Opinion: Car features that are bad in practice

Foolishly, I turned on the TV the other day.

Have you ever noticed how you can check the electronic guide, choose a channel and click on it, only to have an advert playing? I reckon that happens nine times out of 10, which suggests that either I’m just unlucky or the networks are playing pretty loose and fast with the regulations that govern the content-to-advertising ratio.

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Mind you, like half the motoring websites around these days, the line between ads and editorial is blurrier than Lindsay Lohan’s view through the windscreen any night of the week.

Anyhoo, the ad I’m presented with is for a product to make your feet silky smooth and attractive to the opposite sex.

The deal consisted of a goo you squirt into a pair of plastic bags, stick your tootsies inside, seal it all up like a takeaway charcoal chook and wait 45 minutes. I am not making this up.

You then throw the plastic bags in the bin and, by the time they’re choking a sea turtle, all the old skin has peeled off your feet and you’re dead sexy again.

Predictably, there are flaws with this. For a start, how is this dame now gonna take the bins out without putting shoes on? Losing the tough, outer layer of skin on your feet has got to be a backward step (literally). A reduction in utility, if you want to be brutal about it.

But it makes me think about car doo-hickies that make about as much sense. Let’s start with side-steps on an off-roader.

Anybody who has sampled them in the bush will know that after the first spoon drain, this pair of stupids running between the axles will be bent and twisted and probably stopping the doors from opening.

Diesels in city cars; punt an oiler exclusively around the ’burbs and several things will happen. Your servicing costs will increase and the particulate filter will back-up faster than a Greek dunny (requiring more maintenance).

And because diesel doesn’t evaporate, every time you touch a bowser, your hands will stink of diesel for the next three days. And since you’re also standing in a pool of unevaporated diesel during each fill-up, the stuff will also get into the carpets and overpower any air-freshener yet devised.

Large, hairy goons like me who drive four-wheel drives in the bush won’t care about any of this. The lady who delivers your mum’s Avon just might.

Now, hands up who has a car that, despite never seeing the naughty side of 250km/h, is fitted with a bootlid spoiler. Go on, you know who you are.

Same goes for fake scoops and dummy air-intakes. They make the car heavier and more expensive to build, yet the only thing they improve on is the potential for wind noise hot-spots.

Let’s go aftermarket – namely, those strips of clear Perspex you fix over the leading edge of the car’s bonnet. The idea is to make your car look stupid while you own it, so that the paint on the bonnet is mint for the guy you sell it to.

Problem is, the Perspex forms a neat little pocket capable of trapping every ounce of industrial fallout, leaf and drop of water that goes near the car. In two months, you’ll have yourself a little ecosystem sufficient to grow grass. Tadpoles, if the conditions are right. In four months, the rust has started.

Then there’s anything manufacturers do to a perfectly good hatchback to turn it into the dreaded compact SUV.

Let’s see, jack it up? There goes the centre of gravity and any cornering prowess. Oh, so we’ll make the suspensions stiffer to cope. There goes ride quality. Um, okay, we can save this – hand me the ugly stick...