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!
I had a VW Atlas for a rental. Nearly EVERY control on that thing was infuriating, with the worst being the horrible touchbar volume control that is NOT LIT AT NIGHT, and the start button being all but indistinguishable from the trim of the center console. It should not take minutes of hunting to figure out how to start a car.
Noone can ever wind the window switches on my r56 mini Cooper s.
And it has the same hood release on wrong side.
I have a Mercedes and two BMWs. The Mercedes shifter is where the wiper stalk is on the BMWs. Been years now and I still occasionally try to wipe the windshield in the Mercedes with the shifter and put the BMWs in gear with the wiper stalk – and they are both sticks!!! And the Mercedes wipers are by twisting the end of the turn signal stalk – I try to do that in the BMWs too. Sigh – I am getting old…
My 2011 BMW 328i and 128i have 12v power outlets mounted vertically under the glovebox, directly over the passengers left shin. SUPER handy and easy to get at, and things just love to stay securely in them. NOT. Also not really placement, but BMWs “monostable” column stalks are just plain weird – though I personally prefer them to the usual kind now that I have been using them for 14 years.
For my P38a Range Rover, they managed to move the bonnet release to the left side, but left the ODB-II plug in the original location over on the right side.
My Peugeot 504s had the ignition key on the left side of the steering column (as do many Porsches), and the turn signal stalk on the right side of it. Early Triumph Spitfires have the ignition mounted to the bottom of the steering column between your legs. My later Spitfire has the horn on the end of the turn signal stalk, which was a common thing with European cars in the ’70s and was picked up by Ford for a while in the US. Saved having to have a rotating contact in the steering column for one on the steering wheel.
Common setup for newer automatic trans semi trucks. Twist for r/n/d, push/pull for manual shift, up and down for jakes. First time a budy of mine tried to put an auto into gear was hilarious. He spent 30 minutes wiggling the stalk like a pickup truck column shift and nothing happened…
Seriously. Freightliner came up with the idea and it spread… Jake brakes should be 2 toggle switches on the dash with chrome toggle extensions with fake gemstones on the ends. No exemptions! I’m a traditionalist!
Not uncommon, but younger people find it strange when I tell them about the push button transmission controls on
my 63 Valiant.
The Clarkson quote about the 911 made me laugh out loud, but he’s not wrong. I had mine at least five years before I discovered (when I happened to have my head in the passenger footwell and looked up) that there is a map light just above the glovebox, both switch and light completely invisible to driver and passenger.
This may not qualify as strange, but just inconvenient. Subaru placed the cruise control switch on my Impreza in the lower left of the dash, just above my left knee. You can’t really see it well because the steering wheel is blocking the view, so you have fumble around to find it while keeping your eyes on the road. I get why they did it, there’s plenty of real estate down there for switches and whatnot. It just seems odd, because just about every other car places it on the steering wheel or the column.
I don’t get why Japanese and American cars usually have on-off switches for the cruise control to start with. European cars generally do not. It’s always ready to go, just do whatever to set it.
This is a good point, though I vaguely remember my old BMW also had a button to switch it on. Regardless, it was probably some regulatory thing that needed satisfying – presumably to protect against a perceived safety risk from accidental engagement.
I’ve remembered another one! The boot release button for the VT Commodore (and presumably the VZ and VY) was an unmarked button in the glovebox on the passenger side. I don’t know how anyone would have found it without digging through the manual. In terms of access, with my long arms I could reach it from the driver’s side but it was a bit of an awkward lean.
There were a bunch of GM products that had the same eccentric trunk release in the glovebox – unmarked for increased confusion. Damned if I can remember which ones.
Basically ALL of them that actually had electric trunk releases back in the day. The cheaper ones you had to use the key in the trunk to open it.
None of my 60s or 70s had them, seem to remember it was 80s higher end models. I could be misremembering.
My stepfather’s fancy fully-loaded ’77 Grand Prix SJ had it. But only loaded cars had an electric release at all back then. Most you just had to use the key to open the trunk. European cars usually had a button on the trunk lid like VWs, the Japanese loved the pull handle on the floor beside the driver’s seat.
I think the reason for putting it in the glove box was that you could lock the glove box door, then nobody could pop the trunk. And fancy cars came with valet keys that only worked the driver’s door and the ignition, not the glove box or the trunk. So your dead hookers would be safe in the trunk, and your blow in the glove box when you valet parked the car. 🙂
This was VERY much an American car thing, so presumably due to the GM roots.
Interesting to see a weird design decision probably made years before in the US propagate through Germany then finally end up in Australia!
I base this on the fact that the VT’s roots are in the Opel Omega, which probably also had that weird boot release placement (I kind of want to find out now)
I had to look it up…yep, that’s a weird one. I drove a pre-New Holland Ford tractor once that had shuttle shift similar to that, but I can’t imagine using a control like that on a vehicle destined for the road.
Technically not a control per se but either the gauge cluster is too spread out or the steering wheel is too small in my Dodge Journey. Despite owning it for 6 months now I have yet to find a way to position the wheel and not have half the gauges blocked by the rim. In my ideal sitting position the rim follows the curve of the temp gauge perfectly and also blocks off the upper half of the fuel and tachometer. I suppose the fuel and tach aren’t as important but I’m still unsure how it made it into production like this.
IIRC, in my 2012 Journey the very top of the gauges was blocked by the steering wheel, but only slightly. I’m sure it gets better or worse depending on one’s height and seat adjustments.
The pre-2011 Journey had an entirely different gauge cluster, so I can’t speak to those.
