There’s a great struggle in all product design between maintaining something that works and trying to improve or advance a user’s experience. This is especially true in automotive interior design, where any change that removes a user’s attention can create a safety risk. Volkswagen’s zeal in replacing buttons was particularly off-putting and now the company is trying to undo some of the damage.
If there’s one outcome of Volkswagen’s Dieselgate experience I hope persists, it’s the company’s sudden ability to reflect on its own mistakes in a timely and public manner, which was seemingly impossible for the company to do under CEO Martin Winterkorn. Today we’ve got the current CEO owning up to some shortcomings in interior design with a refreshing frankness.
Speaking of refreshing frankness, former Nissan-Renault boss Carlos Ghosn is suing his old company, Hyundai’s CEO says his company might be the next domino to fall in the charging plug wars, and Maserati is apparently trying to horn in on our business model.
VW Used A ‘Room-Sized’ Spreadsheet To Fix Its Interior Problems
I’m not going to use this space to jump on Volkswagen for its weird interior decisions because:
- It’s not just Volkswagen! Most automakers are moving to touchscreens over buttons.
- The company is trying to fix its problems.
If anything, this post is in praise of new Volkswagen CEO Thomas Schäfer for his refreshing honesty. First, though, let’s review the problem.
Automakers are moving to touchscreens both because they are familiar interfaces for most of our daily lives now, and because they’re cheaper and easier than installing a lot of buttons/switches/nobs. With the introduction of the ID-line of vehicles, VW quickly embraced the Tesla-inspired screen design and jettisoned a lot of useful buttons and switches. As we discussed when we reviewed the VW ID.Buzz, too many operations were moved to the touchscreen or unlit buttons, resulting in some extreme annoyances.
Autocar did a great interview with Schäfer during the launch of the new Tiguan and got him to admit to a lot of mistakes, which he says the new Tiguan will partially remedy:
Asked if the unconventional interior arrangements introduced under his predecessor Herbert Diess had threatened Volkswagen’s standing among loyal customers, Schäfer said they “definitely did a lot of damage”.
He added: “We had frustrated customers who shouldn’t be frustrated. So we’ve spent a lot of time now – working through really systematically – on what all the functions are that a customer usually touches when using a vehicle.
[…]
“We worked through this with a massive team. It took us quite a bit of time. It was an Excel spreadsheet as big as a room, but you have to do that.”
I think the big question here is: Why didn’t you do this the first time? This seems like an example of the design team getting too far ahead of the user. He goes further and, again, credit to Autocar for getting this all down:
“Once you have it, don’t touch it again. Bloody leave it. Don’t confuse our customers every time a new model comes out and something is completely different. Optimise it. Bring into the future. But don’t change buttons from here to there, to there and here. At Volkswagen, we were always great for sitting in the car and you know where everything is immediately, intuitively.
Hell yeah. My friend had an Mk4 Golf and I loved the way all the backlit red and blurple buttons looked. It was ahead of its time and I’m hopeful VW is working its way back to that.
Former Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn Sues Nissan For More Than $1 Billion
I was in Montreal this weekend and was trying to explain to my daughter that we were under a slightly different set of rules because Canada is a different country. She definitely noticed that most people were speaking French.
When former Nissan-Renault CEO/Chairman Carlos Ghosn escaped Japan in a box, he knew he wanted to end up in Lebanon for numerous reasons, but the biggest reason was that there was little chance he’d get sent back to Japan in cuffs. In Lebanon, Ghosn is one of the most famous business leaders of all time.
Unsurprisingly, Ghosn is suing Nissan and a number of individuals in the company over his sudden arrest and the alleged defamation that follow. Reuters has seen the lawsuit and filed this report with some of the details, although it’s fairly light:
The May 18 lawsuit accuses Nissan along with two other companies and 12 named individuals of crimes including defamation, slander and libel, and fabricating material evidence.
I’m no expert in the Lebanese legal system, but I’m curious what kind of standing Ghosn has to sue Japanese citizens over something that seems to have happened almost entirely in Japan. At the same time, Ghosn is a fugitive who cannot travel outside of Lebanon, maybe ever.
