"Wobbles the Mind" (wobblesthemind)
07/25/2017 at 09:08 • Filed to: Crossover All The Things
4
18|
"Wobbles the Mind" (wobblesthemind)
07/25/2017 at 09:08 • Filed to: Crossover All The Things | 4
| 18 |
The !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and it now features body cladding around the wheel arches and a little bit of silver up front that does a skidplate impression. Alongside the Chevy Spark ACTIV, it is my deepest regret to announce that crossover styling is replacing the sporty look. Welcome to the automotive design trend I’m referring to as the Actionpack.
That 10mm lift is like a 5 ‘o clock shadow. So manly Im going to call you Karl.
We saw the Trackpack design age come through lowering cars, adding faux-diffusers, faux-vents, faux-spoilers, faux-carbon fiber, big wheels, and blacked out out trim all in the name of making cars look as if they could survive a track day. Sporty was all that mattered and the term “functional” was qualified by numbers so small no one could ever test them.
“The new Hodor Recorder is 12% stiffer!”
“The Bord Concentrate RS-TUV’s rear spoiler adds 3% quicker upshifts errr, I mean higher downforce!”
“By replacing all the chrome trim with cheaper black plastics, the all new Iota Crunchy XSE now has 22% more steering feel than past Crunchys!!”
So much bull just to de-content cars and sell them to you at a higher price through Convenience and Technology Packages. Cars can’t even make it up driveways or over speedbumps wihout risk of tearing off the bottom third of the front end.
People need to replace their factory tires at 30,000 miles and then they find out those Michelins/Pirellis are $200 or more on their 200 hp family car. You have AWD so make sure to replace all four! Where you once spent $600 on tires every 70,000 miles, you now spend $1,100 every 40,000 miles because handling is everything!
When Chevy told you the new Malibu had a 4G connection you weren’t supposed to shout, “Wooow, that’s a lot of grip!”
We all knew that eventually people would react against this Trackpack design trend. Don’t want the factory 20' rims on your Civic? No worries, big wheels and rubberband tires are going away and being replaced with smaller wheels and plenty of tire sidewall. We will need to add some bodycladding around those wheel wells though...
Does the sound of scrapping every time elevation suddenly changes by half an inch make you squirm? We’ll shorten up that overhang and take off that faux-front spoiler and give you a faux-skidplate. You need it!
Tired of “falling” in and out of your Mustard3 because it’s too low to the ground? We will happily raise up the floor, seats, and roofline to make that easier for you! We’ll even make that roof a bit longer and claim that back window airspace as cargo capacity improvements.
Dont even worry about the lifts, all we are doing is taking cars back to where they were 15 years ago. Soft, high riding, comfort-centric, easy to run, low stress objects compared to all these cars that want to convey the most engaging highway merging you could ever experience.
Upkeep? Just 10% of the resale value. You wanted luxury, well money and time are luxuries.
Sedans became sports cars and left CUVs to become sedans.
From Trackpacks to Actionpacks, watch as automotive design continues the same ebb and flow that ALL design trends go through. The key is how do you hide it? One way is changing the market perception. People still freak when they get leather in a vehicle you step
up
into all while thinking it’s more expensive! Utilitarian is an asset. Especially for those that build the cars...
People want leather everything so badly automakers resorted to running a sewing machine over the plastic dashboards. That big chunk of hard plastic on the bottom of the door is unacceptible! Well yeah, if you are sitting low enough to touch the bottom of the door then it’s a touch point now!! However, get people to sit higher, get touch points out of reach and people won’t even notice what materials are there. Better yet, tell them it’s a more adventure or “active lifestyle” focused vehicle and all of a sudden cost cutting becomes utility. Complexity becomes simplicity. Crossovers become everything that even the enthusiasts ask for in regular cars. But don’t tell them that!
People go from, “I can’t believe a $35,000 car doesn’t have heated-ventilated-massaging seats,” to exclaiming, “I can wash out this $55,000 truck with a garden hose? This 2023 F-200 is perfect!!”
Prepare your body...cladding, the Actionpacks are about to strike!
Slant6
> Wobbles the Mind
07/25/2017 at 09:25 |
|
This actually makes a lot of sense. Small cars for city use with bodies adapted to take what the city dishes out. It is for this reason that I maintain my Ranger is the perfect city car. I can easily take a speed bump or pothole, and my 29 inch tires on my 15 inch wheels can easily tackle a curb.
