More re Compact SUV's

@PaddleDog52 said:
Not many are racing to a paddle spot.

Doesn’t matter. Drive like this and all cars feel like they have infinite grip and behave like supercars at all speed limit levels.

If anything being so deliberate and smooth in this grip-driving technique works going double the speed limit, at 10mph over the speed limit driving to work, 5mph under the speed limit driving your kids to school in the rain, anywhere. You are basically raising the car’s limits by utilizing physics on your side by being smooth and deliberate.

If anything such a driving style is very desirable when going paddling because with stuff on the roof you want to avoid hard shocks so this would definitely be the best way to drive. Basically it keeps the car happy and grippy so that you wear the drivetrain less, wear the tires less, don’t experience hard shocks, everything lasts longer and you’re safer and less accident prone regardless of car or condition.

On a motorcycle you have to drive that way or you’ll fall. On a car you can get away with it most of the time but if you just point, add throttle, and unwind the car will be so much happier and you will too, slow or fast regardless. Try it out going the speed limit on a curvy road. Don’t break any traffic laws but stop having a constant amount of steering in a curve. Be dynamic, feel the car, add throttle after you point and slowly unwind the wheel as you keep adding gas. Slow in, faster out, smooth always, you’ll see!

I liked those 2005 Legacy wagons, had a 2002 wrx wagon that I loved, but at the end of it’s lifespan I had trouble spending more than 45 minutes in that thing. I was thinking about a used Legacy wagon in 2012, but got a new Outback instead which I absolutely hated, and traded for a used Ford Flex only a year or two later. Hated to get a crossover, bloated and slow, but still drives better than the Outback and incredibly comfortable. Was also the closest thing to a “wagon” I could find, evenif the roofline is almost 6 feet tall. And what’s the old saying about if you can’t beat them join them?
What happened to the full sized wagons? Did the mini-vans kill them off, then the suv became cool, but the cuv more practical? I guess they just don’t sell in this country, a few domestic manufacturers made them, Dodge Magnum comes to mind, but they didn’t last. Still a lot of hot hatches, like a Mazda 3 wagon, but you have to go European to get a full sized wagon. And you can still get a full sized wagon in Europe that isn’t a bloated cuv. I still like the last of the Saab wagons whenever I see them, great format, too bad GM killed Saab. Would love to get the modern equivalent of a '69 Cutlass wagon, or even a Country Squire, a low slung cruiser that holds a lot, will carry 4-5 comfortably, big old rack on top within easy reach, and will eat up highway miles. I suppose with the demise of the domestic sedan, more cuvs and suvs will be built and sold, probably little chance of a big wagon coming back, unless we get some crazy gas crisis that hits hard.

Celia, Ford Focus uses a Dual Clutch Transmission (DCT), not a CVT. If you google it, it looks like they paid a high price in consumer complaints…although I also rented one a few years ago and the execution was pretty good. I know the manager responsible for that transmission and I bet he has more gray hair than last time I saw him.

CA139, I basically agree with you. One thing I remember from Bondurant training was “turn in, trail off (the brakes), accelerate, unwind”. For sure one can be fast and smooth (and safe) by paying attention to some basics. I also love manuals and leased three different Miatas when I worked for Ford. My Miatas had a 4.18 axle and turned 4200 rpm at 80 mph. My Miatas had the sport package with summer tires and limited slip differential with no electronic traction control so they were totally unusable in the winter. My friend worked for Audi and one year he leased an S4 with 6 speed manual (NICE car) and the next year he leased an S4 with 7 speed DCT. The DCT made it a better luxury car and also took the performance to a significantly higher level but overall I might still take the manual. Just FYI I’ve had about 15 motorcycles but I never really thought about bike skills transferring to cars although I do think bikes made me much more aware of the importance of good brakes.

My main point around CVT’s, DCT’s and other technologies like turbos is that none of them are universally good or bad…customers don’t drive transmissions they drive vehicles with lots of integrated technologies and all vehicles and technologies have trade offs so it’s really a matter of personal preference (just like boats!).

Dodge Magnum with hellcat motor dropped in would be my choice.

Doesn’t matter. Drive like this and all cars feel like they have infinite grip and behave like supercars at all speed limit levels.

If that was true then there wouldn’t be any supercars.

Junk is junk and the more you drive it at it’s limitations the more it shows.

Never really drove any small crossover vehicles or small SUV models.