Who is wrong and who is right here is a matter of perspective, but it seems like it’ll get way nastier before it gets resolved.
Hyundai To Join Tesla’s NACS Charging Standard?
Hyundai Motor Company’s CEO, Jaehoon Chang, is the latest to considering joining GM and Ford by adopting the Tesla-created NACS charging standard. The safe bet seemed to be Stellantis as the third major company to fall, but Chang has opened the door. (Actually, while writing this it turns out it’s Rivian, more on that soon).
From another Reuters report, here’s what Chang told analysts at the automaker’s investor day:
Jaehoon Chang, who is also Hyundai’s president, said the company would consider joining the alliance of automakers shifting to Tesla’s standard, but that it would have to determine that was in the interest of its customers.
One issue, he said, is that Tesla’s current network of Superchargers does not allow for the faster charging Hyundai’s electric vehicles can achieve on other chargers.
“That’s what we will look into from the customer’s perspective,” Chang told analysts at the automaker’s investor day.
This is technically true. V3 Tesla Superchargers offer a charging rate that maxes out at 250 kW, compared to 350 kW for the fastest CCS chargers. However, in my experience it’s rare to see anything above 200 kW at any charger in this country. For various complex reasons I’m not going to get into at the moment, batteries don’t charge equally over time and stations can’t always deliver maximum charge to each charger.
What matters most about charging, right now, is that a station has available chargers and all work when you arrive. In that way, Tesla us crushing it with Superchargers.
Maserati Is Going To Membership!
For various reasons, we’re a big fan of the membership model here at The Autopian. It’s therefore exciting to see Maserati doing the same. I’m just going to quote liberally from the company’s press release:
Maserati is thrilled to introduce Tridente, the brand’s first-ever membership program that will provide its fans, clients and multi-garage owners access to exclusive editorial contents, curated travelogues, previews of new products and collections as well as bespoke experiences inspired by that unique modern Italian luxury that defines the Trident’s soul.
As Maserati’s first integrated loyalty initiative, Tridente has encapsulated its five fundamental pillars – editorial storytelling, Maserati exclusives, cultural encounters, curated driving experiences and international events – in the Tridente app, combining the rich heritage of Maserati with the ease of modern technology, where the only requirement to enter the club is being a passionate lover of the Italian brand.
Maserati Tridente offers three membership tiers covering different levels of brand loyalty: a Blu tier for all Trident fans and car enthusiasts, a Platinum tier for Maserati clients including owners of GranTurismo, MC20 or MC20 Cielo spyder while Diamond is the most exclusive tier, only accessible to owners of the ultra-limited super sports car Project24 or collectors of the high-performance single-seater GT2 car.
It’s no Vinyl/Velour/Rich Corinthian Leather, but it’s pretty good. I also didn’t realize that we shared so many fundamental pillars with Maserati. Editorial Storytelling!
The Big Question?
What was the peak of interior car design from a usability standpoint? I’d say my E39 is pretty much perfect circa 2003.
Photos: Nissan, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Maserati
Re: VW and screens
Wow, who would’ve thought that the thing consumers have been saying for (checks notes) nearly a decade would turn out to be right? It’s mind boggling to me that it’s taken carmakers this long to figure it out.
Capacitive controls don’t belong in cars. If you need the configurability and contextuality of a screen, you can do what GM is doing with lines of switches under a mini-screen.
Re: Hyundai and NACS
V3 Tesla superchargers can only deliver 42kW to an 800V Hyundai. This is because the charger runs at 400V, and the car has to boost that to 800V using a boost module designed for backwards compatibility with outdated hardware. Not a good deal for Hyundai.
I’ll admit I’m a little late to the party to throw my two cents in about NACS, but I wanted to wait until I understood the facts. I’m wary of the NACS takeover, and Hyundai should be as well. Not because of technical reasons, but because Tesla seems to be making a move towards chokepoint capitalism.
