70 rubber, bumps and potholes don't exist, the cabin is a delight to be inside, like a gentleman's club. The downside is the sun-perished plastics, but I'm slowly getting them remade in GRP. That aside, long journeys are a doddle as the seats are just so comfortable. Brakes are progressive and powerful, and when you accelerate, it goes quicker, immediately. Parts are relatively cheap and plentiful. Although I have to import most of them, I can still get most stuff in three days. Working on the vehicle is not a major issue and needs little in the way of specialist tools, apart from the right ODB reader. Electronics aside, it's a Land Rover after all! And being a LR product, it's a charmingly eclectic mix of metric and imperial. Frugal however, in the stop-start traffic here, is the one thing you cannot accuse it of! But the elbow position is just so, so right, so who cares? So, horses for courses and I speak from limited new car experience, but I know which I prefer to drive. Sorry Isuzu, Toyota, Mazda, it ain't you!
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Oct 24, 2019 11:56:56 GMT
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I agree so much with the point about visibility. My normal daily is a fiat Panda- big widows, high seating position = good all round visibility. I sometimes borrow my parents late model Corsa and I hate reversing in it because the rear views are awful. So then car makers and dealers make more money selling people parking sensors and reversing cameras. I see so many cars with the same profile of upward sloping window line and thick rear pillar so assume they have the same claustrophobic feel. Good point. The Mazda's rear window is like a letter box. Probably why the reversing camera comes as standard.
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Oct 24, 2019 12:00:51 GMT
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Though I love my Carledo, mentioned a couple of pages back, I have to put in a word about about the 2 "moderns" in my life. Modern number 1 is SWMBO's car, a 56 plate Citroen Xsara Picasso 2.0 Petrol auto. It had to be as this is the ONLY auto you can get in that model range! And it's an unbelievably competent car! I paid 3 grand for it in 2012 as a one owner, FSH, 50k on the clock, VERY tidy car, not quite 6 years old. Which, by my standards, is very modern indeed! Apart from annual services, a set of front pads and 4 new tyres it's needed zero attention in the 7 years i've owned it. It's comfortable, quiet, reliable, quicker than anyone expects with 147bhp on tap, everything still works including the cruise control and there's no sign of the rotten sills that Picassos are known for. The only real niggles I have are the intermittent wipe which controls itself for speed up to about 40mph, by which time it's almost in continuous operation and not intermittent at all! And the fact that (not really the car's fault) other road users consistently underestimate it's performance so are continually pulling out in front of me! I have gained a grudging respect for the car, but it's totally soulless, I can't bring myself to like it much, let alone love it! Modern number 2 is a 2001 (so not retro by this forum's own definition) Zafira 2.0 DTi manual. I was GIVEN this one owner car back in 2013 with 161k on the clock, a 2 page MOT failure and a totally flat battery. I fixed all the faults, tested it and moved it on to an elderly lady in my village who owns the local petshop. But as her eyesight is now too bad for driving, for the last 5 years, i've been the only driver! It's now done 183k and, unbelievably, is still on it's original diesel pump and dual mass flywheel, clutch etc! The central locking is erratic and it has an inordinate appetite for coil springs (aided and abetted by the awful state of local roads) It only gets used once a week for a 50 mile round trip to a warehouse for shop supplies, so I have to leave it parked in gear with the handbrake off, else it locks on! Other than that, it starts first time, every time, drives fairly well, pulls strongly, even loaded with piles of 25kg bags of birdseed and dogfood, in short, it does what it says on the tin! I do have a sort of affection for this battered old bruiser which has defied all the odds to still be running and doing a useful job when, by rights, it should have died of some "too expensive to be worth fixing" problem years ago! I guess it reminds me of ME!
