In a changing automotive world Morley reflects on the highs and lows of the industry and wonders what the future holds…
Because I have to put food on the table (and a new table wouldn’t be a bad idea for 13 Struggle Street, either) I have a job that requires me to drive brand-new cars. In the name of science, of course. This is a job I’ve been doing for almost four decades and, to be honest, it’s put me in the seat of a lot of cars I could never afford, nor would I ever be allowed to test drive under any other circumstances. I have been a very lucky boy.
But these days, the new-car market is absolutely awash with EVs, dual-cab utes and SUVs; three of the motor vehicle categories I am least interested in. Okay, so a job’s a job, but surely it can’t just be me who wishes to return to a time when Ford was making 351 powered Hardtops, Holden was building turbocharged Commodores, the Japanese were importing little turbocharged slingshots and Europe was keeping itself busy building the best sedans in the world.
Seems to me that, as consumers, we’ve kind of lost the plot. And you can’t blame the carmakers for this malaise; they’re only building what people want. Nope, it’s all about the way the cops have sucked the fun out of going for a drive, the politicians have made it prohibitively expensive and social media has turned car-lovers like you and me into behorned Satan worshippers.
Then there’s the Safety Police. Because most numpties believe what they see on telly, the Safetycrats have been able to convince everybody that they must go into hock for a brand-new car with all the latest driver-safety aids. And it is here where my real job of driving new cars has taken me to some very dark places.
The problem is not the technology (which I’ll get to in a minute) but the way it’s being implemented. If you don’t have stuff like autonomous braking, driver-alertness warning and lane-keeping assistance, you won’t get those all-important five safety stars that tell the neighbours you’re a caring human being and, no, it wasn’t you who ran over their cat. And this is how the tech is being marketed: Drive a car without the ability to steer and see for you, and you’re a potential common murderer.
But, you ask, what if I drive carefully and keep my older car in good nick? No dice, friend. The adverts will tell you that we’re all hopeless drivers, careering around, blindfolded, in killing machines with headlights. Which means you need the help of Big Tech to keep you and others safe from each other.
Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t let The Speaker drive a car without stability control (even if she’s managed to drive for many years without referring to the fuel gauge) but making me feel guilty about not buying a car with the latest tech? Frankly, I don’t buy it. Mainly because I’m not an idiot. And neither, I suspect, are you.
But also, I don’t like to see clever technology (and some of it is really clever) go to waste. And if you look at the way this stuff is being implemented in cars, the manufacturers are really not making the most of it. So allow me to present my alternative uses for the type of safety tech I’m seeing on a daily basis.
Let’s start with an easy one: Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB). AEB is what you need if you really are going to drive around with Stevie Wonder at the wheel. By using a system of cameras, radar and other sensors, the car can see if it’s about to run into the car in front and will apply the picks to prevent same. The problem is that even though this tech is clever, it’s not savvy. No street smarts, as it were.
See, these sensors and such cannot determine whether the red thing in front of it is a flower on the edge of my driveway, or a London bus. The first will not harm me if the car brushes it. The second, not so much (not to mention, how the hell did I get to London). Some car brands have also had terrible problems with the car hurling out the anchors because it thought it was about to hit a wheelie bin sitting safely on the footpath.
Now, the best of these systems also have what’s called cyclist and pedestrian recognition. And if they really can identify a MAMIL or a schoolkid about to do something dopey, then surely, the computer could be fed an algorithm to allow it to recognise a shopfront. Congrats, you’ve just invented the car that can’t run into the front of a shop, deliberately or otherwise. And at that precise moment, the art of the ram raid disappears. Surely that’s a better use for the technology than slamming on the stoppers to avoid killing a geranium.
Now let’s move to active cruise-control. Personally, this tech shits me to bits because many’s the time I’ve snuck up behind some mouth breather on the freeway, travelling slower than the legal limit and, as I’ve approached them, my car with its active cruise has s-l-o-w-l-y wound my speed down to match the snoozer’s. Five minutes in I’ve worked out what’s going on, but in the meantime, I’m not as far down the road as I should be. And, I mean, if I stand to be fined for travelling above the posted limit, I’m damned if I’m going to voluntarily drive below it.
Worse still, this tech promotes traffic lumping as each car (particularly on an undivided road) gradually catches up to the slowest one out there and eases back so that everybody is travelling together in a big knot. You’re not close enough to the car in front to make an overtaking move, and there’s not quite enough space between each car to do it anyway. And you just know that if you click out of cruise-control to get on it and overtake the group, a Highway Patrol car will materialise out of thin air and bust you.
