Rental death trap - Nissan - what were they thinking ?

[V6Matty]

Unfortunately most cars seem to be a death trap in one way shape or form according to Botus, he really should have been an engineer to sort out all the problems every car maker seems to have

 

[Droverunner]

Did you not drive larger cars from/in the 50s/60s/70s Botus. Non PAS versions near impossible to move the wheel when parking... PAS models lock to lock at a standstill using your little finger.

Back then the driving experience was so much more varied nothing was a surprise or a problem.

Think Triumph Herald at one end of the scale with its 5.20 crossplys replaced with 180 radials and the original 16" steering wheel replaced with a 12".... adding in vicious oversteer both with lift-off and power on. And then at the other extreme a Citroen DS with central hydraulics powering a featherlight zero feel steering controlling a heavy car with high road holding limits but huge amounts of roll.

In comparison pretty well every car made since around 1990 is so easy to drive.

 

[Botus]

Wonder if Botus's rental had some specific issues? Overinflated tyres maybe? Poor steering geometry? Faulty radar cruise? Bit ordinary to judge the whole model on one driving experience in one car.

it was a 22 car with 2k km - looked like new, felt like new - in fact its was so clean I was suprised it has so many miles - just it was setup up by lunatics - tyres seemed a bit low to me - forget now just stood out as less than I'd have expected

noise from side glass !!! most of the time it seemed silent, but now and then road / wind noise though thin windows stood out - compared to my thick windows - a bit of NVH I'd have expected much better

 

[Botus]

Did you not drive larger cars from/in the 50s/60s/70s Botus. Non PAS versions near impossible to move the wheel when parking... PAS models lock to lock at a standstill using your little finger.

Back then the driving experience was so much more varied nothing was a surprise or a problem.

Think Triumph Herald at one end of the scale with its 5.20 crossplys replaced with 180 radials and the original 16" steering wheel replaced with a 12".... adding in vicious oversteer both with lift-off and power on. And then at the other extreme a Citroen DS with central hydraulics powering a featherlight zero feel steering controlling a heavy car with high road holding limits but huge amounts of roll.

In comparison pretty well every car made since around 1990 is so easy to drive.

I grew up with old cars nearly all without power steering - had 2 litre non power steered mk2 escort with the small wheel - no problem at all
when an apprentice I spent lots of time on RR being pushed round the workshop - now your talking heavy steering

I was playing and building motorbikes since 12 - you all seem to forget 38 years back I was a fully qualified Motor Vehicle Tech with RR and Jag - with qualifiactions in motor vehicle engineering - and spent last 20 years as in house consultant teaching a very well known global company run better

 

[Craiglxviii]

it was a 22 car with 2k km - looked like new, felt like new - just it was setup up by lunatics - tyres seemed a bit low to me - forget now just stood out as less than I'd have expected

noise from side glass !!! most of the time it seemed silent, but now and then road / wind noise though thin windows stood out - compared to my thick windows - a bit of NVH I'd have expected much better

Ahh. I may have had a bit of a hand in the side glass thickness… and the window tint come to think of it…

 

[Botus]

I forgot to mention one other point..... (two)

the throttle response was incredible - nearly all cars I've driven in my lifetime do not very much when you give it 10% throttle - even my 386bhp 7 speed Merc does the square root of not much at all - till you get the revs towards 4k and 20+ % throttle

but 3mm of pedal movement in this demented little Nissan thing would instigate the equiv reaction of 3 down changes and 50% throttle on my 5.5 quad cam v8 - don't get me wrong it had no go - but its initial reaction to input was not far off the super light dangerous steering - way more than you'd ever need - for no reason whatsoever.

I couldn't help but understand the silly drug all the small turbo engine'd idiots are hitting so often - it explains the 22mpg everyone with modern small capacity turbo petrol's are screaming about on most car forums

...and don't get me started with one of the DSG downshifts for no reason at all - that was utterly hideous - I'd rather wait half a nanosecond for instant response of the gear it had been in - than suffer that jerky shift making the engine do three back flips just so the throttle response was 200% more than anyone ever needed at 30mph in shopping car

it brings home how far we have fallen - 80's pugs flowed down the road in serene comfort with a flexible torquey engine - now we have hideous rabid little **** boxes with suspension by RSJs

 

[Craiglxviii]

Sorry Botus. I test drove dozens of Qashqai and none of them sound remotely like the car you had. It must have just been a duff one. Your conclusion is bollocks too, cars nowadays are so much better in literally every measurable way from those of forty (!) years ago. Were people in the 70s saying the same thing about Austin Sevens? Aside from Princess owners I mean.

