From the Passenger's Seat

Today, I went to my city's Auto Show. As in most Auto Shows, there were different test drive events. One of them was GM's, and GM's test drive event was the only one my father and I participated in. In both cases, I was the passenger (I'm still far from being driving age). Both test drives were short jaunts around busy streets in the city. Here are my notes about the Chevrolet Traverse and Buick LaCrosse. 2013 Chevrolet Traverse LTZ This car has garnered much praise from automotive journalists. However, I wasn't particularly impressed by it. First of all, the two captain's chairs in the second row had little padding. Plus, there were kind of small. Along those lines, the armrests were too short, and they left half of my arm hanging. A nice touch was that the door panels were padded and stitched even in the second row. On the other hand, the wood trim was obviously fake. It didn't even try to hide its plastic texture. Also, the sunshade for the dual m...

Today, I went to my city's Auto Show. I sat in many new cars, and here is what I got from those sittings about the general direction the automotive industry and auto shows are going: - Most automakers are getting sneaky with interior plastics. They put padded plastics where most people would first see, and thin, hard plastic along the doors, where your ankles are, the second and/or third rows, and/or on the pillars. It seems we are going to less consistency. GM and Toyota are the worst offenders, while Hyundai/Kia seem to have not cut corners. - Windows are getting higher and smaller. It's been like this for a while. Most every cars' visibility is restricted by small windows except for Subaru cars. Their cars still retain a lot of glass area. - Too many complicated controls are here! The worst are the touch-sensitive buttons. I tried MyFord Touch and the "buttons" kept not responding when I tapped them. Also extremely annoying are knob-based multimedia sys...