rev up your engines, today I'm gonna talk about some of the worst trends in modern
car design, and as far as
I'm concerned the worst one are those massive giant grills that all the
manufacturers seem to be copying each other and putting on, like the Lexus
grills, now yes beauty is in the eye of the beholder but
those massive grilles are just absurd, because in many of them a large portion
of that grille does nothing, it's actually just covering up part of the
frame of the vehicle it's not that air is going through the whole thing and
cooling the car down, now as a counterpoint to that, hey I had a 2013
Shelby gt500, it didn't even have a grill it just had a giant gaping hole because
it needed a hole that big to suck enough air in, so that it could go 200 miles an
hour and cool the car down without it overeating, not that anybody really needs
a car that can go 200 miles an hour, but at least that's form following function
not just some absurd ridiculous looking massive grill, now they're all coming out
with it, when I was a young mechanic the Americans had the Fin Wars, they kept
making the fins bigger and bigger and bigger, and they served no purpose either
it wasn't like those things were going 240 miles an hour
it didn't make them that much more aerodynamic, they just liked the look at
these giant fins coming out of the back of them,
the next bad trend is turning everything into an SUV, Hey
there are now Porsche SUVs, Lamborghini SUVs, even Bentley SUVs, because mark my
words, not just a stylish thing, but they're big vehicles they're high up in
the air, almost all of them get pretty poor gas mileage, in the future when the
price of gas goes up, these things are not going to be as popular, and many of
them come in all-wheel-drive, fine if you live in a snowy area or something but in
normal driving in places like here in Texas, you get worse gas mileage as
all-wheel drive, it cost more money to fix, it costs more money to build, you
have to buy all four new tires when you need a tire, because if some tires are
off size from the others, that will ruin the all-wheel drive system and cost you
thousands to fix, which a lot of people don't really understand until it happens
to them, now another trend that I think is
bad is the trend towards removal of not only full-size spares in a car, this
Lexus still has a full-size spare, to the use of those mini spares, this matrix
only has one of those little donut spares inside here, to some modern cars
that have no spare tires at all and even have an air pump or the run
flat tires and you can drive on when they run out of air, really run flat
tires they cost a fortune if you get a flat on that cost a fortune
to fix, and because of their inherent design of being strong, they actually get
worse gas mileage, because they have more friction in them driving down the road, and
at least that's a trend that seems to already be going away, they seem to be
giving up with these run-flat tires, I mean you have a problem where your tires
shredded, even the run flat tires can get shredded, you're gonna be stranded in
the middle of nowhere, there's nothing better than a real spare tire that you can put
on and go your merry way, now the next trend I'd like to
see go away is the use of those ultra low-profile tires, now this lexus has
normal tires and they serve a very good purpose
big sidewalls they absorb bumps so they ride smoother, they can go through
potholes without getting serious damage and they protect the rim, these aren't
cheap rims, if you go to these real low-profile tires, some of those cars
ride like wagons, you feel every bump, if you live in a city like me with pothole
roads, or in a country road with pothole roads for that matter, they will eat the
rims up I've seen guys just destroy the tire and the rims on just a medium
sized pot hole, yeah you can zoom around in them and corner real fast and stuff
but for a normal driving car they're kind of stupid
I've had many BMW customers that cursed the day they got one with these
low-profile tires, they kept having to buy tire after tire after tire, their
super expensive tires and a lot of times they end up the rims too, that's money wasted
that you never need to spend if you just have normal tires that work perfectly
fine, now the next thing that I find stupid and
a ridiculous trend is the installation of fake vents on a
car, for example the Buick envision has fake air scoops on hood, they don't do
anything they're fake they're just stuck on there, they don't suck air or anything
it's just kind of ridiculous, and along the same vein the fake exhaust tips
coming out of a car, even Mercedes getting into it, they put these space-age
looking things come out of the back but there's just regular round pipes going
into them, they don't serve any purpose at all, they're just fake to look like
they're doing something they aren't, now the next bad trend as far as I'm
concerned is those bejeweled headlights so that at night your car looks like a
spider with all those eyes on it, they look weird enough but personally I find
them very annoying when people are coming at you on the other side of the
highway if it's just a little divided highway with not much room between, they
kind of blind you with all those lights coming out at you they make you want to
wear your sunglasses at night, hey I already do that,
and the last trend, one that I really can't stand is the use of
plastics for these headlight assemblies, that's one thing I had to replace on this
Lexus cuz the old ones just got all foggy and cracked, but this is a trend
that I know they're not gonna go away from, because it's cheaper to make
plastic, and you can make it any shape you want to fit any design, but really
plastic, clear plastic the headlight you know what's gonna fog up over time rocks
are gonna hit it, it's not such a hot idea, now if you watch some of my videos I
show you ways that you can protect these plastic headlights so they lasts as long
as possible, but hey when I was young they were glass headlights you never had
to think about anything and if they did crack those glass headlights in those
days cost like 5 bucks versus many of hundreds of
dollars for the OEM ones and when you go aftermarket a lot of times the
aftermarket ones, they're so poorly made they crack too really fast, so now you
know some of the worst trends in modern cars, now let's keep our fingers crossed
and hope they don't come up with a whole bunch of new ones in the future,
so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember
to ring that Bell!