For those of you unfamiliar with Seinfeld’s famous “Festivus” episode, the holiday tradition is effectively an airing of grievances. Now, a little late to the holiday party, we decided to do the same. These are the worst car trends that we can think of. Some of them may be minor quibbles in new cars, some major issues. But all of them are grievances committed against the common car consciousness.
We’re kicking off the airing of our Festivus grievances with big grilles. They are, without a doubt, the worst car trend we can think of. Now obviously this trend might be to the delight of some, and the chagrin of others. But cars like the 2022 BMW M3 need to have smaller grilles. Frankly, it’s simply too easy to smack a big grille onto a car and call it a day. We want to see some automotive design in our autos, thanks.
Next, and arguably one of the worst car trends, is fake vents. We abhor fake vents. Moreover, they’re usually made of plastic. Obviously, that plastic will fade with age. Cars like the depreciation-proof Honda Civic Type R make liberal use of fake vents, and this car trend has gotta stop. Honestly, we’d rather see painted bodywork than a plastic panel.
We’ve been trying to get you all comfortable with EVs for a while now, but maybe we were just speaking the wrong language.
— Ford Motor Company (@Ford) December 21, 2021
A THREAD ? pic.twitter.com/AKydD4YGhj
Our next Festivus grievance is centered around recent auto marketing car trends. Ford took a stab at memery late last month. Predictably, it didn’t go well. We say leave the terrible Twitter memery to Elon Musk. Inevitably, that half-funny tweet will take things too far and upset customers. Then, a very serious, non-meme apology has to be made. We’ll take Subaru’s “smiles and dogs” Twitter strategy over this every day.
Really, none of the car trends we’ve discussed are particularly irritating. Minor inconveniences at best. Climate controls hidden behind touch screen menus ought to be a war crime. Sure, thanks to automatic climate control you really only set it once or twice, but let me turn on my heated seats with a button, dammit.
Finally, our final Festivus grievance. In-car subscriptions. BMW tried this a while back with Carplay and got kicked in the teeth over it. Now, Toyota seeks to do the same with remote-start. “Puffing” may be illegal in some states, but locking any feature behind a recurring paywall is frustrating. We’ll be back next year with more terrible car trends.