 

[Botus]

one of the car mags drove the original 50s Bentley continental vs the current Audi based joke - they were shocked at the ride comfort of the original - its the same thing, older cars were in many ways much better to drive - yes, now they are safer and yes, if you wife wants to try and do 60 mph through a mini roundabout with the kids in there she'll live in the later ones - but they are not better to drive or for the planet

 

[Craiglxviii]

one of the car mags drove the original 50s Bentley continental vs the current Audi based joke - they were shocked at the ride comfort of the original - its the same thing, older cars were in many ways much better to drive - yes, now they are safer and yes, if you wife wants to try and do 60 mph through a mini roundabout with the kids in there she'll live in the later ones - but they are not better to drive or for the planet

Yes, they are. In literally every way.

Buddy of mine is the Programme Lead for Bentley Classic Programmes, he’s in charge of the engineering for it. So I get to hear first hand from the people actually running the engineering. The actual story behind the test drive that article was based around was that the Bentley engineers were really surprised how smooth the earlier car was when at speed. It was, by a very long way, NOT “better” than the current platform- which was designed for Bentley as much as the rest of VAG, sales of the Phaeton it was intended for being lacking, but also a very long way from a joke.

Out of interest do you ever come out of yourself and look at what you post? There’s a bit of a theme going on.

 

[V6Matty]

There’s a bit of a theme going on.

I’ve said it before, our Botus seems to be the one consistent in the world of motoring and how everything manufactured in the last 20 years is a death trap in one way shape or form

 

[Botus]

its great they have conditioned so many of you to be happy with the declining standard of living we're all under ...its called marketing

I nearly fell off my stool talking to a hi flying Russian grad on assignment at our UK base a few weeks back - he seemed to believe what he said - the titanium inside the covid vaccinations will be used to trigger mood enhancement using 6G phone technology

so you step back and laugh - then you think nanobots can be used for surgery already for the last 5 years - they'd be made of titanium - they'd be invisible - they be pumped in via an injection - and we do need to control / kill 6 billion in the next 5 years

enjoy your paradigm - neo would be proud of you !

 

[Craiglxviii]

its great they have conditioned so many of you to be happy with the declining standard of living we're all under ...its called marketing

I nearly fell off my stool talking to a hi flying Russian grad on assignment at our UK base a few weeks back - he seemed to believe what he said - the titanium inside the covid vaccinations will be used to trigger mood enhancement using 6G phone technology

so you step back and laugh - then you think nanobots can be used for surgery already for the last 5 years - they'd be made of titanium - they'd be invisible - they be pumped in via an injection - and we do need to control / kill 6 billion in the next 5 years

enjoy your paradigm - neo would be proud of you !

Hmm.

Go and read “The Road to Wigan Pier” by George Orwell, then come back and tell me our living standards have declined. I don’t eat tripe, bread & dripping, I’m not confined to margarine for sandwiches, I don’t have to go kicking over slag heaps to find enough coal to heat the house. And yet my living standards have reduced?

We live longer. Every year, people live longer than they have before- this is why “the population is aging” as the average age is increasing.

We have medical advances every year to treat more & more horrific diseases. Although we don’t have nanobots. That’s pure sci fi at least for the moment.

Where the fuddering juck do you get the need to control or kill 6 billion people in the next half decade? That’s just under the current planetary population (7.7bn). Seriously, what are you smoking? The UN has been doing a lot of work on this for a long time, their projections (which are holding water, and have been for over 20 years now) are that the population will top out at between 11.2- 11.5bn by 2100, then fairly rapidly reduce to the 8.0- 8.5bn level. All of that is sustainable at current levels of food & energy production and most of that growth is projected to occur in Africa & Latin America.

You hold some strange views I must say.

 

[Botus]

thank goodness nothing will come of it....

the researchers described the collective movement of nanobots and “Nanobot swarms” and indicated that they could be particularly useful delivering drugs with greater levels of precision

Scientists are exploring the efficacy of DNA robots after successfully programmed strands of DNA can move through the blood to deliver drugs

and theorise that nanobots may be used in the future to wirelessly transmit information stored in the human brain to a cloud-based supercomputer network, allowing real-time data extraction and brain-state monitoring.

 

[Craiglxviii]

thank goodness nothing will come of it....

the researchers described the collective movement of nanobots and “Nanobot swarms” and indicated that they could be particularly useful delivering drugs with greater levels of precision

Scientists are exploring the efficacy of DNA robots after successfully programmed strands of DNA can move through the blood to deliver drugs

and theorise that nanobots may be used in the future to wirelessly transmit information stored in the human brain to a cloud-based supercomputer network, allowing real-time data extraction and brain-state monitoring.

