Let’s say you’re a car designer and you’re penning a new model from scratch, so you can put the switches and levers essentially anywhere you want. You’re probably going to place them with established conventions in mind, perhaps ergonomic data, certainly some sort of common sense, right? You’d think.
So why do some manufacturers choose the most absurd locations for controls?
There are plenty of examples out there. Here are just a few instances of some really idiotic control placements:
Saab 9-3: Rear seat heater switch in the front of the car
No, I am not gonna mention the ignition key, which is not as bad a placement as you might think. It’s the fact that the rear seat heat button is impossible to access from the back. And most people didn’t know it had rear seat heaters. I owned one of these, and if you had an infantile mentality and wanted to mess with rear-seat passengers, you would not be the first.
Alfa 75 Milano: Power window switches on the ceiling (front only)
Well, the front power window switches are up there. Not only is the position odd, but the buttons are both unlabeled and do an odd left/right press to make the windows go up and down.
The rear window switches are located on the panel behind the lid on the center console where both front and rear occupants have to contort to get to them. Rolling down all four windows requires some aerobic exercise. Of course, it’s an old Alfa so just be happy that they put the switches inside of the car; if you value ergonomics over a Busso V6 at full song this ain’t the car for you anyway.
Porsche 944/968: Odometer reset by pushing in an air vent
And no, it isn’t labeled at all.
Audi Coupe: Trunk only opens from inside the car
See the clean trunk lid? Yup, no key. And this was a decade or so before they got wireless key fob releases, so no dice if you’re trying to open it when you’re standing at the bumper, hands full of shit. Unsurprisingly, the Alfa Milanos (and a number of other cars) are the same way.
Sterling 825: Hood release in passenger’s side footwell
This is the Acura Legend that the Brits covered in their own body and interior (and electrics – ahhh!). Both the Honda and the Rover were home market RHD cars, and while the Japanese car chose to move the hood release to the driver’s side on US cars, the English manufacturer kept it right where it was in old Blighty – you can see it below the ill-fitting glove box. Bad choice, especially since in this British version you’ll be opening that hood way more than in the Legend. I will say that wood still looks pretty damn nice, though.
What cars have you owned where you wondered if, as Jeremy Clarkson once said about the Porsche 911, the designers of the interior stuffed all the switches up their nose, sat in the driver’s seat, and sneezed to place them? We want to know!
Sometimes I think these comment-bait things are just a practical joke on readers to see how many fools with itchy keyboard fingers step up, but yeah, #76 here. In any event, the wiper controls by the driver’s door handle on a C4 Corvette (at-least the early one I have). The wipers are not on the door, the control shouldn’t be there. The only justification could be that they ran out of room in the normal places. All that wiring and crap has to go from the mechanism, to under the dash, to the hazard-prone hinged-door opening, and through the door a ways, then back out…
Not unusual on either vehicle, but the electric window switches on my EF Fairmont (Australian) were in the centre console.
Right about where the e-brake switch is in the Touareg.
Guess what happened…
Windsheild wiper controls on a touchscreen. (the “automatic” setting was useless.)
Yes, on a Tesla. =P
I don’t know if it counts as “weird” as much as “dogshit” –
Go look up the mechanism to toggle automatic high-beams on the 10th-gen Accord
(for those who don’t want to look it up, here’s an excerpt from the user manual)
This is what I found in the 2024 Civic manual as well, but it seems like a 3-4 second hold does the trick to toggle it on/off, plus there’s the option in the dash menu, so seems like maybe they came to their senses with the tech in the newer gens.
But that reminds me of the cheat codes with key turns or hitting the lock switches I think some cars (Chrysler?) used to do for things like disabling automatic power locks ~30 years ago.
This reminds me of the method to move the wipers in a current-gen Mazda3 into the service position for replacement or when cleaning the window. It was enough of a faff that I always forgot how to do it and just didn’t bother with it when cleaning.
Most European, American and Chinese cars in right hand drive markets: the indicator stalk is on the wrong side (the left), which would be the correct side in LHD markets. It’s not a huge deal and was more of an issue back when manuals were more common. Still annoying when I’m holding my wife’s hand and have to let go to whack on the indicator though.
This also often results in volume and other common controls being on the wrong side – closer to the passenger than the driver.
A more annoying LHD market hangover: I drove a Haval H6 (mid-size SUV by Great Wall Motors) as a rental last month and the Apple Carplay/Android Auto USB port was on the side of the centre console in the passenger footwell, which made it an absolute faff to get to every time I had to plug in the cable. There was a matching USB port on the driver’s side but it was power-only.
Oh man, I rented a Mitsubishi Magna on my first trip to Australia, and I spent the first 30 minutes of a drive from Sydney to Melbourne wiping the windscreen when I wanted to change lanes. Funny, then annoying, then the funniest thing ever.
I have a vivid memory of a lovely sunny day at Christchurch airport in New Zealand about ten years ago where I observed a driver in a rental car negotiating roundabout with their wipers on full-tilt. Welcome to opposite land!
I remember when working at a quick-lube in the 80s, we had to tell the newbies “hood release on the passenger side” on every Sterling.
And we actually had quite a few, it was Barrington, Illinois and the Sterling dealership was right down the block. More Sterlings than Legends!
Motorwerks had Sterling? I didn’t move here till ’93 so I didn’t know
It was on Hough St just north of downtown, if my creaky old memory serves. Not at the main Motor Jerks facility on Dundee Rd.
Or was it on 14?