Why NEW Cars S*CK!

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Transcript

00:00

Hey you. Yeah, I'm talking to you.

Are you feeling that modern cars are becoming just more and more boring each day? And are you really not excited for all these new cars anymore?

Well, I have good news for you. You're not alone.

In today's video, we're going to talk about why cars are becoming increasingly more boring and how we can probably stop

00:15

this. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy.

00:34

lead right [Music] [Music] to truly understand what went wrong and

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why cars feel so different nowadays than what they used to before. I think it is time that we kind of give ourselves a little throwback and remember how cars used to be.

You know, back in the late 90s and early 2000s, driving a car truly meant something. You could feel every gear change, every little rattle, every

01:07

single five of the cylinder. And a quick and simple drive with an E36 down a twisty road truly could make your day.

Nowadays, cars just have like 500 horsepower and 16 different driving modes, but what they truly lack is all the emotion and passion. Obviously, times have changed and things have

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gotten better in some aspects. and also worse than some others.

But there's a few different key points that we need to look at today to understand why cars have become the way they are nowadays. Now, let's start with one of the most obvious reasons for this big change in how cars feel and behave, which is

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obviously EU regulations. As here in the European Union, we like to regulate things a lot.

And unfortunately for us car enthusiasts, also cars have gotten under severe regulations nowadays. The European Union really likes to choke modern cars with all different kinds of

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emissions testing, new laws, and variety of different regulations and requirements that they have to meet in order to be legal for the roads here. And unfortunately for the rest of the world, the car manufacturers also apply these rules and changes to all the different kinds of cars for the other markets as well.

I mean, by now we all

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should know that cars have to be quiet. They have to be tuned to apply to CO2 regulations and not for motion and fun and throttle response.

They have to have a variety of different safety regulations that only seem to get worse by time and time. One very good example for this are the OPF filters that are found in every car since 2019.

OPF

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stands for auto particle filter and it basically is just a huge pile of metal in your exhaust filtering all the exhaust gases and supposedly making your car more CO2 neutral. The major downside to this is that it takes away a lot of the car's noise.

It makes the car way more quiet and with that also way more

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emotionless to drive. And since so many people saw that and removed the OPF, car manufacturers has stepped up their game and made this process a lot harder.

Removing your OPF often means that you need to tune the car as well because otherwise your car will throw a variety of different error codes and go into limp mode anytime you drive it. And another very good example of these

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regulations are all the speed limit assists that you have in modern cars. The car will tell you every time how fast you're allowed to drive and even make signals if you're going over the speed limit.

This will go so far that in a few years, which I know from a very trustworthy source, cars will actually start breaking if you break the speed

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limit, which honestly dims my excitement a little bit for what's to come in the future. It just seems like the car doesn't trust you anymore.

And if the car doesn't trust you, how are you supposed to feel connected to it? So, the next reason for cars becoming piles of metal without emotions is cost cutting.

Obviously, we're not living in the best time financially. And this also

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means that car manufacturers have to try harder and harder to stay profitable each year. meaning they have to cut costs at each corner they can.

And trust me, unfortunately, you truly feel it in some cars. We have fewer unique cars.

We have many, many shared platforms that basically all feel the same inside,

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whilst on the outside, they're supposed to be a different car. One platform gets stretched into a dozen of different models.

A very good example for this are the new BMW C4 and the Toyota Supra MK5. They basically share the same platform, and once you drive both of them, you truly feel it.

The cars feel similar.

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There's no real way of distinguishing them if you drive them both down a whiny back road. They are fun to drive, don't get me wrong, but it just doesn't feel like the good old times anymore.

Every car kind of feels the same. Every BMW that you get into looks the same nowadays.

Whether you're in a 1 series or you're sitting in an M5, they all

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have the same buttons, the same steering wheel, there's no real distinguishing them anymore. And this kind of makes me sad because back in the days, car used to be very unique.

They used to be something special. And each car had their own flavor, their own taste to it.

Look at the interior of the MK4 Super, for example. It looked like a fighter jet.

It was something so special. It

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made the car stand out. It made you want to be in the car and it made you want to drive the car.

On this M5 E34, for example, they used only finest materials to craft an interior that was truly unmatched. Compare that to the new M5 G99.

I actually made a whole video about that. The car feels just a little bit

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cheap inside. I understand it.

We all want to make a profit. We all want to make a living.

And we all want to stay alive. But it just makes me a bit sad to be honest.

Back in the days, a sports car felt raw because it simply was raw. Today, car manufacturers just add a little bit of stitching, sport badges,

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and they call it the day. That's your sports car for you.

To make up for all of this, car manufacturers just try to blemish over everything by throwing more and more power at the car. And I mean, we can all see it.

Cars nowadays are faster than they have ever been before, which makes for incredible lap times

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around the Nurburg and incredible 0 to 100 times down the straight line. But truly, this is not really what I want.

And I think I speak for some of you guys if I say that's not what we want altogether. But the problem with this is that speed doesn't automatically equal fun.

I don't care what the new M5 makes

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around the new ring. I want the car to be enjoyable.

All the technology of all new cars is trimmed to making them incredibly fast. And I think the worst contender to all of this is the new C63 AMG.

I've made a separate video about this car where I tested it. And let me tell you guys, this car was everything

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that we've just spoken about in this video combined in one bottle. The car has a four-cylinder engine combined with hybrid power, which makes it insanely fast down a straight line.