@Celia said:
The real trick for someone who wants to talk wayback is manual transmission without synchro mesh. Few under the age of 70 are likely to have encountered a car without it. I was first taught on one of these old clunkers with at best marginal results. Speed shifting came easily to me later on as well as trucks with extra gears for towing horse trailers. But double clutching another matter, probably couldn’t do it now.

My progression in my own cars with manual transmission has been from three speed manual on the column to up to five speed boxes; included US made, German and Japanese brands.

I agree with a lot of the car guys I have heard on talk shows. Current cars are safer than what I started driving. I am glad that I learned on cars that made me work a little harder to handle bad driving conditions, and yeah my current car is really a computer with wheels and a transmission. But if you look at what these vehicles are really doing over the course of driving a few miles - the constant monitors for traffic on three sides and the rear cameras that practically and see around corners when trying to back out of a spot - they are pretty impressive.

There were parts on the older cars that were simpler and so they lasted longer, but it wasn’t an even situation. The body on my first Plymouth was rotting out long before the engine gave its last gasp because it was before anti-rust coatings were so good, After the first couple of years it required a piece of cardboard to hold the the butterfly valve open for the carburetor when temps were under 20 degrees because the spring was only reliable up to about 40000 miles. And I wasn’t going to buy a who;e new carburetor for one badly designed spring. The simplicity of these older cars made workarounds more feasible than in the current computerized versions. I am not ready to equate that to better.

I saw the butterfly comment which brought back an old memory for me. I assume you mean the choke blade on the carb? I had the same thing. Went to a junk yard got the spring out of another carb and was fixed up. my 1974 AMC Gremlin, green color 3 speed on the floor manual steering manual brakes AM radio, plus before electronic ignition had points that I changed a lot. . the good old days. Paid 300 bucks for it. in 1981 so it was old.

Anyone going back before syncro transmissions is really old. I believe semi trucks are still that way?

@PaddleDog52 said:
Doesn’t matter. Drive like this and all cars feel like they have infinite grip and behave like supercars at all speed limit levels.

If that was true then there wouldn’t be any supercars.

Junk is junk and the more you drive it at it’s limitations the more it shows.

Never really drove any small crossover vehicles or small SUV models.

The supercar allows either insecure people to feed their ego or extra speed on the track, but drive for grip as above stated and especially with the well designed modern cars you can go pretty much 1 1/2-2x the speed limit at all times barely giving it any throttle. All cars are like this and when you use the throttle to add grip you can do it slowly pulling out of your drive way or at Watkins Glen or driving to your grandpa’s house in the winter on snowy dirt roads in rural Maine it’s all the same. Smooth application of throttle whilst unwinding the wheel equals grip. Take it from someone whose done it with a lot of vehicles, do this, all cars seem very similar from super car to econobox. They all start to feel like supercars though, it’s like the magic grip and rotating button were some how unlocked and it works even at parking speeds!

Try it, take your car and drive it as if it were a motorcycle by pointing, applying throttle and unwinding the wheel as you apply more throttle. I’m not saying fast or reckless or even enough throttle to speed. Nope, just a tiny, teeny little bit and keep smoothly rolling onto the throttle as if it was an egg! Don’t be speeding, just try coming out of a slow curve that way, practice, you’ll get the hang of it. The modern cars have such high levels of engineering that even the cheapest car on today’s roads is way too fast, way too capable and the speed limits will seem so low with just a few page thicknesses of gas. And the performance potential only goes up from there.

Like I said if you have to floor the throttle unless you are opening up on a very long straightaway on a closed course that allows you the speeds that any modern car can allow in that situation you aren’t driving properly. True grip, true speed is the lazy route, the less you do, the less input you give the driveline and suspension, the more grip the car has to do what it can and wants. If you feel no longer like the driver but the passenger and that the car is driving you, you know that you’re doing it correctly…

My Dad taught me to drive on a manual in a car with a police interceptor engine. Only on country dirt roads. Can’t tell you how many times I crow hopped and stalled that beast.
Many years later we got a VW Beetle and I couldn’t believe how simple it was to shift.

@CA139 said:

@PaddleDog52 said:
Doesn’t matter. Drive like this and all cars feel like they have infinite grip and behave like supercars at all speed limit levels.

If that was true then there wouldn’t be any supercars.

Junk is junk and the more you drive it at it’s limitations the more it shows.

Never really drove any small crossover vehicles or small SUV models.