But again, it’s not the tech’s fault that it’s being implemented badly. So how should active cruise work? Glad you asked.
How many times have you been sitting at a traffic light and, when the light goes green, the first car moves, then the second, then the third … all at a pace a glacier would recognise? Plenty, right? So what if, when the light flashed green, every single car in that queue – even the ones right at the back – stomped on it as hard as possible. The active cruise won’t let you run into the car in front, remember, so there’s no risk of that. But suddenly, about 300 cars will make it through each cycle of the green light, compared with the three or four that currently make it through. And the only limit to it will be how hard the first car can accelerate. This is genius, if I say so myself. The first couple of weeks might be a bit messy, but progress usually has a cost.
And what of lane-keeping assistance? From my experience, this stuff is often so poorly calibrated that it will scare people into a crash they weren’t going to have in the first place. Because power-steering is now operated electrically by a motor on the steering column, it’s possible for the car to ‘see’ (those cameras and radar again) if you’re straying over a white line. When you do, the car can add its own steering input to keep you either away from the centreline or the edge of the road. But if the calibration is too sudden or zealous (as is so often the case) it can come as a complete shock. A timid driver could be caught out, I reckon.
But even if you’re not a scaredy-cat driver, there are times when I want some part of my car either close to or even over the white line. When, for instance, I’m overtaking a B-Double on a freeway bridge, I want to be as close to the outside of the road (that is, as far away from the Kenworth) as I can be. The lane-keeping assistance doesn’t like that and has, in the past, tried to recentre me in my lane. Yep, closer to the truck it can’t see, but I most assuredly can.
The other oopsy I’ve seen lane-keeping make was way out west a few years back when I was driving alone, on a deserted road with lots and lots of vision. Which prompted me to experiment with the system a bit. So, I let the car take its own helm and watched as it completely missed the centre line (which, admittedly, was faded and yellowed) and allowed me to travel straight ahead as the road curved around to the left (lots of vision, remember). Once I’d crossed the centre line, the car then spotted the outside white line on the ‘wrong’ side of the road, presumed that was the centre line and then held me in the turn on completely the wrong side of the road. Terrific.
Anyhow, here’s how I reckon this technology could be used more efficiently. If the computer can hold you in the centre of a lane, surely, a different algorithm with input from racing drivers could also lead a car through a corner the fast way. This could be used as a teaching tool for younger drivers who could then shave tenths off their best times by having their car show them where the proper apexes are in every bend. And doesn’t Racing Line Assistance sound sexier than lane-keeping assistance? Who knows, the carmaker that took this up might even sell more cars.
Bush mechanics
I was out with a mate in his elderly Porsche 911 the other day. His is a lovely old gadget, consisting of one of the sexiest bodyshells ever made with three litres of air-cooled fury thrust up its date. Okay, so they’re not the fastest cars on the road any more (haven’t been for about 40 years) but driving an old Porker is its own reward. Until it isn’t.
Leaving a set of lights, my buddy shifted from second to third, only to find the gear-stick now had about a metre of freeplay in any direction. The shift from second to third actually found the gearbox back in first (he didn’t buzz it, because if there’s one thing a 911 donk does is tell you what’s going on). Clearly, something wasn’t right.
Back at the MBC, I had a pretty good idea of the problem. So I lifted up the carpet in front of the rear seats, unscrewed an access panel and exposed the little coupling that joins the gear-shift rod to the gearbox input shaft. And right away, it was obvious what the problem was. Probably to keep the bad vibes out of the shift-lever, this coupling has (or should have had) a pair of plastic bushes between the two metal parts of the coupling. Except the bushings in this one were so old, they’d perished and fallen apart. That meant the two metal components were still talking to each other, but with a ton of slop between them that was the cause of the vague and errant shifting.
Luckily, the fix is a pretty simple one. With a hex-key and a pair of 13mm spanners, the coupling can be removed and new bushes fitted at a cost (to my friend) of about $32. Even better, the new bushes are made in Australia by a mob called SuperPro which uses a nylon material similar to that used in some replacement suspension bushes.
Okay, you have to hammer the pin out (I used the press at the MBC) to replace the bushes, but once it’s all back together, the biggest hassle is probably realigning the shift rod so that you have all five gears and reverse. And once that’s done you won’t believe how improved the gear-shift action is.
Not to mention putting to the sword the theory that all old performance cars are bitches to work on.