Gimmick or great ?
 

What features have you had on cars over the years, that until you have sampled them you always thought were gimmicks ?

My first one would have been power steering, next, air conditioning, followed by rds radios and heated seats.

Heated windscreen , heated steering wheel.... Most dubious , auto wipers... When it rains you turn the feckers on... Simples

Door mirrors (thats how old I am), out side temp sensor, heated front and rear screens,rear wipe-wash,central locking.







..

self closing tailgate on an E-class Merc.....well the last 2 inches..

cool as hell..! but utterly pointless..!

probably being a Volvo driver for the last nine years it must be running lights.

I am now so used not to having to turn my headlights on that I'm a danger to other road users if I'm in a different car in the dark

heated seats awesome if youve got back pain, also feels slightly like pissing yourself without the cold wetness and of course the shame

remote control c/locking.
when I got my Renault 5 back in 87 I told my Mum you had to wisper "open" into it for it to work. She believed it and used that method on her first car to have it :ihih:

Auto wipers and headlights. I have them on the Navara and thought they would be waste of time.
Now, when I drive the quattro or my wifes car and its dark or raining, I look at the dashboard in a puzzled manner, confused as to why I can't see anything out of the windscreen, and have to try and remember where the switches are.:wierdo:

Oh, and four wheel drive coupled with a turbocharged engine on a road car, they'll probably use it in rallying one day.:idea:

Only on a merc!!!!!!!!..............................the q7 tail gate is fully self opening and closing :moon: :moon: :razz: :razz: :razz:

Lazy entry on the Land Rover is great, you set up the seats, mirrors, steering column etc and as long as you use your own key, it adjusts it all as you get in.

the auto wipers puzzles me as im looking at a new van with these on :confused: are they any good?

I've got them on the fester and I think they're great :tup:
But not as good as the voice control for the phone and audio.
Bit of a waste of time for climate control. Its easier and quicker to move my hand 12 inches and just do it:)

I always thought aircon or climate control was something I never needed: open the window!
But after having aircon on various cars and climate on the S4, I am converted!
I can live without it, but its also a nice thing to have.

The heated windscreen on my Cossie was awesome!

The heated seats in my Cav Turbo were never used, I didnt see the point of them

heated screens are brill, i have taken the van over the car because of this on frosty mornings :tup:

.
 

Electric Lumbar Support on the Honda was one thing I did love about it.

And yes,I had the heated front screen on my S2 RS Turbo.The Ford Quickclear System.Worked really well...

Ford Voice control is great!

There is now a message for someone on a Ford Mondeo that I hired a few months ago Basically if the phone book is empty then setup ficticious names against ficticious numbers.

When you use the command to play back the phone book it plays back the entire phone book contents in the order that you put it in, so think of a sentance and split up the words.

It was a long jounrney and I was very very bored!

:lol:

lmfao!!!!

That they turn on by themselves is only half the story really.
They also vary their speed (and intermittent interval) dependent your speed and the amount of water on the screen.
So there's always enough wiper action without any nasty dry scraping across the screen.
If something splashes you coming the other way they'll immediately go to warp speed leaving your finger free to carry on with what it was doing :ihih:.

I have now had 4 different makes of car with intermittant auto wipers and they all do the same thing which is basically quite annoying. You get very light rain and if you are going at speed it sets off the wipers but there is not enough rain on the screen to stop it from scraping the wiper blades across the screen :nonod:

In intermittent mode find they either go too fast when they don't need to or they go too slow when they need to go faster. :wall::wall:

My Navara is the first vehicle I have had with auto wipers. Apart from the odd epileptic fit they seem to work quite well.
It does have a sensitivity adjustment on it though, which needs a tweak occasionally. I don't know whether other manufacturers have that?

All of the ones I have used have the ability to tweak, again does not make a huge amount of difference to its ability to not provide the right speed for the actual conditions.

mercs are better off road than Q7s though....:moon::moon::razz::razz::razz:

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/...x325_popup.jpg

Heated screen is the only thing I miss off my old transit, was ace. Auto wipers are pretty good, the key to them working nicely is to keep the part of the windscreen where the sensor is clean.

Btw love cruise control on my early or late drives.

Mart, you're hard to please and easily annoyed- let it go :tup::):lol:

My A8 had, are you ready.....

Key-less entry, double glazing, fingerprint recognition start which also set steering wheel seat and mirrors position, 4 zone climate, voice control, bluetooth, adaptive headlights, auto boot lid and soft close doors, radar controlled cruise control, heated/cooled electric memory seats with massage function, digital TV, auto adjusting and dimming mirrors and adaptive air suspension and obviously the normal stuff like auto wipers and lights etc.....but most importantly, and most useful - 900NM of torque!!!!!!

It was all good stuff but I'm sure you'd have saved 300kg without half of it!

Crikey what year was that?

It was a 2004 A8 4.0 V8 TDi. Best car I ever owned. I miss it!!!

Automatic transmission.