Mine is a 2009 so the gauges are spread out in three boxes, glad to know it was at least mostly fixed for the facelift.
The 1995-2005 Cavalier/Sunfire had its ignition on the steering column, and there was a 12V outlet on the dash just to the right of the column…yet some N-Body cars (like the Malibu) had the ignition switch where the J- Body’s 12V outlet was. I think it was always live too – what a fun surprise to stick your key in there!
I’ve been waiting decades for this question. I had a 1980 Ford Fiesta (bought new). The switch for the horn was on the directional stalk on the driver side of the steering wheel. I could position my left hand to push the stalk unnoticed by the passenger and make it seem that my index finger on my right hand was beeping the horn. No matter what I touched. The wheel center, the radio. my passengers nose. It was the best feature of the car.
This was very common in cheap European cars of that era. Saved a buck by not needing a fancy rotating contact in the steering column. My Spitfire is the same, and so were Peugeots and Renaults and probably all sorts of cheap Italian cars too.
We bought a 2020 GTI last year. Our first contact w/VAG. At the dealership I had something I wanted to put under the hatch. I faffed about for 10 min, looking for the hatch release. No lever on the floor like my older Hondas, the trunk button on the fob did nothing. Finally, someone showed me that you pushed on the top of the VW emblem and then reached under it to unlock and lift the hatch.
The BMW convertible has the only controls for the rear windows on the drivers door, annoys whichever granddaughter sitting back there. They always want it in whichever position it is not. OTOH the control for the top is on the center console, w/in easy reach of the child in the back seat.
The BMWs monostable gear lever frustrated my wife, who couldn’t figure out the near flush black button on the thumb side of the knob that would actually produce a gear selection when the knob was moved.
My mother is always flumoxed by the monostable column shifter in my Mercedes. Which really works the same as ye olde column shifter, except you start off in neutral, so up for reverse and down for drive. Button on the end for park, but it also goes into park automatically when you shut it off so I never use the button. No extra button to push, just foot on the brake and push up or down. Which has also leads to me forgetting to put sundry rental cars in park before shutting them off and trying to take the key out…
I love that my BMW convertible (128i) has one button that works all four windows at once. On mine the top buttons are under the radio in the center stack though, nobody is hitting those from the back seat.
Ya, the Bimmer goes into park when you shut the engine off, also when you open the door. That prevents the occurrence like that killed actor Anton Yelchin when he was crushed by his Jeep Cherokee at a gate.
One that gets folks who borrow my Volt is trying to find the gas door release. Where the button normally is, that’s where the EV plug door is. If you want to put in gas, you have to feel for a hidden button above that EV door button. Oh and you have to wait for the tank to purge (3-4 seconds) before it’ll let you open the door. Fun stuff.
Although not the weirdest out there, I’m going to take this as enough of an excuse to complain about the PRNDL buttons on the center console of the GMC Terrain. That place where normal people who eat chips with their sandwiches put the interior temperature controls. Apparently we’re just replacing the air circulation button with drive like a psychopath.
Does GM at least make the buttons distinctive??! Nah fam, tha’d just mess with the fung shui of it all. Can’t be messing up those vibes with anything pesky like clearly letting the driver know where neutral is.
Probably what gets my ol’ boxers in a pinch is the fact that I like the car. It’s a pleasure to drive when I get it as a rental. You sit in it and it feels good. But then you hunt for the shifter long enough to contemplate why we’ve strayed so far from God.
Any shifter that makes me think the knob was a better idea needs to act like a GR Corolla over 85mph and light on fire.
My BMW 330i has two buttons on the end of the turn signal stalk. One cycles thru the views on the dash screen (which is fine). The other turns on and off the automatic high beams, something I pretty much never do (on purpose). Buttons are indistinguishable so I’ve driving around w/o high beams quite often till I figure out I toggled them off at some point.
Some Hyundais in the past decade have had an external trunk release button, which was one of the internal sections of the Hyundai badge on the trunk. Normally, that’s a pretty clever way to hide it, but for anything that ends up heavily in rental fleets it’s maybe a little too clever for someone who doesn’t use it daily.
VW used to do something similar on vehicles with rear hatches where you push in the top of the badge on the hatch to release it. I’ve been at multiple auto shows in the VW display and come across someone trying to figure out how to open the rear latch.
Clock adjustment on my ‘97 Ranger took me a while to figure out. Press and hold the clock button (far right on the radio panel), nothing happens…until you press the seek or scan buttons on the far left side of the radio panel. It’s not a big deal, but the location of seek/scan means adjusting the time is not a one-handed activity.
My Mustang has that “feature” too. It’s always annoying as I don’t usually need to set the clock often enough that I remember how to do it right off.
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…
Wiper controls in the door? What the figurative heck?
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
Figuring out how to adjust the mirrors on a rented Tesla was fun too.
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.
I can toggle it off in our Pilot just by flashing the brights. Which is good, because my wife and I disagree as to whether it’s a worthwhile system.
Yes that and several other WTF moments. I do truly love the navigation voice that cannot be turned off and if you turn the volume down, it just turns it back up. FFS Honda!
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’ve often thought it would be helpful to have the wiper switch on the outer stalk (so, left side on an LHD car) to make it easier to toggle them on and off while clearing snow from the car.
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?
Maine had a Sterling dealership back then, but no Acura dealership for about another 15 years. So same situation, and for the first couple years they were really popular. Then people figured out they were British build quality with Japanese style, rather than Japanese build quality with British style.