Do you like and use all the bells and whistles your vehicle came with?

I do have to add I have come to really like the power door locks, Now if I forget to lock the truck while pulling out with the big rig I just point the fob at it and lock it ,instead of having to get out and run back to lock it.

I love the agony booth, the planet destroying megabombs, the incinerator rayguns and the airlock to vent out disobedient crew.
The cup holder is useless, though.

I have an older Lincoln, so it doesn’t have all the bluetooth and GPS. But it does have 6-way power seats, power windows, power locks, cruise control, 6 disc CD stereo, heated and AC seats and I use them all. It even has an interesting extra…it narrates my ride and helps me watch for braking drivers and upcoming turns. But this option only seems to work when my wife is in the car…

I have a top of the line 2000 Chevy Tahoe Z71 model. It was so advanced and luxurious it has a 6 disc CD changer in the back section! Classy!
I occasionally use cruise control. I use power windows and remote power door locks daily.

I dislike almost all of the electronic features of my 2001 car.

I do mostly like having GPS, but that comes from my phone.

The bluetooth I had in a rental car was extremely annoying. It wanted to use a voice interface which didn’t work very well and wasted time and was annoying to try to use. It also refused to sync while the car was moving for “safety” reasons (even though it was the passenger doing it)! It also kept needing to be re-sync-ed, often failed, etc.

I’ve tried using cruise control but I don’t like it even for long road trips.

Separate climate control is ok but the driver-side down-temp button broke, making it hard to reduce that temp setting. I don’t see the advantage over more-durable physical vents like we’ve had forever.

I do think the butt-warmers on one car are nice enough, but not needed.

The alarm system was hyper-sensitive and needed to be disabled.

The high-tech high beams went berserk and it’d be $600+ to fix the “light control unit” so I had to disconnect the high beams – screw that!

The stupid sun shader things broke and had to be cut out.

The stupid smart key is mostly pointless and can run out of power and will be expensive if it ever gets lost or breaks – do not want.

The programmable chair positions might be ok but the interface is hard to remember so I never use it.

The auto-adjustive-reflectivity rear-view mirror is a joke especially as it has no manual tilt so I just get blinded by vehicles with high headlights and can’t do anything about it.

The rain sensor for the wipers doesn’t work well and so messes up the variable wiper speed experience, requiring more attention rather than less.

I usually disable the traction control because it mainly goes off too soon, sapping power and interfering with driver control.

The air bags that supposedly are making me safer have never been needed, but did get recalled because some of them were found to kill people (...).

Involuntary beeps when the car is unlocked.

Power locks and windows seem needless to me and have broken down on me several times, including cascading expensive and/or problematic malfunctions.

The cup holders are likely to drop drinks, and one broke.

In short, it mostly sucks and I’d rather it were older cheaper more reliable more controllable systems, or nothing.

I hate loathe and despise computers that track your positions and movements, or allow your car to be messed with over wifi, or where the computer can/will take over your car in some way (auto-parking, auto-driving).

Cars with always-on headlights also seem like a terrible idea to me.

Gizmos I like (or have liked in newer rental cars):

Power steering.

ABS brakes.

Cameras that let you see from your bumper so you can tell if you’re backing into something or about to scrape your front fender on a curb.

A good sound system, preferably with a USB port that can read MP3’s.

^ I’ve got a new hero! Now get off my lawn! :-)

I opted against bells and whistles when I bought my car. No moon roof, no spoiler, no GPS, no little video screen, no airplane cockpit. Basically I want the same controls I want for everything. Just give me two knobs: one for station or channel selector and one for on/off-volume. That ought to do it for a TV, radio, coffee maker, vacuum cleaner, washing machine, camera, and of course car. Why would you need more than two knobs for anything? Just messy and confusing. So yes, I’m happy with what came with my car because it’s basically nothing but stop, go, and steer. Plus a radio.

(Yeah, it does have heat/AC, power locks and windows, and so on, but they sort of spoil my argument.)

