Thanks, Harry.

 

Hows the Nav compared to other OEMs?

 

The nav is good. The maps are VERY accurate, the voice guidance comes on a LITTLE too much for my taste. It will tell you what the next turn will be, then two miles out, then 1/2 mi out, then beep when you are AT the turn.

The navigation itegrates to the Heads-up display which is nice. The resoultion on the HUD isn't good enough for a map, but it will show an arrow indicating which way they want you to turn, the name of the road you are going to turn onto, and a progress bar that shrinks and gives you mileage to the next turn (once you are within 2mi of the turn.)

It has a lot of features, it will suggest three routes EVERY time you pick a destination, you can tweak it further by selecting the general route you want to take, then going in and "avoiding" individual intersections. You can also set waypoints and the guidance will direct you between the various points before you get to the final destination.

When you are on the highway, it shows the distance to and the name of the next three exists (and you can scroll for as far as you want.) It has icons for the varous points of interest available at that exit. So if you want to look for a gas station or a restraunt, you can do that. However, it is tricky to do WHILE driving.

It does force you to "I Agree" to the safety warning EVERYTIME you start the car, and want to use the navigation. It also prevents you from typing in an address when the car is moving. You can select from memory points of which there are 4 user definable categories to store them in, or choose the "Home" button or a set of often used 'quick' presets (1-5.)

Overall it works really well, but it is VERY complicated and not the most intuitive user interface. I feel it almost gives TOO much information. It is also a little clunky in the way it manages your search area. You have to select a "region" you want to search in. The US is broken up into 12 regions. Thankfully IL, IN, MI and WI are all in the same region, so I don't have to muck with it much, but it took be a surprising ammount of time to find which region TN was in when we were headed to the Dragon.

Also the location of the screen does cause a problem with glare. It can be hard to read the screen in bright sun, but this is not really specific to this nav, just the installation in this car.

 

nice write up. the HUD sounds cool.

 

[QUOTE=ruexp67,May 1 2008, 06:25 AM] The nav is good.

 

Yeah, the nav will be "standard" soon enough, but there are a LOT of concern about it. People will LONG for the days when drivers were "only" distracted by cell phones.

It's still an expensive option, but as more people buy-in to the technology it will get less expensive, and more user friendly.

I can't believe Honda doesn't have a NAV option for the S2000 in the US. They have had in Japan since 2000.

 

Given the US is not a car culture, the trend is to have all our technology made to help people avoid driving as much as possible instead of improving drivers.

Lane change helpers, traffic assistance, rear view cameras, auto park, auto cruise control, impact mitigation, lane drift avoidance. Thats a lot of technology, will it improve drivers? Nope.

 

Great car, Pete.

 

Thanks. Long time no see!

 

Sweet 'Vette.