Steve
Steve
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ivangt6
Part of things
Posts: 776
Club RR Member Number: 132
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Oct 24, 2019 14:33:56 GMT
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It's (I think) fly by wire as well. So as I've said a fair few times before... try pulling out into a tight space in traffic or a roundabout - that an old car would make easily - and it becomes a terrifying flirtation with death as the car thinks about moving for a few seconds, and then responds to your desperate foot trying to persuade motion, by spinning the front wheels uselessly at 5000rpm. Very clever. I prefer a pedal that's mechanically attached to a good old basic throttle and when I press it, the engine is forced to do something. I really don't want a super-fast computer calculating what's best to do under the circumstances for 5 seconds before doing it. Our modern golf gti does this. In fact you can tap the pedal to the floor before the engine does anything at all. Not very sporty for a "hot hatch"
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1979 Mini 1000 1972 Triumph GT6 2007 VW Golf GTi 1979 VW T25 Leisuredrive 1988 Range Rover Vogue SE
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gryphon
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 330
Club RR Member Number: 157
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Oct 24, 2019 14:50:41 GMT
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It's (I think) fly by wire as well. So as I've said a fair few times before... try pulling out into a tight space in traffic or a roundabout - that an old car would make easily - and it becomes a terrifying flirtation with death as the car thinks about moving for a few seconds, and then responds to your desperate foot trying to persuade motion, by spinning the front wheels uselessly at 5000rpm. Very clever. I prefer a pedal that's mechanically attached to a good old basic throttle and when I press it, the engine is forced to do something. I really don't want a super-fast computer calculating what's best to do under the circumstances for 5 seconds before doing it. Our modern golf gti does this. In fact you can tap the pedal to the floor before the engine does anything at all. Not very sporty for a "hot hatch" Are these auto or manual? I've never felt that throttle by wire makes an engine slow to respond, but auto boxes are often dreadful at deciding what gear to be in and the torque request to the engine is delayed until the box has made up it's mind.
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Oct 24, 2019 14:58:02 GMT
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The Honda insight has the drive connected via a bowl of porridge, I've has them at 6k revs at less than 30mph trying to get out into the traffic Throttle response in great, actually transferring it into drive to the wheels is brown trouser time!😳
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ivangt6
Part of things
Posts: 776
Club RR Member Number: 132
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Oct 24, 2019 14:59:56 GMT
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Our modern golf gti does this. In fact you can tap the pedal to the floor before the engine does anything at all. Not very sporty for a "hot hatch" Are these auto or manual? I've never felt that throttle by wire makes an engine slow to respond, but auto boxes are often dreadful at deciding what gear to be in and the torque request to the engine is delayed until the box has made up it's mind. It's a manual. Every fly by wire car I've been like this though, it's not just golf's.
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1979 Mini 1000 1972 Triumph GT6 2007 VW Golf GTi 1979 VW T25 Leisuredrive 1988 Range Rover Vogue SE
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gryphon
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 330
Club RR Member Number: 157
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Oct 24, 2019 15:03:13 GMT
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It's a manual. Every fly by wire car I've been like this though, it's not just golf's. I stand corrected then! Most of the fly by wire cars I've driven have been autos... maybe I'm blaming the wrong bit.
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Oct 24, 2019 17:15:17 GMT
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The dreadful Rav is an automatic.
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Oct 24, 2019 22:51:07 GMT
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SWMBOs Xsara Picasso is a fly by wire auto, as is the 2001 Omega lump i'm currently fitting to my Dolomite Sprint. Both cars have ECU controlled transmissions, but neither car exhibit any noticeable lag on takeoff. I think it must be something to do with these newfangled J gate autoboxes that actually include a real clutch instead of fluid flywheel.
The majority of modern cars (by which I mean post 2003) have fly by wire throttle and i've yet to drive one that has this problem, manual or auto, diesel or petrol. But I don't get to drive anything much newer than 2012/13 on any regular basis so that might be why i've missed it!
I do drive a 10 plate Diesel auto C4 Grand Picasso every now and again and it's horrid, clunky, whiney, no creep function in the trans to keep you moving in traffic, biblically long gearchanges, lethargic kickdown and an electronic handbrake that takes 10 secs to autorelease. But once it does decide to get moving, it picks up it's skirts and goes! Except the time when it didn't, cos the heater drains were blocked and water got into the throttle potentiometer! Nasty, horrible thing! Very high on my list of cars I never want to own!
Steve
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Our modern golf gti does this. In fact you can tap the pedal to the floor before the engine does anything at all. Not very sporty for a "hot hatch" That was one of my biggest bug bears with the mk5 gti, someone was actually working on a cheat for that to make the pedal work properly. BMW's don't have such the delay. Fact is most car's in the last 15 years are DBW, some less obvious than others. Remaps can help remove the delay.