The supercar allows either insecure people to feed their ego or extra speed on the track, but drive for grip as above stated and especially with the well designed modern cars you can go pretty much 1 1/2-2x the speed limit at all times barely giving it any throttle. All cars are like this and when you use the throttle to add grip you can do it slowly pulling out of your drive way or at Watkins Glen or driving to your grandpa’s house in the winter on snowy dirt roads in rural Maine it’s all the same. Smooth application of throttle whilst unwinding the wheel equals grip. Take it from someone whose done it with a lot of vehicles, do this, all cars seem very similar from super car to econobox. They all start to feel like supercars though, it’s like the magic grip and rotating button were some how unlocked and it works even at parking speeds!

Try it, take your car and drive it as if it were a motorcycle by pointing, applying throttle and unwinding the wheel as you apply more throttle. I’m not saying fast or reckless or even enough throttle to speed. Nope, just a tiny, teeny little bit and keep smoothly rolling onto the throttle as if it was an egg! Don’t be speeding, just try coming out of a slow curve that way, practice, you’ll get the hang of it. The modern cars have such high levels of engineering that even the cheapest car on today’s roads is way too fast, way too capable and the speed limits will seem so low with just a few page thicknesses of gas. And the performance potential only goes up from there.

Like I said if you have to floor the throttle unless you are opening up on a very long straightaway on a closed course that allows you the speeds that any modern car can allow in that situation you aren’t driving properly. True grip, true speed is the lazy route, the less you do, the less input you give the driveline and suspension, the more grip the car has to do what it can and wants. If you feel no longer like the driver but the passenger and that the car is driving you, you know that you’re doing it correctly…

Adding grip pulling out if your driveway?

Barely any throttle to go 1.5 times the speed limit?

Few page thicknesses on the accelerator pedel?

I find this comments bizzare.

Good foundation for a vehicle is required for the intended purpose. Honda fit will never carry a Libra XT well.

Hi String. I believe hopping and stalling would be the result of my trying to drive a pre-synchro car now. As it was in the old 1950’s maybe 1960 Studebaker Lark 6 that my mother tried to start me on. Of course she had no trouble with it, and it was seriously cool looking early little station wagon. Black with red trim and chrome in all the right places. So I was frustrated by lack of skill. But like you, it made me very appreciative when I got my first car, a Plymouth Duster with 3 speeds on the column.

I have been reading the comments about how to drive and hold the best traction, if that is an accurate summary of much of the above. But I cut back on my coffee intake enough that fully tracking all the points is not quite happening. :slight_smile:

Donning my curmudgeon cap…

While I certainly don’t have any interest in going back to the pre-Synchromesh days, I have always driven manual transmissions and don’t envision that changing as long as they’re still available. It’s refreshing when I go to Europe and see that manual transmissions are still the norm, rather than the exception there.

I think it’s time to push back against this ridiculous barrage of technology being added to cars that simply divorces the driver more and more from the process of driving. We keep piling on this unnecessary - and expensive - junk, yet traffic fatalities don’t decrease, probably because people simply pay less attention to what they’re doing behind the wheel, assuming that their vehicle will get them out of any jams they get into. That’s probably why the majority of the vehicles I see off the road in snowstorms are SUVs. People simply have no understanding how their vehicles work or how to drive anymore.

I really resent that poorly designed “safety” features like anti-lock brakes and traction control are mandated on new vehicles. I have to disable them every winter so they don’t get me killed when the conditions get really slippery (if you don’t drive in real winter conditions, you wouldn’t understand why). Fortunately, I only have to pull a fuse and live with the idiot lights on the dash for a few months each year.

My feeling is that people who actually need this stuff, plus the self-parking and self-braking nonsense should just get self-driving vehicles once they’re available. If you’re not willing to invest in learning basic skills and paying attention to what you’re doing, you and everyone around you would be better off if you left driving to someone or something else. Perhaps it’s a good thing that the number of young people getting their driver’s license has been dropping significantly in recent years.

I wish someone would/could build basic, reliable vehicles with just the useful innovations (like galvanized sheet metal & fuel injection - no return to rust and carbs, thanks), but without the unnecessary crap. Give me a vehicle that requires and allows me to drive and I’ll be a happy camper!

