Car Eccentricities

  • Thread starter Thread starter Sage
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What is it with Toyota and wiper blades anyways?

 
land sea air
Its a German thing, my car, my gf's car, sister's and friends BMWs. All do it
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My Grand Am does it. It'll do the same thing if you press the lock button with the keys in the ignition. It won't lock unless you press it a second time.
 
skip0110
What is it with Toyota and wiper blades anyways?

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If they used 2 blades, they'd probably be too long for the windshield height.

And, here:



That's so totally freaky-deaky.
 
I love those FJ Crusiers. They are totally awesome. I really love em. Cant wait to get one. Id want a silver one.
 
Woah, its really wierd alright. I want one now. :D
 
I have one that drives me a little bit mad. Japanese spec cars will sound a beeper when in reverse (my Celica did it and my dad's old FTO and current Legnum VR-4 do it), all the beeper does is tell you that reverse is engaged.

Why do we need a beeper to tell us the car is in reverse?

The beeper can't be heard from outside the car, so it useless as a warning to others, totally pointless and very annoying.

It seems to be a feature of Japanese spec cars, as the FTO and VR-4 are both imports and UK Celica's were all Japanese spec models with mods to make them UK compliant. Japanese cars built for specifically for the UK market that I have driven do not do it.

Regards

Scaff
 
While we're sort of still on the subject of window wipers, I love the wiper on the back of the Citroen C4 3 door. Its tiny! It's only about 6 inches long.

citroen_win.jpg
 
daan
While we're sort of still on the subject of window wipers, I love the wiper on the back of the Citroen C4 3 door. Its tiny! It's only about 6 inches long.

citroen_win.jpg
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Not to mention the fact that the whole car transforms into a dancing robot!

 
Omnis

That's so totally freaky-deaky.
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What the hell!?! is that curving just a side effect of poor quality video or am I missing something?? :scared:

Whats wrong with the design of the jelly bean Taurus :nervous:
 
M5Power
The '00 redesign was a crime?! The redesign you posted, which occurred in 1996, is the single worst redesign in automotive history. To this day I get depressed thinking about it - and I'm not joking. I saw "Breach" the other day - a '96-'99 Taurus is featured prominently. I couldn't stop thinking about how Ford destroyed that car throughout the whole movie.
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No way; the 2000-redesign went went from oddly-brave to boring. Too many copycats of the original 1986 model meant you had to change it eventually. I'm not knocking the original 1st-generation, it's just that in my opinion, Ford managed to actually top the beauty of the original design with something just as visually striking. Problem was, it wasn't too well received, except by maybe the hairdresser's/chick-car Ford ZX2, although I recall the 3rd-gen Taurus design hitting me with the same force as when I'd seen a photo of a Countach or 300SL (gullwing) Mercedes-Benz, as sort of "wow" that because nothing comes close. I know, it's nutsy putting that in the same sentence, but tough crap.

Style isn't empirical, I'm not going bother shouting back and forth over this, especially since there's better things to do with my time. But you know what they say, beauty is in the eye of the stockholder.

Sage, I'm referring to the large "formed scallop" running below the door handles across the areas of the two doors on wither side. I think you look too much into my posts, sometimes.
 
Pupik
No way; the 2000-redesign went went from oddly-brave to boring. Too many copycats of the original 1986 model meant you had to change it eventually. I'm not knocking the original 1st-generation, it's just that in my opinion, Ford managed to actually top the beauty of the original design with something just as visually striking.
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Perhaps in your mind, but the buying public disagrees - 1995 saw Ford on top of its game, and the Taurus was completely out of the public's eye by 1999. The vehicle was the best-selling car in the states from '93 to '95, and lost the title in '96, never to regain it. It's sad what they did to that car.
 
Well to keep this from becoming another design thingy we should drop it then...
My older brother had a first gen RX-7 when I was younger and the two details I remember the most were the buzzer telling you to change gears and the choke automatically retracting when the car started.
 
My Probe raises the lights together, no "one then the other" winking syndrome mentioned before. Another thing it does is turn off the dome light after about an hour. Annoying if you're working on the stereo, but useful if you've left a door ajar - no dead battery in the morning.
 
land sea air
What the hell!?! is that curving just a side effect of poor quality video or am I missing something?? :scared:

Whats wrong with the design of the jelly bean Taurus :nervous:
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That's the monoblade from the first post of the thread.
 
Omnis
That's the monoblade from the first post of the thread.
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I know that because I have the same thing on my car, however in that video it looks like the blade is bending back and forth as it wipes, and not just the little up and down motions it's supposed to make either, it looks like someone removed all the metal and the blade itself is just flapping back and forth, I could just be on LSD but I'm pretty sure it looks weird
 
Yeah – I’d found that video when I made this thread, but it didn’t look right to me, which is why I didn’t post it. I imagine it looks floppy like that because some frames were dropped or messed up in the video to Flash conversion.
 
