The Surprising Rental Car
My wife and I just returned from visiting our middle son in Santa Fe. For rental cars on these and other trips, I like using National. In addition to still getting a good rate through the account number of my old engineering job, I like the “choose any car in the aisle and go” thing. When we were last in Santa Fe two years ago, I selected a brand-new Toyota Corolla, figuring that I didn’t need the ground clearance or traction of an SUV, and because I wanted to glimpse the safety features that come standard on a bread-and-butter Japanese sedan. After all, Maire Anne and I are entering our Geritol Years, I don’t have the visual acuity to drive any distance at any hour like I used to, and a few dings and chimes (or a sharp jab in the ribs) to prevent me from doing something stupid might not be a bad thing.
As I wrote here, I absolutely hated the Corolla. The combination of the lane-assist feeling like it was yanking the steering wheel out of my hands and the auto-dimming headlights that kept shutting down the high beams on nearly empty roads in favor of using low beams whose illumination profiles were downright unsafe was enough to make me scream.
To be clear, although I love vintage cars and did the “old man yells at clouds” thing at the Corolla, I’m not an automotive Luddite who thinks that everything built after the DOT instituted 5-mph bumper standards in 1974 and the EPA put the wrench to smog in 1975 is garbage. There’s no question that newer cars are better than older ones in the objective measures of safety, power, economy, and emissions, and that if you want to arrive somewhere not looking like you’ve been put in a Waring blender or smelling like such a high concentration of unburned hydrocarbons that you might spontaneously ignite, you take the newer car, not the 50-year-old one.
But my daily-driver 2003 BMW 5 Series is now over 20 years old. My wife drives a 2013 Honda Fit, so that’s a bit newer. But neither of them even has Bluetooth, much less active safety offerings. Renting a car while traveling is my main vector for experiencing the influx of these sorts of features. Since my last reaction to said features was negative, I was curious to try it again and see if it was just the implementation on that particular make and model.
Unfortunately, this time, the pickings in National’s “Emerald Aisle” at Albuquerque International Sunport were pretty slim, consisting of a giant pickup truck, two small Korean crossover SUVs, and a Chevy Malibu. As I walked past the pickup, though, I saw an Audi A4 sedan crouching next to it, and thought “score,” but someone was already in it. I asked the fellow in the booth if any more Audis were due in. He said that one should show up in about ten minutes. Sure enough, Audi #2 soon appeared. It wasn’t a sedan, though—it was a little Q3 Quattro crossover SUV. But hey, close enough. My wife and I threw our bags in the back and headed for I-25 north to Santa Fe.
My immediate impression was that something appeared to be wrong with the car, because you had to put your foot several inches into the accelerator pedal before anything happened. Later that day, I looked it up online, and found that many people complained about this lag, attributed to the turbo on the little 2-liter four-cylinder engine, the accelerate-by-wire system, the S-trontic transmission, driving in comfort mode instead of sport, or some combination of all four. But once I got accustomed to stomping on it to get it moving, I rapidly warmed to the car. Small crossover SUVs aren’t really my thing—they all look alike, and if you’re not going to have the size and towing capability of a truck, I’d rather have a wagon—but this one was what you’d expect of a German SUV, with a priority on handling and road feel. And the engine moved the car just fine once the revs were up.
Technology-wise, yes the Q3 did the same thing with the automatic lane assist that the execrable Corolla did, giving you the unnatural feeling that there was another hand on the wheel if you didn’t adhere to its overly fussy lane discipline, though perhaps with a bit more subtlety. I quickly figured out how to shut it off. And I couldn’t correlate most of its frequent beeping with anything obvious. Was I approaching an intersection? Train tracks? The restaurant that serves the best huevos rancheros? A mouse-laden vehicle with hantavirus? I never could be certain.
But the thing that really surprised me, the thing that I’d never experienced, the thing that I now want in my next car, wasn’t lane assist, or blind-spot detection, or auto-braking, or any of the safety nannies I thought I’d reluctantly allow into the room of my automotive dotage.
It was adaptive cruise control.
Those of you with vehicles that have the cruise control that’s been standard in many cars since the late 1980s probably play the same game with it that I do. You set it, then use the controls instead of the pedals, clicking the speed down when traffic slows your pace, and clicking it back up when it clears. You lose the game when you have to hit the brake or the accelerator pedal. Hey, it helps me stay alert on long drives, and it’s more consistent than trying to maintain speed manually. But there’s no getting around the fact that, if you have a major-league senior moment and space out, you’ll run right into the back end of the car in front of you.
