souless rental

My wife and I had a rental Altima when we were in Atlanta at the Mitty this year. Wow, I thought only the domestics could make a car this bad. It wasn't soulless, it just sucked.

The steering had no self-centering. It felt like a steering box that had been over-tightened, all of the weight came from internal friction. Made it impossible to drive in a straight line.

Added to that was the CVT. Now, I don't have a problem with the idea. But on the highway, the CVT (and/or the throttle programming) would only allow engine speeds in 500 rpm increments - and this correlated to steps in the power and thus acceleration. So you had your choice of power level A or power level B when trying to maintain speed. Heaven help you if you needed something in between.

So there we are, weaving down the highway and maintaining an average speed by accelerating past it then coasting down below it then accelerating past it. I had been transformed into a terrible driver automatically.

My wife dropped it off in Birmingham and traded it for a Chrysler 300. I didn't get a chance to see it, but she says it was night and day from a driving experience.

As for the soulless part - I once worked at a company full of Java programmers. The entire parking lot was full of beige cars. Corollas and their ilk. Booring. Meanwhile, the half dozen of us with interesting cars (a 914, a purple 70's Cuda with a 440 and a six-pack, my Miata or bright blue Golf, a red Legacy GT, etc) parked over in a different section of the lot. I doubt any of the programmers could have told you what kind of car they drove other than "beige". Meanwhile, the interesting cars tended to be owned by the guys who were coming up with the ideas or exploring new technologies. Read into that what you will.

I will agree with the others who have said this is reliable A to B transportation. It's going to be boring to us. I owned a AE92 Corolla Wagon w/ the 3-speed slushbox, if you want to talk about boring. But, I made it fun to drive, I learned its limits and shifted the Trans manually everywhere.

The problem here with the new Corolla is that it was really boring, because you couldn't do anything with it. It wasn't something you bought. Because, I guarantee that if you bought it, it would have a manual and within a week you be scouring the Internet for new springs and tires.

mguar wrote: In reply to ProDarwin: Excellent point.. daily drivers are by definition boring.. so buy a reliable one keep it stock and spend money where you get something (For me it's race cars)

Yup. The Trooper stays pretty much OE except for better brake pads and a better sound system, otherwise it's an appliance. A GOOD appliance, but still an appliance. That reminds me, I do need to tint the windows because summer's a' comin'.

By the way, something to consider: the things we want in a sporty type car are exactly what the great unwashed do NOT want.

We want taut suspension; they want marshmallows which insulate them from having to feel anything.

We want manual transmissions or at least automatics we can have some input with; they want to let the thing make all the decisions for them.

We want tires which grip like crazy, wear life is secondary. They want to not think about them at all (not even to rotate them) for 80,000 miles.

We want engines we can feel and hear. They want as little intrusion as possible from the ickiness of what propels them down the road.

We want to know our cars are properly maintained and don't mind getting a little dirty. They view maintenance as something akin to incest, best kept under wraps and not thought about very often at all.

So that's where the blandmobiles come from. It's what the vast unwashed masses want.

For me, I spend too much time in my DD for it to be totally boring. Its like the Warsteiner add "Life is too short to drink cheap beer". For most people they want to be some place other than in a car going somewhere. Me, I enjoy driving so I want something that does not put me to sleep.

Rusted_Busted_Spit wrote: For me, I spend too much time in my DD for it to be totally boring. Its like the Warsteiner add "Life is too short to drink cheap beer". For most people they want to be some place other than in a car going somewhere. Me, I enjoy driving so I want something that does not put me to sleep.

My mouse pad at work just says "Life is too short to drive boring cars".

Rusted_Busted_Spit wrote: Its like the Warsteiner add "Life is too short to drink cheap beer".

So what was that quote doing advertising Warsteiner? I can't stand that stuff.

93EXCivic wrote:

Rusted_Busted_Spit wrote: For me, I spend too much time in my DD for it to be totally boring. Its like the Warsteiner add "Life is too short to drink cheap beer". For most people they want to be some place other than in a car going somewhere. Me, I enjoy driving so I want something that does not put me to sleep.

My mouse pad at work just says "Life is too short to drive boring cars".

That was pretty close to my motto...until I spent some time with an '86 911 as my daily driver. My kids had a horrible time getting out of it in the carpool line at school. I could only get groceries on the way home if I didn't pick up the kids (no room for both). I spent my spare time screwing around with annoying niggling problems. I got my garage covered in oil spots. It was a pain in the ass to commute to work in. The a/c sucked. The heat sucked. Windshield wipers, defroster, degfogger, radio, pretty much anything you expect to work inside a car...sucked. My business associates and coworkers hated riding in it. And my wife refused to drive it at first and later refused to ride in it because of the lack of comfort, the noise, and the smell of it. And once the novelty wore off, my kids didn't want any part of it either.

I had a 944 as a DD. It was better, but less interesting. I had a BMW 325 convertible as a DD. It was better still, but even less interesting. You can keep going down this path of trying to find something more useful but less interesting and then one day you end up in a minivan. And maybe you even like it.