A friend of mine recently bought a new car “with everything” (after totaling her old one), and she hates it. It takes her so long to figure out the functional steps every time she gets in that she winds up punching buttons randomly and swearing. You should see her operate her smartphone. I won’t even own a smartphone.

Because I drive a Honda, I have very little choice about the features. You can’t really Special order, so if you want this feature, you also get a bunch of those features, whether you want them or not. Because I wanted heated seats, I got a bunch of other stuff. Some of the features I like and happen to use, the other stuff I just ignore.

It’s really not a big deal to me, I like the stuff I like, I ignore the stuff I don’t.

I do when need them. I like the GPS.
My husband is much more into bells and whistles than I am.

Oh really like my egg McMuffin warmers! They get a heated seat all to themselves so they’re nice a toasty when I get where ever I’m going. And, being cold blooded like I am, I appreciate them for me.

I like having my truck as simple as possible. My last one even had manual roll up windows. The one I have now has the “new” basics: Electric windows, cruise but not much else. I do add “features” such as an after market mp3 player, inverter, quad band radio and live obd reader. I don’t care for stuff like heated seats.

I am really glad I am not the only one that dislikes all the freaking gadgets most vehicles come stock with.
Just another piece of vomit to break down later in the vehicles life and cost mega bucks to fix or replace.

What I don’t get is there seems to be plenty of people that want nothing to do with these wonder gadgets that come on todays vehicles, why can’t the manufacturer offer a more plain jane model for those that don’t want the gadgets?

^^^ I couldn’t agree more, oh Squeeky One. All the modern safety devices prevent injuries and save lives, and they need to be mandatory on every vehicle. But, many of us don’t need or want the extra features.

I’ve never bothered to learn about my cruise control. There’s a rear camera that automatically engages when I put the car into reverse; the view is distorted and unhelpful. There are knobs and buttons that I can’t even name.

When I bought my brand new 1982 Subaru, I was thrilled that it had AM/FM.

My present vehicle is a bicycle and I am very pleased with the bell. If I want whistling I have to do it myself, which I sometimes do.

I like most of them since most are related to safety and/or comfort. My blind spot and parking alerts are particularly useful and heated seats in the winter are a pleasure. I’m sure there are some that I don’t use, so what? I don’t like the GPS that came with the car but I do use Google Maps sometimes from my (Heaven forfend!) smart phone.

Do you not use GPS in the trucks you drive for work @Squeeky? That would seem inefficient.

Hahahahaha… my car has a cassette player, which we use on longer drives with books-on-tape that are really on tape. Amazing how cheap books-on-tape are people will almost give them to you to haul them away.

This car (96 Saturn) is at that sweet spot in US car manufacturing when fuel-injection was perfected and ABS is good and the passenger compartment is surrounded by useful safety features. And the sweet little 16-valve 4-cylinder engine still gets us around at 30+ mpg.

I have a 2017 Ford F-150 standard cab with 8 foot bed. 6 cylinder.

I like how it syncs flawlessly with my cell phone. Excellent safety feature.

I never use cruise control. Don’t want it. That seems to irritate my wife.

I don’t like the power window and power mirrors. I think it’s unnecessary.

The sound/entertainment system and climate are fully controllable from the steering wheel but I still reach over to the dashboard and make my adjustment. The irritates my wife.

It has air conditioning but I just use the heater and defrost aspects not the cooling. If it gets hot I roll the windows down.

Our Transport trucks don’t have GPS @janbb , our company has set runs, we never go in blind if we acquire a new customer our road foreman will meet us and lead us in,and orientate us to what the new customer expects out of us.

Our rigs have a power window for the passenger side but the drivers is a crank.
I really like that.

My new truck has power windows and I still don’t like them, power mirrors are ok, first time I have ever had them,it came with heated mirrors as well and in the winter they are a nice feature.
It came with blue tooth for my cell that I do not use, people just can’t understand while driving my phone is just plain OFF!

What do you think about the axe-storage compartment?

