Car_and_Driver_USA_July_2017

The Columnists
It’s been a while since I’ve heard
of any car company paying big
money to someone with a vague
New Agey job description, which
means the time is ripe for me to
cash in on that lucrative sector. I
figure that my angle is to tell them
things that ought to be obvious but somehow
aren’t, so I’m going to call myself the
Innovation Dictator. (I was gonna go with
Innovation Consultant, but autocracy is so
hot right now.) I hereby invite product planners
and design directors to consult me
whenever they’ve got an idea that just might
be cockamamie. What kind
of ideas? Glad you asked.
Let’s say a designer comes
to me and says, “We’re thinking
about this new idea for a
shifter.” I’ll say: “Stop right
there. It’s stupid.” The shifter
is a solved problem. Enough
with the novel shifters. But
this designer just has to
explain how the dowdy shifter is about to
become sexy, modern, and so very it. TMZ
will hound this shifter. This shifter will
have 2.7 million followers on social media.
If this shifter were a hotel, it would have no
front desk and you’d check in through
Snap, and maybe the elevator would be,
like, hidden in a tree that you climb inside
like an elf.
“Here’s the problem,” the designer
would say, cueing up PowerPoint to explain
something that is not actually a problem. “A
boring old shifter, you pull back once for
reverse. Drive is all the way down, park at
the top. You don’t even have to look at it, let
alone think about it. It’s safe, easy to use,
and—record scratch!—just like your
father’s shifter. And your grandfather’s.
Although maybe not your great-grandfather’s,
because back then you’d have the
riding mechanic climb out on the hood and
close the fargle valve so you could put the
clutch petcock at 2 o’clock and then gently
unwind the torsion retainer to engage the
dogleg and take just enough pressure off
the main bearings that you could slide the
primary actuator up and to
the left, then down, then
back up, then diagonal, and
that’s how you shifted to second
while pursuing the Hun.
“So anyway, our new
shifter is entirely gesturebased,
which frees up valuable
console space for those
wireless phone chargers that
are probably rewriting your DNA and don’t
work with iPhones. Shifting is entirely
crowdsourced and updated via the cloud, so
if you don’t like the reverse gesture, not to
worry—tomorrow it might be different!
And yes, we did learn the hard way not to
let the internet choose the gestures. Rest
assured, you won’t actually need to pantomime
autoerotic asphyxiation to put your
car in park. We also extend our apologies to
James Corden and Lady Gaga, who backed
through a storefront while voguing during
Carpool Karaoke. But now it’s all sorted out,
and our trademarked Dab to Drive is just
hitting dealers. For reverse, you pull your
ear like you’re giving the signal to bunt. For
neutral, you just make a face like ‘Hmm, I
wonder what Dan Quayle is up to right
now?’ It’s totally intuitive!”
Well, I’m sorry we all had to sit through
that imaginary presentation, but just know
that real ones like that happen every day
around the world. Nobody wants to be seen
as stodgy and everyone wants to sell new
capabilities, so we end up driving around
with a bushel of half-baked ideas.
As Innovation Dictator, I’m forced to
decree that the crazy shifter is not alone in
its pointlessness [see: “Bullsh!t,” p. 076],
and there are a few other features we’ll have
to abandon until they actually work, a point
which may or may not coincide with the
heat death of the universe. These features
include, but are not limited to: Voice recognition.
Any form of in-car joystick, mouse,
or doodle pad. Hill-descent control. Fake
wood trim. In-dash apps. Capacitive-touch
anything. Rear-seat entertainment systems
that require an advanced degree from
MIT to operate. Any digital representation
of trees that grow leaves if you drive like a
dweeb. And rear liftgates that are supposed
to power open when you swing your leg
under the rear bumper, but don’t, so you’re
standing there with your groceries, sweeping
the leg like the Karate Kid while your
car laughs at you. Get a load of this jamoke
doing Dance Dance Revolution instead of
pushing a button on the key fob!
Lest you think the Innovation Dictator
is a troglodyte, allow me to remind you that
the Innovation Dictator will not be questioned!
But I can commend some worthy
additions to our lives. Such as: Head-up
displays. Electrification. Rev matching on
manual transmissions. Line lock. Lane
keeping that intervenes only if you’re actually
going out of your lane. Remote start.
Power doors. Adaptive cruise control. Easily
removable truck tailgates. Performance
data recorders. Quality cloth seats. Capless
fuel fillers. And, as you can learn from my
Match.com bio, I enjoy eight-speed transmissions
and 10-speed transmissions but
not, for some reason, nine-speeds.
Well, as they say in the biz, they can’t all
be intermittent wipers. Now let’s get back
to work on puddle lights that project indecipherable
logos on the ground. We’re
almost there on that one.
Ezra Dyer
034 . CAR AND DRIVER . JUL/2017