In reply to Otto Maddox:

There is probably a decent trade off somewhere. I would kill myself if I had to DD my mom's Camry. And my current Civic is a bit boring. I need to change the springs, shocks and swaybars. But my A/C doesn't work. It doesn't carry people in the back really (and I don't really care to).

Keith wrote: As for the soulless part - I once worked at a company full of Java programmers. The entire parking lot was full of beige cars. Corollas and their ilk. Booring. Meanwhile, the half dozen of us with interesting cars (a 914, a purple 70's Cuda with a 440 and a six-pack, my Miata or bright blue Golf, a red Legacy GT, etc) parked over in a different section of the lot. I doubt any of the programmers could have told you what kind of car they drove other than "beige". Meanwhile, the interesting cars tended to be owned by the guys who were coming up with the ideas or exploring new technologies. Read into that what you will.

I actually met a good friend of mine this way. He noticed that there was this black speed 3 (mine) parked in the same spot in the same building every day. One day he noticed a blue Cooper S in the spot. He was curious, and saw the MNMazda stickers on both cars. Popped on the site and made a post about it. Turns out he owned a mazdaspeed 6, and wanted to know other people in the car community. That was almost 6 years ago now.

Keith wrote: As for the soulless part - I once worked at a company full of Java programmers. The entire parking lot was full of beige cars. Corollas and their ilk. Booring. Meanwhile, the half dozen of us with interesting cars (a 914, a purple 70's Cuda with a 440 and a six-pack, my Miata or bright blue Golf, a red Legacy GT, etc) parked over in a different section of the lot. I doubt any of the programmers could have told you what kind of car they drove other than "beige". Meanwhile, the interesting cars tended to be owned by the guys who were coming up with the ideas or exploring new technologies. Read into that what you will.

None of the programmers had an interesting car sitting back at home that they didn't feel like driving in their mindless commute?

ProDarwin wrote:

Keith wrote: As for the soulless part - I once worked at a company full of Java programmers. The entire parking lot was full of beige cars. Corollas and their ilk. Booring. Meanwhile, the half dozen of us with interesting cars (a 914, a purple 70's Cuda with a 440 and a six-pack, my Miata or bright blue Golf, a red Legacy GT, etc) parked over in a different section of the lot. I doubt any of the programmers could have told you what kind of car they drove other than "beige". Meanwhile, the interesting cars tended to be owned by the guys who were coming up with the ideas or exploring new technologies. Read into that what you will.

None of the programmers had an interesting car sitting back at home that they didn't feel like driving in their mindless commute?

IMHO a mindless commute is made more fun with an interesting car.

Ehhh. To each his own.

A bunch of lights at 35mph in dense traffic is just as boring in my S2000 as it is in my Saturn. But I get the bonus of worse gas mileage, more noise, less space, higher cost of consumables etc. etc.

Nothing wrong with driving an interesting car to work, but I wouldn't imply that anyone who doesn't is uncreative or that appliances have no place in this world.

ProDarwin wrote:

Keith wrote: As for the soulless part - I once worked at a company full of Java programmers. The entire parking lot was full of beige cars. Corollas and their ilk. Booring. Meanwhile, the half dozen of us with interesting cars (a 914, a purple 70's Cuda with a 440 and a six-pack, my Miata or bright blue Golf, a red Legacy GT, etc) parked over in a different section of the lot. I doubt any of the programmers could have told you what kind of car they drove other than "beige". Meanwhile, the interesting cars tended to be owned by the guys who were coming up with the ideas or exploring new technologies. Read into that what you will.

None of the programmers had an interesting car sitting back at home that they didn't feel like driving in their mindless commute?

Nope. These were quiet, sensible guys. If they had another car, it was a minivan. The day we hired Yvonne (aka Yvonatron) to do wireless web development and she reported to work in a blue vinyl miniskirt matching her blue hair - heads exploded all over the office. Did not compute. Yvonatron owned an 80's Charger that she repainted herself in the office parking lot, by the way.

That company ended up doing some pretty creative things as wireless started to pick up steam and got bought out for a ridiculous sum of money. The company that bought us was mostly interested in a particular department - and everyone in that department was part of the "interesting car" crowd.

The guys with interesting cars had a fun habit, too. The first guy in would just leave his car in some odd position in the parking lot. Everyone else would use that as the seed for some formation pattern. Different every day - one day it might be chevrons, the next it would be a circle. All the beige cars huddled on the other side of the lot away from this anarchy. We had a lot of room in our parking lot

An interesting car does make a boring commute more interesting. You're involved, your brain is working. Sure beats going on autopilot for the duration. I have a 30 minute commute at a steady and straight 40 mph. I still enjoy driving a fun car more than an appliance.

The corolla just plain sucked.

A friend has a 2011 Civic autotragic that I drove. That I liked.

The newest Hyundai Elantra, all sorts of bells and whistles for less money, haven't driven one, but it looks 1000 times better on the exterior and interior.