But the car just lacks the emotions. It has launch control to help it to get to 100 as quickly as possible.

But at the same

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time, it really forgot the spirit of AMG if you compare it to the previous models. It's a 600 horsepower sedan that drives itself.

And it doesn't really feel like a car. It's just Netflix or video game on wheels.

doesn't feel engaging. It doesn't feel fun to drive.

It's just there. It's a good daily driver and it's really comfortable to

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drive, but at the same time, it's just not what AMG stands for anymore. And I feel like the guys at AMG just threw all this power at this car to kind of make up for the rest of it.

But in my mind, it doesn't really work like that. A car needs to be enjoyable.

Good lap times around the Nurburg Ring mean nothing if

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the car itself is just boring. A Tesla is also fast, but I don't really think anybody ever in the life has said, "Oh, wow.

I really enjoy the emotions my Tesla gives me and I really dream about this car. It just seems to me that you're not really driving your car.

You're just managing it and helping the car be as fast as possible. And I think

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that's kind of the wrong way to me. It just kind of feels a bit like cheating.

Giving the car all the power and all the electronic assists it needs and then saying, "Oh, you know, the new AMG is actually better than the old ones because it was faster on the racetrack than the older ones." You're not really working for anything. The car is doing

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all the work. To make a car fun to drive, in my opinion, you both have to work together to accomplish something.

It has to be symbiotic. The last big reason we have on today's list is all the technology that has went into the cars.

It kind of ties in with all the previous mentioned problems, but

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it truly deserves to be its own highlight of the video. If you think how it used to be back in the days, a car was just basically an engine, steering wheel, gas pedal, brake pedal, clutch, and your shifter, and that's pretty much it.

Nowadays, you have 100 different screens scattered throughout your whole car. A variety of different buttons,

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drive modes, artificial speakers that pump fake engine noise into the cockpit, giving you a very virtual feeling for everything. Electronic steering wheels that take away some of the driving pleasures and everything just feels like you're driving a big smartphone on wheels.

Every time you drive a modern car, you have to scroll through a

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variety of different menus to find the perfect setup for you. You simply just tend to spend more time trying to figure out the menus than actually enjoying the drive.

I just really miss the analog knobs that we had on all the cars. These funky little switches and buttons that made cool sounds when you pushed them

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and that didn't leave a fingerprint each time you even looked at them. The same goes for the instrument cluster.

Nowadays, everything just has to be a screen. And the problem with that is that in a few years, everything will just look so outdated.

Whether with analog displays like we have in the F80, for example, they will always kind of

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look the same. They will never look out of touch.

They will never look old. They just look analog, which to me is absolutely fantastic.

And if you think about it for a longer time, it kind of contradicts itself. We're not supposed to use our smartphones while driving.

But at the same time, all new cars seem to be designed like a smartphone. You

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have so many different things going on in all the screens on the car. It feels like driving has gone from driver focused to distraction focused.

And it's not even about that. It's also that it just really doesn't look so beautiful anymore.

In old cars, everything was just really neatly organized. And there were some really creative ways to put

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all the buttons in your car in different positions. where the new car is.

Car manufacturers just slap a huge iPad into the dashboard and call it a day. That's it.

Prime contender for this is basically every car manufacturer in the world right now. If you look at Porsche, they have big screens.

BMW big screens, Mercedes, big screens. All the car

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manufacturers all do the same. And that also makes them feel the same.

Doesn't feel different if you're driving an AMG or a BMW M5 because the touchcreen you press really doesn't matter if it's positioned in a Mercedes or BMW. So yeah, modern cars are amazing in many different ways.

They are very fast,

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reliable, and safer than cars have ever been before. But they are just not really fun to drive anymore.

Fast is not always fun. They just lack emotion, and they lack that sense that you get when you turn on an old car that gives you goosebumps around the whole body and makes your neck hair stand up.

And while

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I get it that car manufacturers just really have no other choice than to comply to EU regulations and to save money in order to make money and always try to make a faster and faster car. It's just kind of going down the wrong direction for me.

They don't have to be crafted with the most expensive

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materials. I just want the cars to be enjoyable and fun.

I just really feel like car manufacturers are kind of missing the point on what we car enthusiasts truly want. And I get it.

We are only a small group of a big audience that the car manufacturers are trying to reach. But it would be cool to just see

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at least a few more cars that are catering to our needs. I don't care if the car is fast.

Just make it fun to drive. That's all I want.

Fun and emotions. And I think you guys kind of want the same.

At least that's probably the reason why you're watching my videos. And also, don't get me wrong,

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I'm not saying that all new cars suck. I just say that older cars tend to be better.

At least for me. New cars are cool.

The M5 G99 is an amazing vehicle, but it's just nothing compared to the thrill of driving old cars. So, what can we really do to stop all of this and to

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make cars amazing to drive again? I'm going to be honest with you guys, I don't really think that there's a lot that we can do.

The only thing that's truly in our power is to stop buying cars that suck, that seem to have helped with the C63. After it launched, nobody really bought it.

And Mercedes really had to change the way they think about

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producing AMG models. Meaning they brought back the V8 and some of the latest AMG models, which is very delightful to see.

Still, I think we really need to go a long way to truly make cars great for driving again. And truly, the other thing we can do is just sit and pray.

Pray that one day cars

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will be fun again. Pray that one day we will get excited for new cars again.

Thank you guys for watching. [Music]