Meet Sheila!

[daveamkrayoguy]

Yes, GM seemed to emphasize style over practicality. They did some dumb things like seatbelts anchored to the front doors. Their rear drive cars had the steering gear mounted in front of the tie rods, and the driving position was a tad off center. The big 3-4 in general did nice interiors.

What bad safety ratings those got…

Consumer Reports sure emphasized how the front seat occupants could get pulled out of those cars that had them & it didn’t help that those were the final model Caprices with the ‘77 bodies in production until 1990, many used as police cars…

Ford was also using those two, and I read the praise CR gave them for discontinuing the old, slow, awkward and unsafe motorized seat belts…

Yes what a dumb idea, and who knows how many cars out there kept up still have them maybe in workable condition…

 

[daveamkrayoguy]

GM has always been a bit spotty on ergonomics... I rented a Corsica last century that had nice clicky power window switches, but the click had nothing to do with when the contacts made. You had to push the switch a bit further to get the windows to go down. They just don't get it... And I think I'd rather have just two or three intermittent wiper settings than the spastic full-automatic version my C Class has, my I think my '24 V60 uses the adaptive cruise camera for that, and it's much better. The Benz has some sort of sensor or camera up by the rear view mirror that can see the drops on the glass. Never has been a "great" feature. And Plymouth sold a Mitsubishi called the Sapporo in the late 70's that I think was the first car to have illuminated keyholes on the doors... It had a plethora of interior courtesy lights and other buttons nobody else had, even Caddy. That should have sold a boatload of 'em, right there!

I rented a Corsica, I wanted a Barretta and didn’t know if a basic white with a red interior, a bright red basic model a gray interior or a metallic burgundy Z-26 with a black inferior, all in cloth, was right for me…

I liked the knobs for the lights on that left part of the dash and for the wipers and washer on the right… It was cool how for a moment something went back to the way those controls used to be placed…

I thought the newer Cavalier was done that way too, but it used stalks like the imports off the steering column and its similar knobs just controlled panel dimming on the left and turned on the interior lights on the right…

 

[daveamkrayoguy]

Okay here’s the color box for the ambient strip lighting much like how you do colors for characters or character backgrounds on the computer:

Decided what red I had adjusted it to from the purple it came with was enough and didn’t really want to try or trifle yet with the other colors nor adjust any hue that “lever” was for…

The car was turned off with only the accessories on, such a feature may probably not be used while driving, which I hadn’t attempted but think I may get that warning if I do, which leaves me with the car running and burning gas, spewing out carbon monoxide and perhaps when I’m home from somewhere and want to get in or on my way to quickly go somewhere—so I waste time, my car, and/or my life doing the unnecessary feature of that—forget it!

—need more operable wipers and fewer of those electronic do-dads so my under dash bulb will be placed where it will light or be a bulb and not an LED and light better under there like my jeep cherokee did…

Oh but I love my steering column shift, if only cars went to that instead of just making bulky, intrusive levers or had gone to the push/pull buttons I enjoyed on my old Buick Envision…

My Chrysler 200 had a dial, unfortunately a lot of drivers dislike and gets put on everything even jeeps and ram pickup trucks to this very day!