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Bit of a story here as i'm not too busy at work and this has been playing on my mind for a while now.
I had the day off the other day and I decided I go have a look at a new 3 series coupe as I quite liked the last one and I was purely interested in what the new one was like with the hope to having a go in the new twin turbo petrol one. It didn't go very well in the dealership as I had an arguement with the salesman within about 2 minutes of being there as he insisted they didn't make a 335 in the petrol variant, I accepted defeat as I assumed I must of got mixed up with the new twin turbo diesel. After our arguement I decided it would be best to listen to what he had to say and have a look round the car and compare it to the old 3 series coupe, I have to say I wasn't very keen at all and it's still not grown on me now, it felt very plain and boring where as I felt the old one had a bit of character about it. After about 10 minutes of sales talk I decided it was time to leave now as I was completely bored with the talk of this paddle shift diesel I was looking round, as you know these days it's impossible to leave a dealership without a full collection of brouchures, spec lists and prices on every single car bmw as ever made ever!
Now to get to the point of the story.
The other night I was sat there looking at the 3 series brouchure on the side and decided to have a quick read seen as I had been given it and was about to bin it. To my amazement and amusement on the first page was a big picture of a twin turbo 3 series in petrol form, top of the range 3 series coupe, don't get me wrong I know everyone makes mistakes but if I sold bmw's for a living and they had just brought a new model out of which the top of the range happened to be a twin turbo petrol i'd make sure I knew about it before arguing with a potential customer and then boring him to death about the new fantastic oil burner.
Back to the point again, I carried on reading/looking at the brouchure and got to the technology section which I always read with some interest as sometimes it can very interesting. Now I know modern cars are getting more and more full of electronics, gadgets and anti-crash devices hence one of the reasons I like the simplicity of the S2000 but I think they are taking this a bit to far now.
Beemer have always marketed their cars as a drivers car with near 50:50 weight distribution and rear wheel drive etc etc but i've no idea how they are going to market this one as a drivers car as it does everything far you! Apart from all the traction control and cornering control they seem to put on cars these days you can now get cars that straighten the car up for you when it tramlines under braking, cars that feather your brakes out for you allowing you to do a nice smooth stop everytime, cars that hold your foot brakes on whilst on a hill so you don't roll back when going from the brakes to the accelerator to give you time to find your biting point, I always assumed the hand/parking brake was supposed to be used in these instances.
I'm not an anti-technology person, I appreciate power steering and abs but isn't that taking it a little bit too far? All the little characteristics of driving are slowly being removed from all modern vehicles it seems, the only thing left to do in some of them is turn them on and press either the go or stop pedals until you arrive at your destination and then turn it off again, you could have more fun driving a train at least you have to slow down for some of the bends or else it crashes.
No wonder the S2000 has such a good following, it seems the only modern car where your actually allowed to drive it without a computer interfeering where the driver makes the decision. I've done over twelve thousand miles in mine now and I'm sure I've still not done the perfect drive where every gear change has been perfect, I've stopped smooth everytime and took the correct line for every corner, this is what makes the S2000 so good, it's so hard to drive perfectly and when you do it can be so rewarding!
I'm not an anti-technology person, I appreciate power steering and abs but isn't that taking it a little bit too far? All the little characteristics of driving are slowly being removed from all modern vehicles it seems, the only thing left to do in some of them is turn them on and press either the go or stop pedals until you arrive at your destination and then turn it off again, you could have more fun driving a train at least you have to slow down for some of the bends or else it crashes.
No wonder the S2000 has such a good following, it seems the only modern car where your actually allowed to drive it without a computer interfeering where the driver makes the decision. I've done over twelve thousand miles in mine now and I'm sure I've still not done the perfect drive where every gear change has been perfect, I've stopped smooth everytime and took the correct line for every corner, this is what makes the S2000 so good, it's so hard to drive perfectly and when you do it can be so rewarding!
I love this car!
Rick
I agree with most of that, you cant beat driving the car yourself and not
the other way round.
Cars like the S2000 and Elise make you feel like your actually having
some input.
12-01-2006, 09:14 AM
Whats the point in driving?