NACS is not an open standard in the sense that USB is an open standard. NACS is proprietary. Tesla maintains all rights and patents and permits other automakers to use the design through bilateral agreements made behind closed doors. Once every manufacturer relies on a Tesla-owned standard and the alternatives die out, there’s very little to prevent Tesla from exploiting that chokepoint. They could alter the standard to hobble competitors (for example: voltage limits), require manufacturers to give over customer data, or just charge obscene royalties for anyone who wants to keep selling EVs in America.
Or maybe I’m wrong and Tesla is 100% altruistic and is giving away their biggest selling point (their charging network) out of the goodness of their hearts.
This is absolutely an issue that many people aren’t thinking about. This could end very badly.
You are right. Even if NACS truly becomes an open standard, shifting to it deals a blow to competitors, since they’ll be playing catch-up when it comes to converting existing stations and trying to continue a buildout. And it makes Tesla vehicles look a lot better to people, since they already use it. If it does become an open standard, most manufacturers (except those with existing deals) will wait for certification by the standards body (possibly CharIN), slowing adoption and giving Tesla even more of a head start.
If we moved to CCS2, everyone would have to scramble, but also we could push to a true global standard. Any manufacturer selling in Europe already uses it, so it wouldn’t be a huge change for most of them.
I think the real question is “what is the best color for instrument panel lighting?”
2000s era VW blurple is fantastic. Pontiac and BMW redorange are also lovely.
It ain’t blurple. Colors on the blurple end of the spectrum interfere with night vision. BMW red/orange is the correct answer.
I know lots of cars use red-backlit button names, but I find with my eyeglasses, words in red are difficult to read. Plus I associate red with danger or warnings, so it appears to me that my entire dash is filled with danger.
Blurple isn’t a real color. It’s just a pigment of your imagination.
Blurple is #5539cc in Hex coloring. Lol.
Dang it, and I was so proud of that pun!
Oh, it was a good one.
Honda ergonomics were top tier for the longest time. I remember when I first drove my ’01 Accord, it was almost surprising how natural the driving position and controls felt even coming from another ’90s Japanese brand vehicle (Maxima). One quirk Honda still had was the moonroof switch on the dash rather than the roof, which other than being out of reach for the passenger actually made sense in practice. Instead of moving your whole arm away from the steering wheel and shifter, it was a quick reach behind the steering wheel to hit the button to open/close. Think it made more sense before one-touch open/close functionality, however. After that they started putting it on the roof, which my ’07 had (7th gen). That was also still very good ergonomically just not quite as good as the gen before.
Maserati Tridente – I still have copies of Chrysler and Pontiac brand magazines circa ~99-01 that they’d send owners, maybe not monthly but bi-monthly or quarterly. Can’t remember how/why I have Pontiac ones other than maybe from ordering brochures online, but Chrysler was surely because we had bought a Grand Voyager. Mostly PR/fluff content so product wise there wasn’t anything I didn’t know or get from other auto mags, but neat for vehicle history and for owners to send vehicle stories in to.
I think BMW e36/46 is the pinnacle for me. When I sat into the seat of my first e36, went to put the key in the ignition and just automatically did it without thought (including having the key at the correct angle) things just felt right.
I mean I’m glad VW is owning up to this and it does seem like their combination of everything being accessed by a touchscreen and haptic buttons/sliders is quite possibly the most convoluted, least intuitive, most dangerous set up in the industry…but why did they even end up here in the first place?
No one outside of Tesla stans wants to drive a rolling tablet. Honda literally tried something similar, received nearly universal scorn for it, and had to hit the panic button and reverse it all a few years ago. Why in the name of god and all that is holy did VW think it would go any differently for them? Why does BMW think it’s going to go differently for them and the newest iDrive system that they’re currently in the process of panic fixing?
I get that it saves manufacturers a couple of bucks but that savings is quickly nullified when these asinine systems need to be updated a few times, or when people just don’t want to buy the damn cars. These companies shouldn’t have to shoot themselves directly in the dick to figure out that doing so is a bad idea, and yet here we are. Mercedes is currently rolling out tech hell world interiors left and right that are getting lambasted in the press and I’m sure their CEO will be giving some come to Jesus speech about the error of their ways in a year or so.
