These Are The Cars With The Most Egregious Design Flaws, According To You
Carmakers have been making baffling design choices since well before Tesla
I didn't expect to touch a nerve when I asked y'all about the most egregious car design flaws but boy, I did not realize the can of worms I was cracking open. Some of you brought up decades old grudges against cars long since passed while others are exhausted at automakers which seem to constantly need to reinvent the already well-designed wheel. And of course, Tesla.
We got over 280 comments, and they were all pretty good. These are just a few of my favorites. You can read them all here.
A Car So Hot, It Burns
This is make/model agnostic, but a true summertime classic. Aluminum inlays on the top of shift knobs. Although a common bugbear in many cars, the one in my C30 gets ridiculously toasty after a few hours in the sun unless I remember to use a sunshade.
and
Can confirm, had a Mustang with a Glass Roof and a very phallic aluminum shift knob. It was like trying to hold the sun.
From Hankel_Wankel, Ex-Parrot and others
Of Course It Was Gonna Be On This List
Cybertruck. Just like, the whole goddamn body. It's a knife on wheels. There are so many ways this thing can hurt both pedestrians and its owners. Get hit by one of these things and you're done for sure. But if you own one? Watch out. That 90° angle on the frunk will straight up scalp you when its open, and the rear of the bed will gouge a chunk out of your arm if you graze it while walking past. Not to mention all of the fingers (and produce) the frunk has already consumed.
From MrMcGeein3D, others
Plastic And Germans: A Frustrating Love Story
1990-2010 plastic parts in the engine bay. I'm looking at you BMW and VAG and your crappy plastic dipstick tubes, plastic water pump impellers, plastic EVERYTHING.
I checked the oil on an Audi 1.8t and the dip stick tube just disintegrated, some chunks fell into the oil pan. How was that a good idea?
From Zach Wickliffe (hi Zach!)
In Case You’re Wondering, It’s A Embraer
Ok, not a car but this is the plane I fly. It has a potable water system that must be drained every night as it can infiltrate the aileron controls and then when you climb up high into super freezing temps that water freezes and locks the ailerons in place until you descend into warmer temps. Guess how this was discovered?
From WayDude
And We Are Back To Where We Started
The door handles of most new EVs. They don't need to be like that. Stop reinventing the wheel. Mach-E, why? Ioniq 5, why? Cadillac Lyriq, why? (Ok they're fixing the Lyriq handles) Every Tesla, why? Uber had to start sending an alert letting riders know how to open the door handles if the uber was a Model 3/Y. Why can I spec a Model 3 with larger wheels that cut my range by 36 miles but I can't have normal door handles that would cut my range by 2 miles?
From Nick S
We See You, Celica
Toyota doesn't miss often, but the spoiler on the seventh gen Celica takes up almost all of the rearview mirror visibility. That wouldn't be the worst thing except the sideview mirrors were tiny and the spoiler was effectively a non-optional option for the GT and GT-S cars.
When the "Action Pack" XY package came out, the spoiler was much taller, and it framed the view in the mirror in a way that let the driver actually see behind them without using the tiny sideview mirrors.
Old Cars Also Sucked
Just in case you thought that design flaws were limited to newer vehicles: when I was in college, I drove a 1987 Toyota Corolla. Being a college student, I lent my car out to a bunch of other people on a regular basis. Invariably, when they gave me the car back, they'd tell me that they had to leave the keys in the ignition because they couldn't figure out how to get the keys out. If you look at the key hole in the picture below, there's a tiny black button just to the right of it. In order to take the keys out of the ignition, you had to press that button and then turn the keys about 45° counter-clockwise. Why? Absolutely no idea. But it meant that people couldn't lock the doors and had to leave the keys in the ignition whenever they went anyplace in my car unless I remembered to tell them about that stupid button.
From neverspeakawordagain
Why Make It So Hard?
Any car where the battery is in a place that isn't easily and readily accessible.
It's the part of the engine, that needs to be replaced more often than anything short of filters or fluids. Also, if it dies, having it easy to access for a jump box or cables is super handy.
On my 2013 Ford Escape, you had to remove the wiper arms and two plates underneath them, just to see the battery, let alone pull it out.
And, I've heard of even worse locations. Like having to to remove the front wheel and fender liner or other nonsense. (See Pic)
Either stick in the front of the engine compartment, or tuck in the trunk. Either way, it should only take seconds and no tools to be able to access the leads on it in an emergency.
From Knyte
This Explains So Much About BMW Owners
Similar to dont mess up whats already working. As a new-to-me 2014 F30 BMW owner coming from an older 2001 E46. BMW decided to mess with the turn signals. So now when you click the turn signal stalk it moves BACK to center, which would be ok if you are turning and it cancels itself out. However if you want to change lanes the only way to cancel the turn signal it is to click it back the SAME direction which is not intuitive since there is now no feedback or click, or the OPPOSITE direction from CENTER, which if you put to much force turns the opposite turn signal on. So you need to adjust the amount of pressure you put on the turn signal to not look foolish signaling one way then the other way. My 2001 BMW did not have this, it clicked one direction and stayed there and then to cancel I CLICKED it BACK to middle so you get this sensory feedback. Plus you could SEE that the turn signal stalk was up or down. Like how it works on most cars. This is why I feel many BMW drivers just dont even bother to use their turn signals. I had to relearn how to use it and till this day its still very unintuitive. Its the most stupid thing ever to have fine motor control over your turn signal pressure.
From AudiB5Hawaii
Time Machine Goes Back To The Ice Age
The DeLorean.
Water would drip onto the throttle mechanism and the throttle would seize in cold weather. A recall was issued and the fix was for the dealer to attach a metal cover over the throttle to divert the water.
From Earthbound Misfit I
Might Want To Reconsider That V8
I would probably say the Optispark design on GM's LT1 V8. They put a distributor with an optical sensor for crank position pick up directly below the water pump. If literally anything blocks the path between the optical sensor and the laser the car has ignition issues. This means car washes, large puddles, and what else but the water pump itself which has a conveniently located weep hole that dumps coolant right onto the sensor when it starts to fail.
From klone121
It Looks Cool, At Least
Ram 1500 with the metal badging on the armrest / center console for the front seat. This metal "Limited" badge becomes a branding iron when sitting in the sun, even on the gentlest summer days. Numerous is the times I have burnt my right forearm on this blister producer.
From WhiskeyThief
Oy, These Guys Again
Model 3 doesn't have a gutter for diverting water when you use the windshield washer. So on any long drive the drivers window starts to look like this:
And if you have the window open – it just drips inside.
and
They had to remove the gutters because Tesla employees' morale kept falling into them.
From thisismyid2 and CarrerCrytharis
British Cars. That’s All
Some early models of the Austin Maestro have the alternator mounted on the bottom of the engine. So everytime you went through a deep puddle the car cut out. Take a lap, British Leyland, for a car that doesn't work in the rain, for the rainiest island on the planet.
From plant_daily