Rant mode off. :wink:

I need a “like” button for bnystrom’s post. My sentiments exactly. I recently bought a new car and I’m puzzled about the engineers’ thought processes. Subaru seems to cater to the outdoor folks… paddlers, hikers, cyclists, etc. The fact that they are one of the few folks that still offer a manual transmission reflects that they are in tune with the ‘do it myself’ market segment. BUT… they don’t want you to know what your engine operating temperature is. They give you four ways to measure your mpg information and one idiot light to let you know that you’ve already overheated. Progress is regress.

edit: My last two vehicles have had a simple button on the dash that turns off the traction control. Thankful for that.

I could’ve written bnystrom’s rant myself, it so exactly matches my thoughts and feelings. Thanks for posting it, Brian!

“Best” in cars doesn’t equal “fastest” or “most idiot-resistant.” If a driver cannot really sense what the car is doing despite paying attention, then the divorce is already final.

FEELING through the body matters a lot for driving finesse and control.

For bynstrom:

The above posts reflect my starting point. But I also had to go out and get a car, and at some point I needed to make peace with what is available that carries the crap I need it to and gets around in my climate conditions. There is a point where I can’t expend energy arguing with a car that overall works just fine, even if it is not my preferred methodology.

That said, I am thrilled that collision avoidance is pretty much universal now because I watched as my stepmother got to the point she really should not have been driving. If someone in her state was driving a new car now it would at least have that.

I and all the other drivers on the road got lucky. Just about the time I was going to anonymously report her to the state for needing a road test I knew she couldn’t pass, she drove her car into a solid object at the right speed to produce the ideal result. She was able to recover fine and enough air bags went off in the car it was a clear total. But frankly, she could have killed someone. Until they get these drivers off the road, some of this safety stuff is a very good thing.

I agree with B Nystrom… I was able to disable the autocorrect on the traction control in my 2009 Forester after it nearly killed me. I had the car sliding around a corner in a nice skid with the rear end braking a little loose… From behind the snowbank there looms a plow stuck across the travel lane… The car was determined it ought to go straight and ergo right into the side of the snowplow truck… Fortunately I was able to turn it to the right to pass in back of the plow truck on the shoulder.

All this electronic crap is not a DIY job for you to fix either. Gone are the days you could literally climb in the engine and maintain it yourself.

I still hate the ABS in my truck. When it comes on, I used to think something had gone wrong. Now I recognize what it is right away but I still instantly take my foot OFF the brake when it happens. I used to pulse the brakes instead, similar to braking a mtb on an extremely loose, steep, tight turn downhill. It worked well and I avoided skidding.

The ABS has never stayed on long enough for me to estimate whether it would be better than the old pulsing method. But sometimes it kicks on for something that is of no consequence, such as a tiny bit of gravel on the road, in a very small spot. Without the ABS, any skid from braking on that would stop in a split second anyway.

Manual transmissions can be fun, but for daily driving, which usually includes in-town driving, I much prefer automatic transmissions. Clutch usage tires my calves and ankles. Traffic jams really suck with manual transmissions, at least it did with the 1970 models that I drove. Modern manuals may be less demanding of the legs than older models, but I haven’t driven a manual transmission in over 20 years and I don’t miss them.

I also prefer the shifter on the steering column, rather than on the console. Consoles are for drink holders and clutter : )

I learned to drive in a pickup with a “three on the tree” manual shifter.

As we age, not that any of us do, the newer safety features can be very helpful. My wife insisted that her new Camry have them. I don’t think she needs them yet, but who knows?
A friend’s wife has had 4 minor collisions over the last few years, all her fault. So far her new Camry has prevented any . I can’t imagine what the insurance cost must be.

String, I went from almost zero of these new safety features to a fair amount of them in one car change, partly because I wanted to lurch my wreckers along until they had a chance to smooth out glitches in the new stuff. So I skipped the early issues that I have heard from other drivers.

But one thing that it took no more than a couple of weeks to find out, in general the sensors on the car see and respond to a problem sooner than me. The car will see a car inappropriately stopping in front of me when I have not seen the brake lights due to sun glare for ex. This is I think a good thing as we get older. You can then choose to disagree with the car, but at least you were alerted.

I do talk to the car more. Most frequent is what the hell is your problem when it won’'t lock because I have left the keys inside or pushed the wrong button. Still not slick with the push button start. The second is what the hell are you doing when the collision system starts to kick in or the side or rear camera sensors make the car start bleeping. Latter couple happen a lot, because they can see around corners backing out and I can’t.

I leaned very quickly to just stop the car. Even if I haven’t sussed it out yet the car is correct, there is something there. Granted it is occasionally a neighbor’s garbage bin. But better to know.