NO ONE WANTS THIS SHIT! NOT A DAMN SOUL! The endless push to copy Tesla is absurd because their market share and fanbase are unique. Tesla stans aren’t normal consumers or car enthusiasts. They’re a completely different animal altogether and not a single one is going to look at the tech in a VW and reconsider their choice. It’s just not how they work.
All of this is just so goddamn stupid. Listen to actual customers instead of your coked up marketing bros. We’ve seen this song and dance several times and know how it ends. Don’t miss the forest for the trees. I drove my mom’s 2022 SQ5 for a while this weekend and found its interface to be a headache, and it still has individual HVAC controls and a volume knob. Why in the hell do I need to take my eyes off the road and fiddle with a touch screen to change the damn song or channel?
All of these functions need buttons, knobs, and switches because you can operate them with muscle memory. I don’t give a shit if it costs like $12 more per car. There’s no need to fix things that aren’t broken…but if there’s anyone who’s capable of doing that until the heat death of the universe it’s the goddamn Germans. Give their engineers a project and they’ll come up with the most convoluted solution you can possibly imagine every single time.
As someone who works in software, you’d be surprised how many UX changes are driven by the design experts eager to do something ‘new and exciting’ in the interface. Combine that with the bean counters happy to save 47 cents a button, and here we are.
Innovation is cool and good. New for the sake of new is a fool’s errand.
“…you’d be surprised how many UX changes are driven by the design experts eager to do something ‘new and exciting’ in the interface.”
This has always been my complaint about Microsoft and especially about Excel and Word: Change for the sake of change alone. To be perfectly serious, both were perfected around (?)1995(?) and should have been left-the-F-alone after that. I mean, has English grammar or any mathematical function changed since then?
But…Nooooo… the guys on the development team need something to show the boss that they’ve been working. So, they move the controls around, make the new version incompatible with the old, and put in a bunch of features that nobody asked for, and turn them all on. The first thing I have to do with every new version of MS Office is spend three days turning all the new bull OFF.
Final rant on the subject… God help him/her/they/it if I ever meet the guy who thought splitting the screen view so it looks like f’n book was a good idea…
Darned right. I would still be using Office 98 if I hadn’t gotten super cheap upgrades to Office 2007 back in the day. No reason to upgrade, everything does exactly what I want and I don’t need to learn the new version.
Quicken is similar. They really haven’t even changed the interface since 98, but want me to pay every year (now every month) for new features that I don’t need. The only thing that would be nice would be if my accounts connected online, but that isn’t worth $50 a year to me. My line of thinking must be expanding, because I used to get 50% off offers a couple of times a year, now it’s every time I open it up.
Hard disagree. The “Ribbon” makes sense to me as a UI. The old Word & Excel UI’s were a dizzying rabbit warren of submenus, sub-submenus, and sub-sub-submenus. Muscle memory is not the same thing as good UI.
Yes! Did it ever occur to them to do user-experience testing? If they did, I can’t imagine any tester saying “Wow! Love those non-backlit buttons that I can’t see at night. More of that, please!”
Breaking: Maserati provides reading material for when one waits for a tow truck in their Maserati
I like Android Auto. Let my phone run the nav instead of making me use the car’s out of date map. But I only want navigation and entertainment on that screen, and not the volume or forward/back controls. Anything I’ll be using while driving should be physical controls. I prefer the shifter on the column for an automatic, but I’ll deal with whatever location, so long as it makes sense. Heated and cooled seats need to be physical controls, too. I don’t want to dig through a touchscreen menu to maintain a comfortable temperature.
My 2019 Kia Niro actually hits most of the points here. The shifter is unnecessarily large and central, but it’s got physical controls for all the most-used functions, gives me important info between my gauges, and the infotainment isn’t intrusive. The car itself has its issues, but they got the controls pretty much right.
Volkswagen intentionally implemented a sub-par UI to deflect from the terrible idea of installing a WHITE STEERING WHEEL.
FTFY
I’ve found that the current GM’s have struck a fine balance between touchscreen and physical buttons (including steering wheel controls).
I was about to post this. Yes, GM products have a nice balance between what you can do in the screen and buttons for HVAC and minor things. I am always adjusting the AC in the summer or heat in the winter, between heating seats on or off. Wireless carplay connects almost immediately, tap the address, select a playlist and thats it, everything else I need is on the steering wheel.
