These days, if you’re buying a new car, you can spend hours poring over the options list. From heated seats to lane keeping assistants, you can spec a new car out with dozens of high-tech features.
But, not every car feature is created equal, and some might just be a waste of your hard-earned money. To find out which are best avoided, we turned to you.
Yesterday, we asked what features can you next car do without? These are some of the top responses we received.
“My last two cars have had sunroofs and it surprised me how little I used them.
“While a sunroof looks appealing in the ads (which always seems to be a couple of beautiful people traveling down PCH with the sunroof open) is in actuality a PIA in mid-July heat at highway speeds.
“Is a sunroof nice to have for a leisurely drive through the country on a nice spring day? Sure.
“Is it worth the extra grand in purchase price, the additional weight and cost to repair if something goes wrong? No.
“Strictly on a cost/benefit analysis, my next car will not have a sunroof.”
If you don’t have a sunroof, how are you meant to transport your enormous sunflowers around Italy, answer me that one?
Suggested by: earthbound-misfit-i
“Touch screen for sure.
“It’s like all the designers have given up and just glued tablets onto the dash. They’ve got the same anxiety inducing interface that everything has today. Over engineering at its best. You have to go through five steps to do something that used to be done instantly with a single button push.
Four cylinder turbo engines in luxury cars or the ‘up model’ engine. I don’t care what numbers they produce, they never feel as smooth and effortless as a larger engine. One cylinder in the power stroke at a time, they sound like lawn mowers. If I wanted a little ‘put-put’ car, I’d have bought an economy car, but now everything sounds and feels like an econo-box.
“Mid 90s through the 20-teens were great decades for cars. Post carburetor and pre GDI turbo and ‘smart’ everything.”
A lot to unpack there, but touchscreens seem to be a bug bear of a lot of Jalopnik commenters today. What do we want? Buttons! When do we want them? Now!
Suggested by: Joe Nino-Hernes (Facebook)
“My partner and I just bought a 2019 Honda Pilot. It has the lane keep assistant.
“I was totally excited about it, but the system is a little overbearing. It kind of jerks the wheel back into your lane. There is a curvy road into town that I drive every day. Just this morning I counted and it yanked the wheel two times in the space of 3/4 of a mile.
“I can do without that on my next car.”
There’s nothing worse than an overly aggressive lane keeping system when you’re trying to navigate twisty, turny roads.
Suggested by: hangovergrenade
“Infotainment that does anything beyond AM/FM radio, Bluetooth, and CarPlay/Android.
“Also, piano black or other reflective interior trim.”
Anything finished in piano black or some other polished surface is going to be finger print city forever.
Suggested by: @IAmGaroott (Twitter)
“Backseats
“I’m a DINK, most of my friends are either online or hundreds of miles away because of job relocation.
“Like how some truck beds remain 99 percent empty of the year the back seats in my Passat remain empty.”
Suggested by: thedriveress-
“Anything that requires a subscription. I’m done with that.”
BMW keeps trialing subscription services for things like heated seats. This does not need to become a thing, please.
Suggested by: Michael Christian (Facebook)
“A turbocharger.
“Just say no to downsized turbo everything. Buy a big engine while you can.”
Smaller engines with forced induction can often get better fuel economy than naturally aspirated motors. But sometimes, you just want a big shouty engine to show off.
Suggested by: v10omous
“Low beams. I just drive with highs on all the time.”
It’s a joke, right? It has to be? If not, you should be banned from driving and locked away in an alarmingly bright room for a long time.
Suggested by: @DingBell5 (Twitter)
“Gimmicky door handles.
“I preordered a Lyriq, and I must say that even without touching them once the idea of pushing a button that looks like a door handle, and then grabbing a tiny ass finger sticking out from the B pillar seems like a textbook example of engineers being so preoccupied with whether or not that they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.
“I’m sure I’ll be able to live with it, but I am not looking forward to using them in the winter with thick gloves. This, plus all the electrical pop-out ones seem like expensive failures waiting to happen.
“All these may look cool, but are they really making things better?”
I’d say wait until you’ve tried the Lyriq to knock its door handles, but our Andy Kalmowitz thinks they’re definitely a gimmick.
Suggested by: meridemis
“Built in factory navigation systems.
With Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, which is available in most new vehicles, and able to be retrofitted to virtually any older one, you can run a variety of navigation apps directly through the vehicle’s screen. Those apps are oftentimes better with real time traffic, automatic updates, and more user friendly compared to factory units.
“I have never once used the factory system on my current and last two leased cars.”
Every new car should come with Android Auto or Apple CarPlay by now. All alternatives are inferior.
Suggested by: Patrick Crowley (Facebook)
“AM/FM/Sirius XM radio.
“Terrestrial radio is a joke in Atlanta, the traffic reports are basically useless and how many times can you listen to “Wanted dead or alive” by Bon Jovi before wanting to stick your head in the oven?
“I have Waze on my phone for traffic alerts, as well as an 800 song music library, a subscription to Pandora and a fuck ton of audio books and podcasts that I want to listen to ‘someday’.”
But if you don’t have a radio, how will you tune into the audio at the drive in movies? Didn’t think of that now, did ya!
Suggested by: greenpig
“Power seats, I’ve had cars with and without and I just find it totally unnecessary. Nobody drives my cars except me. I can see the appeal for others though.”
What do we want? Fewer buttons! When do we want it? Now!
Suggested by: @SCUBASteve7000 (Twitter)
“I’m pretty sure I have purchased my last car with an internal combustion engine. I have about 3 1/2 years of payments left on my wife’s Lexus, and once that’s done I’ll be buying myself a replacement daily driver for my by-that-time 12 year old Mustang...
“There’s no way that anybody should be buying internal combustion engined cars in 2026; you’re just buying in to obsolete technology at that point.”
What do you think, is the gas-powered engine “obsolete?” The list of arguments in its favor is certainly shrinking at a rapid rate.
Suggested by: neverspeakawordagain
“Auto Start/Stop. This system is so aggressive in our Pacifica that when I pull into the garage the van shuts off the motor before I have a chance to shift into Park.
“The only time I ever experienced lane assist was when the salesman had us try it on the test drive. It’s turned off now because my first instinct was to try and correct changes in direction that weren’t a result of my input.”
Oh, that over enthusiastic stop/start system does sound like a nightmare!
Suggested by: Mike Shoup (Facebook)
“Electric parking brake. My car is a stick (of course) so I always set the brake and I’m really concerned about how that piece of equipment is going to age and what I’m going to do about it when it inevitably fails.”
One more electrical system to fail and one day fix isn’t always a good thing.
Suggested by: midlifemiata