At least the cities I go to, like Raleigh, Asheville, Charlotte. Roads are pretty bad, some lots within the city are gravel, there are enough hills that I would frequently scrape my bumper in my old Saab. Also less than 20 minutes outside the city you can find yourself on dirt roads, or other rural hazards.
Probenja
> Wobbles the Mind
07/25/2017 at 09:27 |
|
Guess who’s back!
|
Wobbles the Mind
> Slant6
07/25/2017 at 09:30 |
|
What we have is what we needed, Bad-roaders.
duurtlang
> Slant6
07/25/2017 at 09:35 |
|
Your description has a distinct third world feel to it.
|
Slant6
> duurtlang
07/25/2017 at 09:57 |
|
Welcome to North Carolina! But in my experience, most cities that have a winter and a summer have pretty bad potholes, or roads that just suck.
Everytime I go to Asheville my car breaks. One time in my e34 the roads were so bumpy it knocked a radiator hose loose. On another occasion my power steering pump failed in Asheville, and in my Ranger the ignition box thing quit on me. All easy stuff to fix, but all happened when visiting one city for a day.
DAWRX - The Herb Strikes Back
> Slant6
07/25/2017 at 10:22 |
|
I think its just most cities. Houston only has summer and our roads SUUUUUUCK.
415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°)
> Wobbles the Mind
07/25/2017 at 10:28 |
|
Yeah well the wheel arch plastic is great for the city. I’ve damaged two on my crv and it’s cheap to replace vs a fender job.
|
415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°)
> Slant6
07/25/2017 at 10:31 |
|
Yeah I have a crv and it’s the perfect city vehicle. It’s not too big, I can see over normal cars and through pickup windows. The streets are always plated and under construction, potholes. The plastic wheel arches were easy to replace when a plastic barrier decided to wander into a lane.
|
DAWRX - The Herb Strikes Back
> Wobbles the Mind
07/25/2017 at 10:33 |
|
I actually like this. The Prius isn’t a sporty car so it doesn’t need all of the sporting pretensions. I could do without the body cladding, but, in a screwed up way it actually works. The design is actually cohesive and attractive compared to a lot of Toyota’s lineup at the moment.
Practical, cheap to run, cheap to buy, I’m actually interested in one to replace my wife’s old Camry after my car is paid off. She could do with the gas mileage since she does a lot of stop and go driving.
Amoore100
> Wobbles the Mind
07/25/2017 at 12:18 |
|
And, as always, Citroen led the charge.
ptak appreciates old racecars
> Wobbles the Mind
08/01/2017 at 16:58 |
|
This needs drastically more upvotes
winterlegacy, here 'till the end
> Wobbles the Mind
04/11/2018 at 09:20 |
|
To be fair, the Prius C kind of needed the refresh. It’s still understated but the cladding helps to hide some of its miserable guts.
I would honestly buy one, but we’ll have to see how big it is compared to the Corolla hatch before we start making plans to swap it to that ugly gasoline combustion engine instead of a glorified generator
facw
> Wobbles the Mind
12/11/2018 at 17:12 |
|
Honestly, looking at Kar Wai Wong’s all the car posts:
!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!
The vast majority of the small hatchbacks look better in their “active” trim. The lift is unnecessary, but they still end up looking much sportier than the standard poverty spec ones.
Future Heap Owner
> Amoore100
12/11/2018 at 17:13 |
|
Wow
|
facw
> DAWRX - The Herb Strikes Back
12/11/2018 at 17:17 |
|
When I was in Houston, f riends visiting me from the Northeast were always shocked by the roads. The problem of course is that if you had roads as bad as Houston’s in a place with a regular freeze/thaw cycle, they’d be gravel at the end of the winter, whereas in Houston, you can just make crappy patches to concrete slab roads for half a century, and they’ll stay low-quality, but driveable.
The big difference in TX to me was that a lot of the ramps from the road into parking lots/driveways are ludicrously steep. My S40 scraped the splashguard/towhook on those all the time, unless I drove super slow, and even then it was iffy.
HFV has no HFV. But somehow has 2 motorcycles
> Probenja
12/11/2018 at 17:27 |
|
Oh..ooh...
|
winterlegacy, here 'till the end
> Probenja
12/11/2018 at 20:22 |
|
Echoes of the past.
for Michigan
> Wobbles the Mind
12/11/2018 at 21:17 |
|
But why does it have Ford Fiesta headlights?