Right now we have peak GM in regards of reliability, easy to use, somehow fuel efficient, nice interiors and good looking vehicles.
I was with you until “good looking vehicles.” The latest pickup refresh at Chevy and GMC didn’t do onlookers any favors. Its SUVs are pretty generic, which is probably okay for 99.99% of buyers. The Corvette was designed by a front team and a back team that didn’t talk to each other.
I would agree Cadillac’s design language is distinctive and not in a bad way.
I think mid-2010s was pretty good for design, pretty much before Tesla became the iphone of cars and all the cars wanted to be like the iphone of cars. Like look at the e-Golf, it was an electic car with analog gauges and proper auto-shifter, and switches in the right place, but also had apple carplay and the backup camera and most the infotainment stuff you want. It’s like the team making the VW electric cars couldn’t talk to the regular team that’s been making cars all along so had to redo everything.
But as mentioned it wasn’t just VW that messed up, everybody going crazy with the giant screens, I’d prefer the F150 lightning Pro’s regular touchscreen compared to the higher trim giant ones but don’t think that’s even an option, guess I’ll just keep my old EV ranger with the double-din I can put whatever I want to in.
I’ll be the outlier and admit that I like reasonably sized touchscreens. Backup cameras are great, and apple carplay is amazing for navigation. Small instrument cluster displays can give convenient info like tire pressure, distance to empty, fluid temps, etc at a glance.
Usability wise, I’ll not go so far as to say it’s the best thing ever, but my 2016 f150 is set up pretty damn well. Intuitive buttons on the steering wheel, big buttons and dials for the radio and hvac controls, analog gauges with a small supplemental display screen, a reasonably sized touchscreen that has a good backup camera and is intuitive (try changing the time in a Subaru, I’ll wait…), and a column shift, because why take up storage space with an electronic switch cosplaying as a phallic object? Styling is subjective, and the materials could be a touch nicer, but it’s hard to argue against the design from a usability standpoint.
I will never buy a car with a touchscreen that looks like an iPad sticking out of the dash. It’s frickin’ annoying. Leave the HVAC and radio volume as knobs someplace handy. And if you HAVE to put a touchscreen on it, keep it central on the console, below the top of the dash. I know this sounds obvious when I say it, but some of us actually DRIVE by looking out the front window. Anything that sticks out above the top of the dash obstructs the normal visual horizon while driving, and is visually tiring after a while. This is actually a neurological thing. It’s how our brains maintain position in space. Scanning the horizon is part of the oculomotor cerebellar axis organized in the flocculus/paraflocculus, and it’s how we fix gaze after an acceleration disturbs our balance.
Sorry for the neuroscience. But aesthetics aren’t the only issue with that iPad lookin’ schizz. It’s biology.
I like having a mid size touch screen for nav and entertainment. Not so much for climate control. Being over 6′ tall, I like them high so you don’t have to take your eyes off the road as much, and the only thing I see out of the bottom of most windshield is the hood of my vehicle, so having a display in that range of vision isn’t that bad.
I haven’t been in any car where the “iPad”-style screen blocked any part of the windshield. If that does happen then I agree that it’s a terrible design.
Speaking of which, I think a very good case for that style of screen is that it lets the interior designers style a dashboard however they want it, and the screen is treated more like an accessory. Whereas if the design mandate is to have the screen integrated into the dash, then the designers are much more limited in what they can do.
My control pet peeve is the front window defrost button. In the olden days with mechanical sliders, I could defrost my windshield with AC and leave the unpleasant exterior air outside (paper mills, skunks, diesel exhaust).
In the modern world, I press the defrost button and my car automatically disables recirc. In my 2008 Honda, I could press recirc and re-enable it. It became like muscle memory; defrost – recirc.
My 2017 Mazda disables it and I can’t turn it back on until I turn off defrost. Annoys me to no end.
Mine does the same thing. I just turn mine to screen and foot and hit the recirc
One of my previous cars was like that, and I hated it so much. Fortunately my current car lets me use defrost with AC in recirc by default.
