Car types I hate....

[cable_t]

The cars I hate or more specifically the types of cars I hate...hehehe. Not enough time for my list...however to narrow it down...SUV's and mini-vans. And 4 doors. And station wagons. And most imports (with the exception of the car the gorgeous blonde got out of...I loved her car...hehehe). And after I just spent 160 bucks for a dealer to scope my car and then wrap a wire in my engine compartment three times with electrical tape...new cars. My wife's next "new" car is going to be a '64 Chevy Impala!!!!!!!!!

['97ventureowner]

I used to "dislike" these types of vehicles too, (about 15-20 years ago) but then I was single and no responsibilities either. As time wore on, and I got married and started a family, I quickly realized how important minivans have become in my life. I still dislike SUVs as I think too many people who really don't need them for practical purposes, own them. A positive thing about station wagons is that they usually come with the larger, more powerful engines available, and are good alternatives for those who don't want to own a minivan. You're lucky it only cost you $160 to diagnose the problem with your car. It could have cost much more. One of the good things about today's vehicles is that most times they are easy to diagnose with many "tools" available for diagnosing and correcting problems. The computer systems in today's vehicles do a pretty good job of monitoring and alerting the owner to possible problems, and then interact with the diagnosing tools to what the problem is. Although cars are becoming more complex these days, they are still plauged with the problems that affected it's "ancestors'' such as loose wires, faulty sensor, simple items. Usually it is one of these items that cause the problem in the first place.I remember years ago it sometimes took a longer time and ended up costing more money to find some of the problems that affected cars. There was a certain procedure mechanics used to diagnose a problem, and if one thing didn't work, they would go on to the next test until the problem was solved. Don't get me wrong, I still prefer older cars to the newer ones, they are a lot easier to work on. In fact, my "oldest" car happens to be a '64 Bel Air ( cousin to the Impala.) I didn't care for 4 door cars years ago either, but I just purchased a '95 Buick Roadmaster (4dr.)in excellent shape, for only $1500. It has the LT1 engine in it and sure can haul a family around

[drunken monkey]

what i see here is not a hate of a type of a car but a hate of the misuse of a type of car.
as you have said, you didn't like the big hunkering minivans (people carriers?) until you yourself needed one.
by the same token, if you were to move into the country where you would really have need for an off roading 4WD car/truck/range rover type thing, then once again, you will see the point and the use and the need for them.

going off slightly, this dislike for such a type of vehicle is also probably enhanced by the fact that many of the modern versions of these things aren't even good examples of their breed, especially that last generations of them
i.e H2 hummer and god forbid, the first gen Freelander.
To me the BMW X3 is a joke and even the X5 which is essentially a good car in some respects is still not all that when you compare it to a proper Range Rover.

cars used out of context and cars built to follow a trend is what i dislike. Add them together and it just gets worse.

[Chris V]

Why not dislike the owners of cars that use them out of context, and not the cars, themselves? Of course, that would mean disliking anyone that drove sports cars on the street in a non road race environment, or performacne cars anywher enear the speed limit, and since we LIKE those cars, then we can't use that same logic on them. It's easy to fall into hypocracy when faced with a choice like that, isn't it?

So again I ask, as in my other thread, why is it so important to close your minds up and hate on things, rather than finding things to like and understand about more vehicles?

Cars/trucks/SUVs are products, and like all products, we tend to buy what we want, not what we need. No one needs ANY cars, much less performance cars. SO when you start talking about cars that people don't need, remember, your favorties should be on that list, as well as all race cars (no one needs to waste fuel driving a car for pleasure). A better approach would be to buy what you want, don't buy what you don't want, and let others do the same without being insulting.

[drunken monkey]

well, i think, from the perspective of someone who works in the design industry that there is good design and bad design and in most cases, i tend to look at cars too in that respect. sure any car will have something good to say about it but i'm not convinced that is reason enough to ignore the bad points. My most cited examples when ever i'm part of a crit panel is that of the VW beetle. Fundementally, as a car it is a well engineered and pretty reliable and well built machine. Unfortunately, as a design, it is old and lazy, being essentially a golf with a new body clunked on.
as you should know new body = new loads, new stresses etc etc and yet surprisngly, pretty much nothing was done to the underlying golf chassis to make up for the changes. Fundementally, while the car is without doubt a well made thing, it is in my eyes, a flawed car and a piece of lazy/bad designing.

it isn't all down to being closed minded as you seem to live branding all people with.

one thing that i have always ended up with in these discussion is that ultimately we all have freedom to buy whatever the heck we like, even if it is totally inappropriate for the eventual use (although there is more argument for driving a 911 in the city than there is for driving a range rover in the city).
then again, doesn't that freedom also extend to us being able to not like any particular car for any reason?