Adaptive cruise control eliminates that risk by incorporating a sonar sensor in the nose of the car and slowing it down as you’re approaching traffic. The system in the Audi worked so well that I initially didn’t even realize it was doing it. It simply continued to drive with the cruise control on, but at a slower speed. When there was an opening in the left lane, I pulled in and the car sped back up to the previously-set threshold. A number of parameters are adjustable, but I didn’t change any of them. It worked so seamlessly that I instantly filed it away in my mind as a requirement for whatever “real car” we buy next. And yes, I’m probably the last person to find out about it. Sort of like learning that How I Met Your Mother, despite its stupid name, is actually really funny, at least when Neil Patrick Harris is in the scene.
Another thing I liked about the Q3 is that it’s the first vehicle I’ve driven whose central display didn’t look like someone took the screen off a laptop running Microsoft Windows XP (“Oooooh! 3D icons!”) and screwed it to the dash. The way that the look and feel of most dashboard screens have absolutely no relationship to the look and feel of the rest of the dashboard drives me crazy. On the Q3, the fact that the instrument cluster is electronic (no mechanical speedo and tach gauges) allows it and the central display to have the same look and feel. I’m sure this isn’t the first car to do this, but it’s the first one I’ve driven.
So. I can still do without the mystery beeping. And Bluetooth still drives me nuts (quit dropping the volume of the music to tell me to keep right!). And the odds of my running out and buying a Q3 are zero. But if there was a hundred-dollar adaptive cruise control retrofit for my BMW E39 and my wife’s Honda Fit, I would be all over it.
But keep your damn servo-controlled hands off my steering wheel.
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Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic™: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem, is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.
I have come to like my wife’s 2022 Audi A6 for many of the reasons Rob mentions. The only intrusive feature is the lane control, which is easily turned off. I found the Audi to be a nicer car to drive than the 5 series BMWs we drove, an I’m a long time BMW fancier. All the cars we drove, including the Audi, were 3 liter 6 cylinder cars. Th Audi seemed to have better engine response than the BMWs, with little or no turbo lag.
Rob glad you got out of Boston and out to the real America out West. Santa Fe is interesting and expensive. However next time you go there is an excellent restaurant directly next to the Road Runner Railroad Station that does it look like much but is excellent and the serve huge portions and are reasonably priced. I think the name is Tomosetas or something like that but you will know you are there because they have a huge gravel parking lot next to the tracks where the park the Road Runner trains.
Also be careful with those automatic cruse controls. I rented a Rouge and it had it and drove from DC to Orlando to Albuquerque to Chicago and back to DC one week and it worked fine except when it approached an 18 wheeler pulling a flat bed aluminium trailer and the radar did not recognize the trailer as an obstruction and it would have let the car drive right up under it if I did not disengage the crude by hitting the brakes. So you got to pay attention.
I can think of no situation in driving where “you got to pay attention” isn’t applicable, automatic driving assists or no. 😉
In Level 5 Autonomy, human interactions will theoretically not be needed. We are a long way from that, as Tesla’s “full self driving” marketing nonsense is actually on a Level 2 system.
Funny – the use of the word “theoretically” here doesn’t seem to instill all kinds of confident anticipation for that to happen! 😁
My wife has a new(ish) Q3. When we first took it on a test drive we thought there was something wrong with the suspension or wheel alignment since the steering kept pulling to the side. Only after testing some alternatives, all with lane centering, did we realize the car was doing that on purpose. I’d say I’ve made peace with the safety nannies; I now drive her car in the precise lane center, use my turn signals even when nobody’s nearby, and accept that the car may jerk to a stop when parallel parking even though there’s still plenty of space behind. And sadly, I kind of miss the Q3’s blind spot light when driving my old BMW, notwithstanding the proper placement of my mirrors and continuing to look to the side as per my high school drivers training instructor (i.e. P.E. Coach).
But yes indeed on adaptive cruise control. You’re right that it’s nice on a long boring freeway drive but where it’s really invaluable is in bumper to bumper traffic. I may think of myself as an enthusiast but when it comes to stop and go traffic, I’m more than happy to turn things over to the robot.
Yup adaptive cruise is one of those luxuries once sampled that becomes a necessity. To be fair when I purchased my current daily driver I already knew I wanted it and actively looked for the steering wheel pictures in online ads to cross some vehicles off the list. But after owning it I don’t see myself buying any non vintage or work truck w/o it.
As far as the lane keeping goes it definitely depends on the system. I pretty much always keep it off on my 2015 which is an OK implementation, but haven’t turned it off on the 2022 with good implementation. I suspect some of the refinement of the lane keeping is just due to the additional development time due to being newer but I also suspect the fact that the newer one has lane centering helps with the lane keeping.