4 out of 5 dentists recommend Tridente, but what does the 5th one prefer?
Fruit Stripe?
I was thinking Cadillac, but maybe it’s a Tesla now.
“Who is this? Why are you calling so late?”
Rivian just announced they are adopting the NACS plug. I really would like to know the details of all these deals. It’s definitely seeming like Tesla giving something for free to win the war. Also getting more EVs to use their chargers is going to help fund their vehicle price cuts. Like giving the printer for cheap and gouging on the ink.
I’m going to agree with others here that the VW Mk7.5 Golf is probably peak user experience from a VW product. Touchscreen for the things that are actually easier to use with a touchscreen (like music, carplay, etc), physical controls for everything else like HVAC, etc.
My B9 Audi A4, for me, is also peak Audi user experience. I happen to love the rotary control for my infotainment but it’s not for everyone. But I can easily, without looking, adjust temperatures and seat heating in my HVAC controls because they are very well-designed physical controls. I hate that Audi moved away from this in some of their newer models with dual touchscreens.
I just entered the golf mk7.5 family with an e-Golf, mostly because of the interior and physical buttons/gear selector. Touch screen duties are really limited to audio/android auto and nothing else, which I very much like. Also quick buttons for A/C controls in an electric car are so important, because the kids need to hear the air so they know it’s on and getting cooler.
From a strict usability standpoint, probably the ’00s. Just before the shift to moving everything to the touchscreen – but with enough of a screen to make certain adjustments and song selection easier. Buttons were big and arranged sensibly. Stereos and other frequently used controls were typically high mounted instead of hidden. For power seats skeuomorphic design was now ubiquitous. Knobs were common for volume and temperature like the good lord intended. Steering wheel mounted controls became fairly ubiquitous. We didn’t have people constantly trying to reinvent the shifter.
There were dark clouds on the horizon – especially if you bought a BMW – but for normal cars it was a solid era.
For me, the best functional interior was in my 1985 SAAB 900 Turbo sedan. All knobs. They were all well-marked and appropriately illuminated.
My 2014 FR-S is pretty much perfect, as far as I’m concerned. Everything is tactile except for the entertainment system, and even the power and volume knobs on that are physical.
All the conveniences are there: climate control, keyless entry, power locks and windows. I don’t think the GRS is much different, from what I’ve seen of the interior photos.
Best HVAC controls were and are the manual knobs and/or sliders from the 80s/90s. Best stalk design is turn signals/high beams/wipers on one stalk, headlight switch on the dash. For radios, I’m not fussed as long as there’s a volume knob.
Why would anyone prefer the headlight switch on the dash? Foglights, sure, but headlights? Those should be accessible without having to take your hands off the wheel. Give me the classic Japanese/Saturn left stalk for turns and lighting, and right stalk for all wiper-related functions.
Ghosn is a goon. If there was a car named after him, it would be a douchewagon.
not Rogue? 😛
Or CrossCabriolet?
Time will tell :)I’mcertainly getting popcorn! I kind of root for him.
Installing nobs? Just the nob behind the wheel!
If you ask me, VW’s interior touchscreens peaked with the MK7.5 Golf. I have a base model 2018 facelift car with a screen almost as big/as big as the upscale MK7 pre-facelift cars and it still has physical buttons. And the 7.5’s could still be equipped with the full digi-dash and 9.2″ touch screen. Tilted towards the driver, loses a few physical buttons but still retains your usual climate control switchgear and everything else you’d expect.
When they showed off the MK8 I was left scratching my head. If you bought a 2018-2020 MK7.5 Golf with these options, honestly I don’t think it gets much better. You can go as small or as large as you want and nobody is angry about it. Seems like everyone is disappointed with what VW came up with after that.
Not to mention the Mk7/7.5 looks WAYYYYYYYYY fresher than the overstyled Mk8 with it’s stupid eyelashes.
Agreed. I saw the early press photos and stuff and my immediate reaction was “Thanks, I hate it.”. MK7.5 forever. It has everything you could ever need (especially if you live in the German market where literally anything you want can be added a la carte, unlike in US market where we have packages). I’m sure the updated MQB platform is slightly better in some ways (more ultra-high tensile strength steel IIRC) but honestly it’s unnecessarily overdone and everyone hates the new touch interfaces. Really sad that they ruined it. Hoping MK9 returns to greatness, if they do it at all.