[Chris V]

Originally Posted by drunken monkey

well, i think, from the perspective of someone who works in the design industry that there is good design and bad design and in most cases, i tend to look at cars too in that respect. sure any car will have something good to say about it but i'm not convinced that is reason enough to ignore the bad points. My most cited examples when ever i'm part of a crit panel is that of the VW beetle. Fundementally, as a car it is a well engineered and pretty reliable and well built machine. Unfortunately, as a design, it is old and lazy, being essentially a golf with a new body clunked on.
as you should know new body = new loads, new stresses etc etc and yet surprisngly, pretty much nothing was done to the underlying golf chassis to make up for the changes. Fundementally, while the car is without doubt a well made thing, it is in my eyes, a flawed car and a piece of lazy/bad designing.

First off, the stresess simply aren't that different. I mean, old style cars like the original Beetle and Triumph Spitfire have lasted years with fundamnetally worse engineering than the new Beetle. And as was shown in crash tests, the new Beetle even outperformed the Golf it was based on, so apparently it got stronger.

As for lazy, it's design parameters were a boutique car, to stand out in a sea of generic hatchbacks. Sure, it's less practical than the Golf it's based on, but designers know that most people drive theri vehicles most of the time with one or two people in them, and so it really doesn't matter much if a car design loses a bit of cargo area in order to make it more appealing to a particular market. This way they can recover the money from their basic tooling, and target vastly different markets with many of the same basic parts, which is rather efficient, not "lazy." It only becomes lazy if you forget what it's reason for existence is

Sure to a lot of engineers, starting from scratch is the more "elegant" solution, but reinventing the wheel and not using most of what you've already developed to do a similar product is wasteful.

it isn't all down to being closed minded as you seem to live branding all people with.

Sorry, but it usually is. In fact it's been stated on these and other forums: it's more important to form an opinion based on nothing than learn about it. And it's apparently more important to whin that one's opinion is being censored or not allowed, than to form intelligent, informed opinions. At least you have some studied reasons for disliking the Beetle, which makes your argument in this completely valid, even if I don't agree with it. But it requires some intelligence to state your case as you did. I see no reason why I should respect someone who doesn't bother to do that. If it's not important enough to them to form an informed opinion and state it with some reasoned support, then it's not important enough for me to treat it respectfully (though I usually just ignore it until blatantly factually mistaken statements are made).

one thing that i have always ended up with in these discussion is that ultimately we all have freedom to buy whatever the heck we like, even if it is totally inappropriate for the eventual use (although there is more argument for driving a 911 in the city than there is for driving a range rover in the city).
then again, doesn't that freedom also extend to us being able to not like any particular car for any reason?

There's a difference between the freedom to not like something (and we all have things we don't like) and the freedom to run around insulting it as though, since you don't like it, anyone that does is stupid. And that's what threads like this come down to. If you think the car is stupid, then anyone who likes it must be stupid for not hating it for the same reasons you do.

It's almost more of a situation of tact than anything. You wouldn't walk up to a man in a restaurant, eating dinner with his wife, and say, "man, your wife is ugly. I wouldn't marry anyone like her." The response would often be physically painful to you. On the web, the response is merely more words. The thing I find amusing, however, is that it's ok for someone to reserve the rite to hate and insult something, but not ok for someone else to reserve the right to respond in a similar fashion. You want to reserve the right to be insulting, but not allow anyone else the right to insult you.

Basically yes, you have the freedom to dislike anything you want and say so. I then also have the freedom to respond to that in any way *I* feel. Same freedom.

My question, in that thread as well as this, is simple: why is it more important to hate on things than try to appreciate them? Why is it more important for automotive enthusiasts to promote that in the hobby and industry we enjoy?

