I recently bought an early 2000’s Honda for my daily commuter specifically to avoid the hyperactive electronics of a newer vehicle.
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A year ago, I leased a new car. A week later I got a call from the dealer asking how I liked it... told him that I totally hated it and if I wanted to sit in a constant surveillance machine that drove me instead of me driving it, I would have hired a graduate from a security company that did babysitting on the side to chauffeur me around.
Recently I rented a car for a week and the agency gave me an Audi. Totally drove me nuts... it couldn’t go half a mile without it putting up an alert in the middle of the dash telling me to “HOLD THE WHEEL!” or something like that. Took me a while, but I figured out what was going on... I was on a straight road and if it detected no movement on the steering wheel, it sent out the alert. I was going about 350 miles and what it forced me to do was jiggle the steering wheel every 10 seconds or to avoid the alert. How stupid is that? Could it be turned off? I’m assuming very likely but I on a business trip in a hurry in a rental car and had better things to do than stop for a while to figure out how to do that.
Yep, rental vehicles are great reminders of how annoying modern vehicles can be. Back when I was doing a lot of business travel, my main personal vehicle was a vintage 5 series BMW. That was the ultimate laid back, no drama machine. I don’t think it even had a beeper in it. If you’ve ever driven an old BMW you’ll know how relaxing the deep amber-red incandescent dash board illumination is. Coming back to it was always such a pleasure after several days of putting up with a hyper manic rental car.