I've always liked that little dual-axis wrist connection on the MB monowipers as well, Sage. I noticed it years ago when they were new, and thought to myself "wow, that's a lot of really careful engineering that is totally pointless to have done, but incredibly cool that they bothered".

I'll have to think of a few of my own.
 
I love how 3-series have the cool-to-watch-but-useless MPG meter. Same with the G-Meter in CTS-V's.
 
Another peculiarity that's always made me: Almost every Toyota had (or still has) it's own unique logo for each particular model. It's probably because there was no logo for the parent brand until 1991 or so.
 
Pupik
Another peculiarity that's always made me: Almost every Toyota had (or still has) it's own unique logo for each particular model. It's probably because there was no logo for the parent brand until 1991 or so.
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Camrys.png

corolla-logo.gif


Like that?
 
Toyotas used to have crests for each model, a lot like the Rover crest, actually. I think thats what Pupik means.

Like the Cressida had it's own logo.
 
Sage
Yeah – I’d found that video when I made this thread, but it didn’t look right to me, which is why I didn’t post it. I imagine it looks floppy like that because some frames were dropped or messed up in the video to Flash conversion.
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Every time I watch it I can't decide whether its poor frame rate/transfer rate or somethings actually wrong/modified on the blade. I guess the first option is far more likely

Another very common but not common enough detail I like is having gas struts/springs support the hood or hatch, why any car these days must still make do with a hood prop is honestly beyond me. The 99 taurus has struts, my moms 05 Fivehundred does not, what gives??
 
M5Power
The '00 redesign was a crime?! The redesign you posted, which occurred in 1996, is the single worst redesign in automotive history. To this day I get depressed thinking about it - and I'm not joking. I saw "Breach" the other day - a '96-'99 Taurus is featured prominently. I couldn't stop thinking about how Ford destroyed that car throughout the whole movie.
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Ford tried to do something original. Yes, it is now understood that they failed horribly, but I'm of the opinion that they simply tried it on the wrong car. The Taurus before was always square, and people simply weren't ready for what they saw when the oval Taurus debuted. The '00 redesign took an arguably cool looking but definitely very original (a bona-fide rarity in the mid-size class) car and turned it into a car that looks more boring than any Camry could ever hope to aspire to being.
The design in itself has very many merits, and it has many details in it that it can be hard to see them all. You notice something new every time you look at it, which few cars can manage. The main problem is that the market wouldn't accept such a radical rethinking.
 
Toronado
Ford tried to do something original. Yes, it is now understood that they failed horribly, but I'm of the opinion that they simply tried it on the wrong car.
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I'm of the opinion that they simply had the wrong design. They pulled off radical in 1986 - they couldn't pull it off in 1996 because the design simply wasn't good enough.
 
M5Power
They pulled off radical in 1986 - they couldn't pull it off in 1996 because the design simply wasn't good enough.
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I agree. I don't understand, however, why people seem to think it looked horrible upon horrible. It wasn't Ford's Aztek, so I don't understand why it is viewed as one today. It was a bold design, I understand. But it wasn't horrifically boring and apathetic, like the year 200 restyle was.
 
Toronado
I agree. I don't understand, however, why people seem to think it looked horrible upon horrible. It wasn't Ford's Aztek, so I don't understand why it is viewed as one today.
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Because we see the effects - the 1996 redesign begat a loss of sales, which begat the 'more boring' 2000 redesign, which begat the vehicle's being cancelled. It's much easier to second-guess, and I admit when the vehicle came out in 1996 I remember not having a strong opinion one way or another on its styling.
 
Vonie
I love how 3-series have the cool-to-watch-but-useless MPG meter.
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That's the "No-Fun-O-Meter".

This is setting the Wayback machine, but my family used to have a 1955 Cadillac Fleetwood, with the short, stubby tailfins. Each had a little reflector at the base of it. On the left side one, if you pushed the little reflector in, the whole taillight assembly popped up to reveal the gas filler. Back in the day of full service gas, it used to confuse the heck out of attendants.

This is from a 1952, but the principle is the same:

1952cadillachiddenfuelfso3.jpg
 
That's awesome. I wish car companies still did stuff like that.
 
Duke
I've always liked that little dual-axis wrist connection on the MB monowipers as well, Sage. I noticed it years ago when they were new, and thought to myself "wow, that's a lot of really careful engineering that is totally pointless to have done, but incredibly cool that they bothered".

I'll have to think of a few of my own.
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I was always fascinated by that thing. The fascination doubles because I actually broke one. As a joke, I pulled up the wiper on my cousin's car. (Popped it up into the "service" position). It got locked there, and they had to go to the service center and pay a hundred dollars to get it fixed... :lol:

Still, a lovely piece of kit.

RE: Those reverse beepers? Those drive me nuts!
 
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