[drunken monkey]

because manufacturers only respond and go about making changes when people tell them what they don't like.
again, as someone who designs things, namely buildings, for a living, i can tell you that i would rather have someone tell me everything that they think is wrong with what i do; simply praising things doesn't help the design process. of course, I do concede that my view is based on my own many years in a design industry/environment and that is how it has always worked. The good bits we don't need to talk about because they don't need more work on, whereas the bad bits are talked about so we know how to fix it.

one thing about the beetle which also goes for the porcshe cayenne that camse up in a different discussion. Someone displayed a dislike (kinda) for porsche simply because for a period they concerntrated on developing the cayenne, essentially a cash cow. Thing is, while I am not exactly a fan of the cayenne, i can see how making money is important for a company and I appreciate the effort they put into making what is without doubt a damn good car when they could have churned out a donkey and it still would've sold. My point is, i don't agree with what they did, nor do i really like the end result but I can understand it. Do i have to like the car?

Taking a slightly off topic tangent as this was also something that came up in conversation with a friend of mine and vaguely related.
You probably don't know this but an Engish footballer died recently (name not that important). This man was admired and in some cases worshipped because in his day he was a good footballer. He was also an alcholic (his death was the result of this), was convicted of sexual assault on an underaged girl and arrested for beating up a woman on at least three occasions.
Of course, you can always find something good to say about him ("hey, he was a good footballer") but that still doesn't hide the fact that he wasn't exactly the best example of a good human being.

I don't think it's that much different with cars or anything else. If something isn't that good, then it should be acknowledged. Of course i know that what you're essentially saying is that there will be good things about it too but is that reason to ignore the bad bits?

[Chris V]

[quote=drunken monkey]because manufacturers only respond and go about making changes when people tell them what they don't like. [/qauote]

Not exactly true. Remember, manufactures are planning and designing cars years before they hit the amrket. usually by the time a car hits the market and people say what they don't like about it, the replacement and the replacement's replacement are already finalized....

again, as someone who designs things, namely buildings, for a living, i can tell you that i would rather have someone tell me everything that they think is wrong with what i do; simply praising things doesn't help the design process. of course, I do concede that my view is based on my own many years in a design industry/environment and that is how it has always worked. The good bits we don't need to talk about because they don't need more work on, whereas the bad bits are talked about so we know how to fix it.

the problem is that too many peopol ethink that things are "bad" about a car simoly becaeu it doesn't fit theri testosterone addled, teenage view of what a car should be, and that often doesn't match reality. tere's bad design and there's different design, and too often, young people think the latter is really the former, when it's not. As in the case of the New Beetle, the Golf already exists, and sells well. Making a stylish version that sells to people that want that isn't BAD design, merely different design. So insulting it as BAD design is completely non factual. Same with the criticisms of cars like the PT Cruiser.

one thing about the beetle which also goes for the porcshe cayenne that camse up in a different discussion. Someone displayed a dislike (kinda) for porsche simply because for a period they concerntrated on developing the cayenne, essentially a cash cow. Thing is, while I am not exactly a fan of the cayenne, i can see how making money is important for a company and I appreciate the effort they put into making what is without doubt a damn good car when they could have churned out a donkey and it still would've sold. My point is, i don't agree with what they did, nor do i really like the end result but I can understand it. Do i have to like the car?

An intelligent car enthusiast would indeed appreciate it for what it really is, and not go insulting it for BS reasons. Liking the car doesn't mean worshipping it or buying it. Too many peopl ethink it means autoamtically putting it at the top of the favorites list and the next purchase. So, do you have to LOVE the car/ no. But do you HAVE to hate it? No. That's the point.

Taking a slightly off topic tangent as this was also something that came up in conversation with a friend of mine and vaguely related.
You probably don't know this but an Engish footballer died recently (name not that important). This man was admired and in some cases worshipped because in his day he was a good footballer. He was also an alcholic (his death was the result of this), was convicted of sexual assault on an underaged girl and arrested for beating up a woman on at least three occasions.
Of course, you can always find something good to say about him ("hey, he was a good footballer") but that still doesn't hide the fact that he wasn't exactly the best example of a good human being.

A human had direct control over their actions. They can choose to be good or evil. A car is a tool. It has no choice. And nothing about a modern one is, in fact, bad. That footballer actively participated in perpetrating evil on another human, by beating them up. A car can't and won't do that. Not even SLIGHTLY relevant as an analogy.

A more apt analogy would be hating ALL footballers because that one guy beat a woman up, and acting as thopugh all of them did that.

YOUR analogy would be like hating one example you owned that never ran right, mysteriously pulled hard to the left in certain situations, and no one could fix it. I have no problem with people hating particular individual EXAMPLES of a make/model. But translating that to ALL of them is as ludicrous as saying you hate all footballers because one of them beat up women.