Whitehat, the spirit of this thread was not to rant and whine, but instead to make some lighthearted fun from some design flaws that leave us scratching our heads.

 

They just head into finance...

It often surprises 'civilians' how vociferously engineers will argue their case with other engineers and everyone else (design vs safety vs cost vs human factors vs ...) expecting that logic will rule the day. The design people are often the worst adversaries since they are not bound by what's physically possible, unlike the rest of us. Frank Gehry's structural engineers, for example, are heros.

 

oh, i got where everyone was coming from, no problem there, and was having some fun of my own. yes, it is a kind of dry and different style of humor between the lines.
it is also kind of fun to set it up for the next person.

 

And George lived a lot longer than Gracie.

 

And you are man of a certain age if you know that reference, as do I.

Whitehat, many points well taken. But you won't many of these up for sale any time soon. Passion and the joy of driving over comes a lot of flaws.

 

we a little younger get it too, raised on classic things which never go out of style.

could not have said it better.

 

Why not go way back ???

I think Fred Flintsone was an idiot for leaving off shock absorbers. Jeez, and to think he was satisfied with just inventing the wheel


hindsight = 20-20


Z

 

Don't forget the drip onto the seat when you open the door of a convertible when it's raining!

 

I used to ride motorbikes, some very quick ones. I loved the feeling of power and thrill that riding those two wheeled machines give. But a million times more thrilling was pulling off my helmet at the end of the ride, in one piece, all safe and sound. Driving the x100 also gives me a great buzz with the cats own power rush, the presence... But the thrill now is pulling the keys out at the end of a drive and seeing theres been no Christmas tree lighting display appearing on the dash! Tick, tock....

 

The best thing is keeping the needles on the right hand side of the dials, and useless mirrors ( nothing keeps up with you so no point in looking in them)
My 4.2 engine just loves to stretch her legs. I'm sure some of these BMW drivers think their following a Mazda, until I gently press the pedal down.,

So my hat off to designers who give us the joy of the drive, the smile on our face when it all works, and the articulate swear words when it goes wrong.

 

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in under 6 seconds.

Graham

 

It actually means First On Race Day

 

So I'm not the only one to suffer this peculiar curse.

 

not admitting to anything. sometimes my girls get a kick out of phrases such as, "taking away the keys," and, "managing my affairs," or one's personal favorite, "it's time."
the only bad thing about one's humor is when your children learn it.

 

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in under 6 seconds.

Or in 6 months up here in northern Canada

 

I was half way through replacing the bulbs behind the dashboard before I noticed that there was a dimmer near my left knee.

 

The very first piece of advice I got when I got my X100 was regarding this:

 

Cupholders have always been a mystery to me as I never eat or drink in a car. The Jaguar design used in XJ40 / X300 / X308 / XK8 is so annoying because it often opens when using the lid as an armrest. I used to have a plain lid which I fitted to each of my Jaguars in place of the cupholder version and then switched the original back when I traded the car.

When the XK was introduced, Jaguar finally realised some owners don't need or want cupholders and made them "lift out" to give more storage space in the centre console. Mine serves as a penholder on my desk.

Graham

 

This is actually one of the reasons that the average job tenure today is only three years. I remember one of my college professors 25 years ago giving me the advice to never stay in a job more than three years, to be constantly looking for the next opportunity. He said that about three years was on average how long it took for your mistakes to catch up with you, for your superiors to realize that your fresh new ideas weren't all that good in the first place. By constantly moving on before your mistakes are discovered is the best strategy for advancement. Probably a lot of automotive engineers hopping from Ford to Jaguar to General Motors, etc. We don't have to wait for them to retire. As a little bit of consolation, they're probably already CEO's at Toyota by now.

 

I feel this. I am a programmer and my roommate is a designer. We often work on the same projects and it is a constant shitstorm of him coming up with ideas that are nonsensical but pretty. I just taught him how to program a bit and told him that if he could implement his ideas himself, and they could withstand all of the pinholes i could poke into them, ( browser or device compatibilities, use case tests, automated testing ), then i would admit I was wrong and would buy him lunch and implement his design.

Haven't had the misfortune of admitting I was wrong yet.