They theorise. Operative word. Theory.

This is quite literally science fiction right now.

 

[Taffy7hfa]

2 of my current crop have electric steering, 2 have hydraulic, I much prefer the steering on the hydraulically assisted cars, the electrically assisted have a sort of disconnected feeling about them which I don't like, it definitely doesn't feel like progress to me. I traded the Insignia in after less than a year because of the utterly horrendous lane assist and highly annoying forward collision warning, neither of which could be switched off, the rock hard ride also got tiresome. In lots of ways modern cars are a big improvement over stuff from back in the day but there are some "features" which I really f*****g hate.

 

[oigle]

They theorise. Operative word. Theory.

This is quite literally science fiction right now.

Is it possible to get the mods to put all botus posts in the joke folder ????

 

[malcolm E53 AMG]

Most modern cars have become tiresome to drive IMO their tech advance has progressed in in-car systems like infotainment, occupant safety and driver aids which is obviously a good thing but driver satisfaction and ease of maintenance no.
As for medical and communication advances yes we have moved on dramatically in the last 100 years my pacemaker, mobile phone and COVID vaccines are proof of that I look back at Startrek and smile the script writers were writing fiction or were they.

 

[s5tuart]

Luckily we are all different and hold different opinions.
Fortunately I'll never have to drive any of the current Japanese cars because most of them are so fugly I wouldn't be seen dead in one!

 

[Botus]

2 of my current crop have electric steering, 2 have hydraulic, I much prefer the steering on the hydraulically assisted cars, the electrically assisted have a sort of disconnected feeling about them which I don't like, it definitely doesn't feel like progress to me. I traded the Insignia in after less than a year because of the utterly horrendous lane assist and highly annoying forward collision warning, neither of which could be switched off, the rock hard ride also got tiresome. In lots of ways modern cars are a big improvement over stuff from back in the day but there are some "features" which I really f*****g hate.

the Nissan had lane departure thing - horrid, I turned it off - disconcerting, useless feature you don't want as it doesn't know how to drive - when I had left it on it didn't even work very well

there was an article on this in whatcar years back - according to euro Ncap its most turned off safety system - they did a test on multiple car brands with blokes and women drivers. Nearly all the women couldn't control the car safety as the system was fighting their need to get around obstacles on the test route - blokes tended to cope but didn't like it

on most systems you can adjust the level of interference in three steps and they all mostly remember the setting - but always reactivate (to your choice of interference) with key off - yet everyone I tell about this, gives me a 10 minute a rant about the feature being a nuisance, then never goes in the menu's to reduce the fight ???

on the Nissan I had to learn a procedure of turn off, change that, set this, disable that, every drive (deliberate time wasting and inconvenience - u r being managed !!!!)

Oh and the speedo on the Nissan is ON THE WRONG SIDE and you can't see the cruise set point as they left that off, and so it was very frustrating to tell if / why it was slowing for traffic from your chosen set speed (as I couldn't see the flipping needle above 100kph easily) and when you eventually battle 5 million useless menus and view choices, the digital speedo in the middle overwrote one other vital bit you need on screen so you couldn't have that on

both the Merc and the BMW had a very good system to tell the speed u r going and the set point of the cruise - the Merc even gives the speed of the idiot in the way

 

[Snake Charmer]

A friend has a Bentley S1 Continental Flying Spur, I have driven the car quite a lot and is now a joy to drive although when he first had the car it was awful on Crossply tyres with worn steering, suspension and woefully inadequate brakes. My first drive was quite draining just concentrating on keeping the car in a straight line, I would say a sedate 1 hour drive was equivalent to 400 miles in a modern car. With time, much work and Radial tyres that has changed dramatically to a car I would enjoy driving from London to Geneva in one go, a trip I did effortlessly in 2008 driving a GL500 towing a loaded covered car trailer. It really is that good now but not so easy to drive as modern car and not somewhere I would like to be in an accident.

If I drive my bosses Audi Q7, the first thing I do is switch off the lane assist. I detest all the bings and bongs it makes plus the inordinate array of information laid out in the displays that change because you have touched some button accidentally whilst driving. The F430 Spyder he had would scream at you with a really high pitched alarm seemingly for no other reason than you had taken the key out of the ignition to exit the vehicle.
I'm all for progress but some of the design is lacking in thought, why do you have to take your eyes off the road to adjust the heater or air conditioning? Because the controls are on a display well and truly out of a casual glance away from the road. Our Ford Galaxy controls were just above the gear lever, a long way down an very lazy to respond, my S211 is slightly better but still not great from a safety point of view.