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active lane assist in any car no matter how premium. I had a rental Jeep Renegade a while back with autonomous emergency stop that was downright dangerous with false activations causing the car to do a couple of full on ABS stops around town. The same feature in Volvos and Range Rovers I've driven has never had a false activation and is probably not a bad thing to have. It's early days yet and these features will get better with time. Personally I disagree with active features of any kind on a car.Knowing the modern mind and how it seeks to delegate responsibility in favour of personal comfort, enjoyment, distraction, I think we're in a dangerous uncanny valley between no features at all (the past which we all collectively glorify here on RR), some self-controlling features (the present where cars don't quite always do what we need them to do but we are still largely responsible for controlling them) and the future (where things wont be cars anymore but 'active mobility pods' which already know where we want to get to and how, because we booked them on the app. Until we reach the future and in evolutionary terms we cease all responsibility for these things, we remain in a world where we are the chief operators of large, powerful, fast, dangerous machines. But our minds are soft and the technological facilitation of driving is such that driving is no longer considered to be a skill demanding experience, expertise and full attention. So the more people that buy cars that have lane assist, emergency stop features, warning buzzers for proximity, speed, active traction and stability etc etc... the further away we get from appreciating the need to be responsible for driving our cars, and for seeing a car journey as a period of time during which we, the drivers, are responsible for operating heavy and dangerous machinery. We get nudged, little by little, away from the old paradigm towards the not quite realised new. We have an amazing ability to assume confidence in these machines, and to start using our journey time to 'do' other things with our minds.... drift into a stupified state, get a little too caught up in the search for a particular tune or podcast, get a little too into eating and drinking and/ or chatting animatedly with our passengers, dial in to that client conference call, try to quickly access the powerpoint file on our smart device that the client just sent as an email attachment, send a quick text because we just remembered something that seems important and we now have the facility to react to that nagging need instantly... because it means we don't have to keep remembering we need to do it later. It's just little by little, a nudge here, a nudge there... less our responsibility and more the cars, increment by increment. And then when a crash happens, if it's not the other person's fault then it was the car's fault. The technology failed. There's little sense that if one was actually paying proper attention they may have been able to avoid the incident. In some ways, cars were better when they were more dangerous and there were fewer safety features. We were more connected to the idea that these things can kill us or other people. It kept us alert, made us take the art of driving seriously. === As an anecdote on how easily we forget.... I've driven manual cars my entire life. Never owned an automatic. Well, okay once aged 17 I had an automatic Metro for about three months before it was stolen, but aside from that... 33 years of manual gearbox driving. I do drive my wife's automatic too, but so far only occasionally alongside my manual car. Recently I bought an automatic LHD car and sold my manual car. I drove it for maybe two weeks on and off - just leisure driving. So for two weeks I had my automatic car and my wife's automatic car only. Then in week three I had to hire a van. A manual. I could drive it, but it already felt odd and a bit like there was too much to remember. I had to drive it a long distance and in traffic that frequently came to a stop along fast straight roads. Any time I'd been happily cruising along in 6th gear for any length of time and then had a need to slow to a stop, I would do so by simply pressing the brake, like an automatic car. Then I'd judder to a stop, assume that was because it was a rough old van, and then find I had stalled when it was time to drive away again. After only a very short period I had to retrain myself to use the clutch to stop. I'm not unusual in that. Our brains adapt very quickly to anything that saves us effort, thought, or a few movements.
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Last Edit: Oct 25, 2019 9:13:21 GMT by Deleted
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Oct 25, 2019 10:27:00 GMT
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Our modern golf gti does this. In fact you can tap the pedal to the floor before the engine does anything at all. Not very sporty for a "hot hatch" That was one of my biggest bug bears with the mk5 gti, someone was actually working on a cheat for that to make the pedal work properly. BMW's don't have such the delay. Fact is most car's in the last 15 years are DBW, some less obvious than others. Remaps can help remove the delay. Interesting video. If I can remember to/be bothered I might make a video of me driving the wife's Yeti out of junctions/onto roundabouts. It's absolutely terrifying and the only way to overcome that terror is to modify my driving style so that I have to wait for ages for a much larger gap in moving traffic before pulling out... like an old age pensioner. People who aren't assertive and who dither at junctions when I am sat behind them - and I can see clearly that there have already been ten opportunities that I could very easily have taken to move off very safely - drive me absolutely nuts. So I simply cannot retrain my brain to adopt that driving style and I am repeatedly pulling out into oncoming traffic and then screaming in terror as the car limps cautiously into the line of collision and then waits a few second before responding to my firmly planted foot... at which point the engine revs like crazy, the front wheels slip (its FWD, obvs) and I just about make it. My entire history of old cars... both old cars in the olden days and my modest list of retros and classics in modern times ... will all respond to my foot with mechanical predictability, and make that manoeuvre perfectly and safely.
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