@canidmajor Our car came fully loaded. I didn’t know that I wanted heated seats, but I love them. (I have a lot of first world guilt about it, but I love them,)

Boy @ragingloli for being this super intelligent space being that one day plans to eat us all, you sure are convinced every trucker out there is a deranged axe killer, you really need to cut back on the horror videos before you zip into your cocoon for the night.

Well, you know the basis of any effective justice system: Guilty

My ex and I were looking at a new car once, for our expanding family. We checked into a Mountaineer or something. It had a damn horizon level on the dash. I asked the sales guy, “Is that for when I drive off a cliff I’ll know where I am in relation to the earth??!” Dumbest thing ever.

But @SQUEEKY2, the old guys who grew up driving model A cars had the same complaints when the cars began to get more modern. “Just more stuff to break.”

I know why manufacturers add the gadgets,they can charge more for the vehicle, dealerships can make more money fixing the gadgets when they breakdown, and they will and do break down.
For those that want all these gadgets great, but it seems a great deal of people would rather opt out of these wonder gadgets if given the choice.
why is there not a choice?

Good question. I’m pretty sure you could order one.

That was true in 1998 when I factory ordered my truck, in 2017 I was told that no longer was an option.

Well shit! What a rip!

When we bought our mini-van in 1987 we had to move heaven and earth to get a standard because that’s what I wanted. Geez. You’d think we asked for the Taj Mahall (whatever!)

My niece and her husband bought a new Honda mini van, and both wanted a standard the sales man just sneered and said nobody wants a standard any more, they both sneered back and said we do.
They settled for an automatic because they both wanted the Honda, but still to this day want a manual tranny.

I didn’t have my first automatic until 1997.

The sales people just say everyone wants it this way type thing, well I am happy to say I am not everyone.

I got a few bells and whistles with my truck, more than I wanted really. All I was after was a work vehicle with a manual transmission, vinyl seats and vinyl flooring, something I could turn a hose on and wash out if I were so inclined. The last of this type was sold to a T-Rex evidently.
“Everyone” wants automatics with fabric seats and carpeting and power everything and such I was told by several sales persons and it did not seem to matter which brand. I was told I could “special order” one but they could not tell me when I could have it and the cost was considerably higher than one on the lot that was equipped with “way more stuff”.
So I settled.
I am glad I got the cruise control but I wanted that anyway. And the bluetooth for the phone is a nice touch, I use that frequently but not so much with the music system; mostly still do that manually, including reaching for the knob on the dash to adjust the sound level. I have to think about it to use the steering wheel mounted controls. The variable control for the wipers is nice. I was used to having intermittent, low and high and none of those three options ever seemed right for the situation. Checking the tire pressure from inside the car is good but as I mentioned in an earlier post, I cannot get the same readings directly from the tires so I question how accurate this feature is.
I have never liked having my lights controlled from the stick and still want the old floor button dimmer back.
A feature I would like would be an accurate gas gauge, one that told me exactly how much gas I had left in the tank and not just that I am “getting low” or having that robot with his dick in his ear light up on the dashboard. And I think I would like a heads up display which was tried, maybe a couple of times, but has not become mainstream. I asked one dealer about his several years back and he said the feedback from users was not positive enough (whatever that means) for them to make it a standard feature on vehicles.

I do like the back up cameras my sisters have in their cars.

” It had a damn horizon level on the dash”

That horizontal level is handy when changing tires using the emergency jack. If the vehicle is not level it’s not safe to use.

handy only assuming that the ground you are standing on is level.

LOL! You jack up only one part of the car, either one of the back or one of the front corners! Then do you jump it the car to see if it’s level, which it won’t be!\? Kind of a dangerous, and useless thing to do, IMO.

If a road were un-level enough to be dangerous to jack up to change the tires, wouldn’t it be really obvious to a human aware of that issue, using their natural ability to detect slopes?

No,no @Zaku people don’t have any natural ability any more that is why they depend so much on these costly gadgets to keep them safe.
The other day at a coffee shop this guy was talking about his new car, and saying GM will email him if one of his tires are low on pressure.