Some Automotive Fun...

The Beast and Scamander all polished up for show, among others.

www.classicdriver.com

Plenty of Beauties and even a Beast at this year’s London Concours

With the 2024 event season now in full swing, attention turned to central London, and more specifically the grounds of the Honourable Artillery Company, where London Concours brought along a delightful array of machinery, with a few wild cards thrown in too!
www.classicdriver.com www.classicdriver.com
 
You have to wonder what the FAA is going to come around for Batmobiles.

Amazing stuff b/w. I particularly like the attention taken to the Gun´s bay doors mechanism... And the fact that they can shot ammo!
 
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The 1962 Ford Seattle-ite XXI.

www.theautopian.com

Ford Released This Concept 60 Years Ago And Basically Predicted The Future: Cold Start - The Autopian

If there was ever a car that is more Seattle in the 1960s than the Ford Seattle-ite XXI I can’t imagine what it is. It embraces the same rocket-age design of John Graham’s flying saucer Space Needle which, like the Seattle-ite XXI, was built for the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair. But that’s not the...
www.theautopian.com www.theautopian.com

www.sixmania.fr

Ford Seattle ite XXI - SixMania

Visitez aussi l’article sur la Tower of the Needle of Space sur BubbleMania.fr Créée à
www.sixmania.fr www.sixmania.fr

Ford Seattle-ite XXI - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

The photo with a woman in it is a montage - it was never anything but a scale model in three dimensions.
 

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Quick correction to the colour on the photos in the first article.
 

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Fallout, the TV series, was a lot of fun and it would have been just a little bit more if a Seattle-ite XXI had appeared in the 2077 segments.
 
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Since the discussion about touchscreens versus switches and knobs has moved on, and I can't remember which thread that was, I'll add this here.

I agree absolutely with the author that cars have got overweight, oversized, overpowered, and overcomplicated. It's not a race to the bottom, it's a race to over the top. 'Technological baroque', if you like.

I’ve got close on several occasions over the last few years to saying to a manufacturer at a new car launch, ‘You’ve given us a day to drive this car. I have a choice: I can either spend that time sitting in the hotel car park learning all the systems or I can go out and drive it and assess its dynamics, powertrain and the other stuff that we traditionally do. But there isn’t time to do both.’

What amazes me is how incredibly sloppy makers have got with basic ergonomics. Here an actual airliner pilot is given a new Mercedes to test. First, (supposedly) informing the driver:

Delving into the Mercedes’ infotainment system I found the CBT videos that are intended to teach owners everything about their car. There are 24 of them; not as many as for the Airbus, but each one is from 1hr 30min to 3hr 30min. Worse, they use jargon such as Augmented Reality. I had to re-run that video several times to understand what they were talking about. There is a Quick Start section but even that has 14 topics in it.’

Then the actual controls, supposing that you've taken the time to watch and comprehend all of the instruction videos:

You can see from the photographs of the A350’s cockpit that, although this is a state-of-the-art modern airliner, there are hundreds of ‘old-fashioned’ knobs and switches. ‘On the flight deck every control is clearly and simply labelled,’ explains Foden. ‘By contrast, in the EQS there are a lot of random symbols dotted around the car. I found the steering wheel overly complicated and not well labelled. There are two home buttons, which seems overkill, and I accidentally adjusted my cruise-control speed because I brushed my thumb across the touch-sensitive button while turning.

‘Flight decks have tactile controls; meaning you can feel where things are while your eyes are out flying. The Airbuses have a sidestick instead of a traditional control column as found on Boeings and this stick has only two buttons on it: one like a trigger for the radio and the other a large red button to disengage the autopilot. You can’t mix them up.’

Remember Murphy's law? It's not 'if anything can go wrong, it will', it's 'if there are two ways to assemble something and one will result in failure, then it will fail.' A basic rule of ergonomics is that the controls should do exactly and only what they are meant to do. You should not be able to mix them up or accidentally activate them.

How bad are modern car user interfaces? We ask an airline pilot | Evo

Do today’s touchscreen car user interfaces ask too much of the driver? And how can they be improved? We get an Airbus pilot’s expert opinion
www.evo.co.uk www.evo.co.uk
 
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'Technological baroque', if you like.
Sadly, I must agree.
When we got my beloved wife a nice Motability Skoda, I spent a long, long evening trying to make sense of the supplied manuals. One thick volume held the 'Basics' of the infotainment system. A second held the 'Advanced' stuff. The third volume, a hefty 'owners' guide did not index essentials like opening the hood to check the screen-wash, or accessing jacking points, or finding the tow-points.

Well, to be precise, it did index them, but not in any way that you could find other than by accident without knowing WTF Word had been given for that topic's heading. And, no, such topics were only indexed one, singular way. Not cross-referenced per thesaurus or 'common sense'...

I read fast. Still, took me several hours to find even the rudiments to safely take that nice car on the road.

FWIW, the 'infotainment' display had, among other options, the ability to display speed in bold, digital form, supplementing the impracticable vagueness of the console analogue gauge. I reckoned you could easily slide into speed-camera country due to the markings' imprecision and perspective offset.

A week later, exasperated unto, um, exasperated, I had to ask the dealers for help. Only took a couple of minutes to resolve, but used at least one inadequately documented step...
 
Nik said:
'Technological baroque', if you like.
Sadly, I must agree.
When we got my beloved wife a nice Motability Skoda, I spent a long, long evening trying to make sense of the supplied manuals. One thick volume held the 'Basics' of the infotainment system. A second held the 'Advanced' stuff. The third volume, a hefty 'owners' guide did not index essentials like opening the hood to check the screen-wash, or accessing jacking points, or finding the tow-points.

Well, to be precise, it did index them, but not in any way that you could find other than by accident without knowing WTF Word had been given for that topic's heading. And, no, such topics were only indexed one, singular way. Not cross-referenced per thesaurus or 'common sense'...

I read fast. Still, took me several hours to find even the rudiments to safely take that nice car on the road.

FWIW, the 'infotainment' display had, among other options, the ability to display speed in bold, digital form, supplementing the impracticable vagueness of the console analogue gauge. I reckoned you could easily slide into speed-camera country due to the markings' imprecision and perspective offset.

A week later, exasperated unto, um, exasperated, I had to ask the dealers for help. Only took a couple of minutes to resolve, but used at least one inadequately documented step...
Click to expand...
I get the impression that nowadays manuals are written by lawyers for other lawyers to avoid liability, not to help users.
 
The motorhome with garage in the cellar ??
FWIW, I think I'd prefer a 'Mini-Moke' or equivalent to that utterly impractical 'supercar'...
 

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