The Mk8 platform is better as far as the drivetrain goes, but they did cheap out on some things, like now having to use a rod for propping up the hood, replacing the good subwoofer from the Mk7 with a crap one etc.
MK4 was great, Mk5 and 6 sucked, Mk7 was great, MK8 and therefore Mk9 must also suck. Gotta wait for Mk10 for it to be good again.
I had a MK7.5 and while it was a typical VW reliability nightmare I will say the interface was about as good as it gets in modern cars. Everything you want to do without taking your eyes off the road (HVAC, volume, etc) had a proper knob or switch but stuff like navigation and music could be operated with a small touchscreen. Plus it had actual volume and seek buttons on the steering wheel, which we are inexplicably moving away from for some reason?
I bought it right when the MK8 was announced because of the 8’s goofy design and the tech hell world interior. A lot of people say that MK7.5 was peak GTI and there’s definitely a case to be made for it if you ignore reliability. Mine was a NIGHTMARE…the cruise control only worked about 3/4s of the time, it had frequent misfires in the first 5,000 miles that multiple dealership service departments told me were flukes that they couldn’t properly identify, it absolutely incinerated consumables, and the spark plugs and/or something with the ignition was starting to fail at about 12,000 miles.
It also only wanted to take the highest quality 93 octane I could find. If the gas wasn’t name brand things would get wonky. VW actually had the audacity to give me a “VW recommended gas stations” list as a “solution” to some of my issues. All of this for a new car that I had out the door with all taxes and fees for under 30 grand. Not even remotely worth the trouble. It makes my goddamn Hyundai ownership seem like having a Toyota in comparison.
…but the styling, UI, and day to day driving experience? Excellent. Worth the hype for sure, just don’t ever try to take it past 7.5/10ths. When you ask Ze Germans for that little bit of extra sauce the answer is NEIN! I think performance Golfs really have to be modified to give you the full experience, and with the extra reliability/warranty voiding risks you take at that point they’re a hard pass for me…but for someone who’s more mechanically savvy and/or willing to pay to play they’re fun cars. I’ll stick with my stock, warrantied N, but different strokes, etc.
I bought my 2018 Sportwagen S 4Motion 6MT new and I have about 34k miles on it. Haven’t had any issues yet (still waiting for the check-engine light will come on). I’m waiting for the water pump to leak since there is a class-action lawsuit or something on it. Really sorry to hear you got what sounds like a lemon because these cars, for every day duty, are simply amazing. I use whatever 87 octane I want, I average mid-30’s mpg per tank, and with the nannies off (well, mostly off, I guess) it’ll even four-wheel drift in the snow! I paid 26k for mine and for me its peak passenger car. I wouldn’t want to DD anything else right now due to how awesome it’s been for me. I hope it stays this way.
I’m glad your VW has treated you better than mine did. The Golf Alltrack is a cool car and I didn’t even know manuals were out there. My terrible VW experience was sad for me because I’d always been a fan of their cars and they run in my family. My sister and I both got VWs around the same time (she had a Tiguan) and we both got out of them less than 2.5 years later.
Her’s had the classic VW sunroof issue, but multiple repair efforts failed catastrophically and flooded her interior. It turns out the technicians had, somehow, missed a full recall that had occurred during their certification process…and they initially tried to play my sister for a fool (which she is the opposite of) and not cover all the issues it caused. How you miss an unaddressed recall during certification is real mystery to me…isn’t that not happening like, the whole ass point of certified used cars?
Whether it was negligence or something more nefarious we’ll never know…after the sunroof failing for a third time and a weeks long battle that eventually led to VW owning up to their fuck up and fixing it under warranty, she swapped it for a certified Lexus. As you might imagine it’s had 0 issues.
