All Entries Tagged With: "Ezra Dyer"
Driven To Distraction By In-Car Displays
By Gunnar Heinrich
YESTERDAY, I picked up an Automobile back issue.
I don’t usually read Automobile or American car mags, in general. As far as US car mags go, I used to be a Road & Track and Car and Driver guy (as it happens both are owned by the same parent corporation which will make for an interesting tale when both auto rags have to merge inside the next five years).
That said, I do enjoy reading Ezra Dyer’s column (he widely appeals to us gear heads in the 18-36 demographic) periodically as he’s less bound by editorial tape in Automobile than he is in the Times‘ broadsheets.
In this past issue, Mr. Dyer discussed hybrids and posed the question to would-be green drivers, “Do you pay fetishistic attention to your little-miles-per-gallon video display?”
Yes. The answer, I was surprised to find myself say, was and is yes.
I’ve been driving a number of cars with really attention grabbing displays lately.
- Cadillac CTS with pop up touch screen nav. display and real-time traffic map.
- Cadillac XLR-V with in dash nav. screen.
- Toyota’s Highlander Hybrid with in-dash battery-engine monitor display (doubling as reverse camera screen).
- BMW 335xi coupe and a M.Y. 07 525xi both fitted with iDrive.
- Mercedes-Benz (W220) S500, SL500, and S550 (with Benz’s superior interpretation of iDrive)
- Nissan Altima with instant economy gauge bar graph.
Fitted with CVT, I drove a Nissan Altima north last weekend to Montreal. On I-91 it poured most of the way through Massachusetts and Vermont which with weekend traffic should have captured my total attention.
But it didn’t thanks to this little bar graph just below the speedometer that instantly measured the car’s fuel economy.
Like some orange pixel screen from a Pinball machine and as quaint as Homer’s little sippy bird featured in The Simpsons, the graph encouraged me like some zealous used car dealer to SAVE! SAVE! SAVE!
When the line touched the far right corner it teased me into dreaming that we could make the 400 mile journey on just six gallons (@ 60+ mpg) rather than a full tank of $4 per gallon unleaded.
Trouble was the moment I pressed the gas pedal as much as a millimeter the gauge would retreat to 20 mpg. And just to confirm, I felt as though I had to constantly check the graph to make sure that I was reaching my full mileage potential. It became a game.
And that’s the trouble in a nut.
Despite the various warnings of the more sophisticated systems and even some nanny measures – Cadillac’s XLR-V wouldn’t allow you to adjust course until the machine was in park – these displays are truly distracting.
And on the course to distraction…
There’s none I’ve test that was more so than the CTS with pop up nav display. When the display was raised above the dash making it slightly less than eye level, something in my subconscious felt like kicking back and watching my own progress on TV – even if that progress led me to an I.O.E. (involuntary off-road excursion).
Mercifully, that didn’t happen. But it could have. Which is why I had the screen retracted more often than I had it raised.
And again, the point. With the increase of what I’ll call “gimmetry” – the apt blend of gimmickry and gadgetry – comes an increase in the fetishistic attention to other things beside vehicular control.
So yes, Mr. Dyer. The answer still is yes.
The Turbo X Spectacular! Part I: The Talk In Herb’s Garden
By Gunnar Heinrich with Photos by Kevin Kusina
OVERSHADOWED by Herb’s own multi-story BMW dealer on the right and squeezed by a parking lot brimming with new Bimmers on the left, the largest Saab dealer in these United States proved a so-so location to talk Turbo X.
Symbolizing just what GM is pitting Saab’s halo car against, Automobile plenipotentiary Ezra Dyer made a showy arrival in BMW’s latest M3 sedan. Indeed, as the morning wore on and the automotive press talked and was talked-at, alternatively, the name “BMW” would surface time and again.
Starting off at 8:30 AM, GM staff held an all-business presentation on Saab’s showroom floor that set the tone for performance expectations.
GM’s G.M. for Saab, Steve Shannon (formerly Buick’s Roadmaster manager) made fleeting reference to his background and Saab’s.
“We’re much more NPR than Fox News,” said he, who also spoke of the quality rather than the quantity of Saab customers.
Mr. Shannon, armed with PowerPoint, directed the group’s focus on the new “cross wheel drive” system that Saab bought from Swedish engineering firm Haldex.
For some inexplicable reason, as I watched the presentation of power-to-wheel transfer diagrams, Subaru’s tagline kept playing in my head: “From the wheel that slips to the wheel that grips!”
Competing notions of “brand” identity aside, the Haldex system proved to be nothing less than a revolution for Saab performance (I’ll expound in Part III) and Saab is set to make the system a lineup-wide option.
Following the talk we shuffled from showroom to garage where Saab’s staff had a Turbo X hoisted on a lift. Swedish engineer Tommy Sundin ducked low and explained the engineering wizardry behind Haldex’s technological tour de force and the challenges that, “putting a new system into an old car,” presented.
Mr. Sundin reminds us that the Turbo X is based on the agèd Epsilon platform that the jet black halo car shares with an ’02 Opel Vectra and an ’04 Chevy Malibu, among others.
Following the engineer’s remarks, we made a break outside to drive off in Saab’s latest and greatest.
[Linked: Trollhattan Saab]
