No offense mean to your mom, Tito, but Lancers are absolute trash. I've never understood why anyone would buy them. The previous generations were so mindblowingly ugly that I can't even
imagine anyone walking into a car dealer with their vision intact and saying "Why, yes! I'd love to give you money for that!" And that's ignoring the terrible engineering, crummy reliability, and spectacular cheapness of the car. I cannot fathom the idea of CHOOSING to own a Lancer. It's like choosing to buy a Cavalier. It's beyond comprehension. There are exactly eleventybillion compact cars available in North America and the only one that even approaches the Lancer's level of terrible is the one that shares engineering with it: The Caliber (and its ugly Jeep cousins).
One of the highest things on the
List of Stuff that makes MoD Want to Unleash a Universe-Collapsing Primal Scream is douchebags who drive around in OZ Rally edition Lancers like they've got the baddest piece of motor engineering on earth. My brain simply shuts off to avoid the possible disaster. I cannot cope with the...indescribable terribleness of it all.
numbnuts240 wrote:(i'm a HUGE fan of driving with my left arm hanging out the window).
Me too. Yet another (add to the huge list) reason I hate modern high-beltline car design. The LS8's windowsill is fortunately low enough to rest an elbow on for me, but I'm friggin' tall. It's also really narrow, but not so narrow as to be uncomfortable to rest your arm on. My dad's Ram drives me nuts because the sill is at the perfect height, but the actual lower rubber seal for the glass protrudes above the plastic, making it a very uncomfortable place to rest an arm.
I also find that far too many cars have center arm rests that are placed too far rearward. I blame the prevalence of Fail-O-matic transmissions. One more reason I love my LS: sliding adjustable arm rest that moves forward to be EXACTLY where I want it, with my hand resting comfortably on the leather-wrapped shift knob. My dad's Maxima has an adjustable arm-rest, too, but it only has two positions and they're both wrong. One is too far back, and the other is too high. Neither lets my hand rest comfortably on the shifter.
My LS actually doesn't have many of those little things that get in the way. It's the BIG things (lack of LSD, lack of a clutch) that get in the way. Ergonomics are great, visibility is generally good unless you're tall (I can't see the top ~1/8th of the speedo through the steering wheel while seated comfortably), controls are well located... My biggest gripe, honestly, is that I have to remove nine screws and a plastic aero panel every time I change the oil. The panel removal takes as long as the whole damn oil change. The filter and drain plug are both well-located and easy to reach without the need to lift the car. But I spend ten minutes taking that damn panel off and ten minutes putting it back on every effing time I change the oil. Are passthrough ports REALLY that much to ask?!
I could go on and on about the little crap that bugs me about my sister's C-class, though. I never liked the C-class before, but driving and working on one has increased my dislike substantially. The gauge cluster is a mess. Huge instruments crowded together awkwardly, with the focus on a pointless backlit dot matrix multi-function display. The Check Engine light is positioned PRECISELY so that it is obscured by the turn signal stalk, which itself is positioned way too low (close to 8 O'clock). And where the signal stalk should be is the awkwardly-sized cruise control stalk, which is too far forward and too short in length to be easy to flick and which has labelling printed at obscured angles.
Then there are the interlocking panels of ballistic-grade plastic which must be removed to access the oil drain plug. Like the LS, they're tedious as Hell to remove. But these are more tedious because they're thick, heavy, and the two of them have to come out together. Ever wonder how a tiny little 2-door with no butt manages to weigh 3500lb? I have your answer: half a ton of plastic protecting the bottom of the engine from road debris. You could sell these things to developing countries as modular building materials and they'd last generations with absolutely no upkeep.
Oh, and why are the seat controls so stupid? Spin a knob to adjust seat recline angle? YES! EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED.
I TOTALLY WANTED TO SPEND TWENTY MINUTES TURNING AN AWKWARDLY-POSITIONED KNOB SO MY SEAT COULD RECLINE 3 MORE INCHES! I'M SO GLAD MERCEDES-BENZ ENGINEERS CAN READ MY MIND!!!!.
) this would be something i'd like to know about before-hand. i like to be comfortable when i drive casually. i know that most of us focus on the mechanics while test driving and would ignore these types of quirks while trying to listen closely to the engine/exhaust or fiddling with electronics or crawling underneath.