I genuinely like a lot of VW products and think they’ve done some objectively amazing stuff over their history…but I personally will not ever own a modern one again. I’m even skeptical of Audi too, because my mom owned an Allroad that she bought an extended warranty for and the thing absolutely grenaded itself literal days after the warranty was up. It had a catastrophic electronic failure that seized the engine at 60,000 miles. She lost thousands of dollars on it because it happened right before she was going to trade it in for her SQ5.
The car essentially went from a nice low mile trade in to scrap in the course of a day or two. I respect folks who willingly take on the task of owning German cars, and to this day owning a Porsche remains a dream for me. There are a lot of cool German cars out there, my heritage is mainly German, and like I said…I come from a long lineage of VW/Audi ownership. But I just don’t have the time or emotional resources to deal with the headaches that come along with them. The next car I’m eyeing is an Integra Type S and I’ll be keeping it for eternity.
Yeah, I hear you. I’ve been pretty lucky. Prior to my ’18 Golf I owned a ’00 Audi S4 sedan for about 7 years. Coming from an ’01 Grand Am GT it was……….well…………a different world. I eventually got tired of the shit gas mileage, complex engine, near-useless back seats and smallish trunk capacity but I guess I caught the German bug from that car. I loved that even in 2000 it didn’t have traction control (the button was blank, I think in 2001 cars they put TC in as standard) so you could do pretty much anything you wanted. In the winter it would do spin-cycle AWD donuts easily and it was hilarious. It was great to learn on but even if I had a wagon I wouldn’t own one now. And I was paying about a grand a year for repairs (various oil leaks, valve cover gaskets, timing belts, water pumps, blown alternator one time, rust repair) but I’ll always cherish the time I had with it. It was a very formative for me. But I’ve realized that Audi’s are probably not worth it. Hell my current VW is almost as nice anyway!
If you want an ICE performance German car I think going B58 is your safest bet right now. I’m sure there will be electronic issues galore as soon as the warranty is up but mechanically speaking that engine is a brick house.
:vomit:
Marketing doublespeak. They probably hired the same consultants as Mission Winnow, Ferrari F1’s old main sponsor:
As a change lab, Mission Winnow provides an environment for ambitions and progressive ideas that promote positive change to be shaped and developed. It’s the role of a change lab to uncover and recognize these innovative ideas and create discourse around them, to find common ground, find the flaws through open debate and come together to find the best way to move forward. This vision permeates all of our work in driving progress.
Is that an actual quote or sarcasm. I’ve read (and written, I’m ashamed to admit) enough mission statements that I can’t distinguish reality from sarcasm.
I also took a peak at the Mission Winnow shit a few years ago when they came out with Kimi Raikkonens book the last year he was at Ferrari and it is 100% either that exact quote or something close to it. The only thing I could pick out was a quiet little line on their site about “for people who smoke”, since Ferrari is funded by Phillip-Morris (Marlboro) I’m pretty sure. Maybe it’s greenwashing/healthwashing cigarettes or cigarette-replacement products (Raikkonen and Arrivabene both smoked) so perhaps it fit the narrative.
Ok. Best interiors were the early to mid 1990s. Especially if there was no screen involved anywhere. (looking at you GM) Also 1980s were ok. These were simpler times before Sky Net was activated. Screens suck and are a huge safety hazard.
Early-mid 90s had a lot of little chiclet buttons – looking at you Ford – and stuff like low mounted stereos or all volume controls on buttons instead of knobs like the good lord intended.
Touche. But I would never own a Ford. But drove a ton of them as rentals, etc.
Pretty much owned Toyotas since 1970s so my brain is biased towards that design language.
Early 90s Saturns had pretty ideal control setups, although a lot of the stereo buttons were a little small. Stereo over HVAC, knobs for the stereo and big sliders (and a giant perpendicular rotary switch) for the HVAC. As for ideal stereo setup, I’ll give that nod to the mid-late 00s GM stereo – so simple and easy to use without needing to look.
The good old days when head unit’s were some what standardized and easily replaceable.
Haha nice reference. The screen in my car is mostly used for navigation and movies. So the bigger the better. All the car stuff I do by voice. With the latest update you can control calls with the left joystick on the wheel too. So I don’t miss buttons anymore (oh my I can’t believe I just said that…)