We had an Auci just like this for 2 months. The wife had a minor fender scrape.
It was an interesting vehicle. It was fun to drive rode and handled well. But I hated the dash and radio controls.
I also found it interesting that this German brand car was Mexican built.
We have a 2021 Acadia Denali. The wife wanted it and so that is what be bought. As we have had it I have lived this vehicle. We have the electronic suspension that turns this big SYV into a touring sedan.
We have adaptable Cruise and it is great. Better in traffic than open road. Also I love our cooling seats.
As for the Audi it was interesting and fun but not worth the money. It felt cheap. Also like most German cars today you don’t keep them as daily drivers over 100 k miles
I have a Q3 and have never had the acceleration issue described. Mine feels anything but cheap, in fact one of the selling points for me was simply closing the doors. Felt and sounded like closing a bank vault.
I wish the interface and ergonomics people did a better job laying out the interiors and controls. My wife’s car does all that alarm stuff too and I always think of that Austin Powers scene when Dr. Evil yells at his out-of-control chair “The power of Christ compels you!”
Adaptive cruise control does not use a sonar sensor. Automotive sonar sensors have very short range and are used exclusively for obstacle proximity detection when parking. Adaptive cruise control typically uses a radar sensor, although some systems (certain Subarus and Teslas, for instance) use cameras instead. Some of the latest systems also incorporate a lidar sensor, and the signals from multiple sources (sensor fusion) are used to provide greater accuracy and improved system operation.
My mistake. Thanks for the correction.
I also play the “cruise control game”. But on the wife’s car (’09 Venza), with the 3.5 liter and 6-speed transmission, there’s too much trans shifting on uphill grades. So then it becomes the “hold the accelerator pedal steady game” to see if you can crest the hill without the trans downshifting, or at least not downshifting from 6th to 4th.
ACC is not in my future, though my daughters (who apparently never use cruise control) may see it someday.
Why though? The transmission exists to multiply torque from the engine and keep it in it’s prime operating range. Keeping it from downshifting is just making sure the trans can’t do what it’s designed to do.
Adaptive Cruise Control is the best logical improvement in cruise control and a massive benefit for longer road trips. I recently returned from a road trip and once again appreciated being able to set a speed and not have to fiddle with controls or even use the accelerator or the break for long swaths of road. Most of the adjustments I needed to make were when speed limits changed. ACC single-handedly reduces driving fatigue.
Shout out also to automatic high beams. Or at least Ford’s implementation. Ford nailed this tech. Not only does it turn on and off appropriately, but it does so by ramping up and down the lights over about one second, so it’s not this bright flash/dim/flash/dim cycle. It does it so well that I wondered if it was working early on. Visual confirmation was provided in the instrument cluster and paying closer attention verified how smoothly the tech works.
I’ve had the unfortunate luck of finding myself in a rental Corolla twice–both times miserable experiences. The first, on the tight roads of British Columbia, had no on-center feel whatsoever and I found I couldn’t look away from the road for even a split second without worrying about wafting out of my lane. It had all of 300 kms on it–basically brand new–and only one of the four speakers worked. The second one had a flat, punishingly uncomfortable seat and a terrible, (painful even) stereo (although all speakers worked). I was driving a route I’d done many times, a mix of interstate and two-lane secondary roads, and it barely got better mpg than my Challenger R/T does on the same jaunt. I honestly don’t know how Toyota sells even one of them.
My daughter has a VW Tiguan with a 4 cylinder turbo engine (probably similar to what sister company Audi uses) and the acceleration / turbo lag drives me nuts. I find using the sports mode helps immensely, otherwise you mash the accelerator to get it going. But it is basically underpowered. I think it is an example where you are better off drivability and fuel-economy wise with a more powerful 6 cylinder engine that you don’t have to beat to get going in real world driving situations.
I got adaptive cruise control on my 2019 Tacoma (Sport Platinum). Didn’t really want/understand but I bought the truck used back when getting ANY truck was nigh-on impossible (Jan 2020).
I now love adaptive cruise control. There’s another bonus in my Tacoma that I never saw before… my truck is 6-speed manual (yay!) but when the cruise control is on, it REMEMBERS! That is, if you upshift or downshift when control is on, it remembers the setting and just keeps the speed in the new gear. My 2008 Ranger just forgot it was in cruise when you shifted.
My 2010 Prius had adaptive cruise control. I think you need to get out of the garage more and try some newer cars now and then. Apparently they are working on something called “automatic transmissions”. 🙂
We are getting closer & closer to the time where all we do is start, point & hold on tight. The car takes over doing all the actual “driving”. Give me back my ’68 911L & I would be driving again!