June 1: Car Tricks

Car tricks. Car tricks? It seems like every new car these days has some sort of techno wizardry added to it so that it will stand out. Or is it done simply to make our lives better? 

This is the 2013 Altima, a beautiful looking re-do in my opinion..........

.......and here is the latest "car trick" as outlined in AutoWeek......

"Nissan's system uses the car's four-way flashers to let the driver know air is coming in. Once the tire is full, the horn beeps once. If the driver puts in too much air, the lights blink faster and the horn beeps three times. When the tire is deflated to a proper level, the horn chirps one more time."

Great idea which will take some memory skills. Was that one beep or two? Are those lights faster? What if I'm at the back of the car, how do I see the headlights? Now don't get me wrong, I think this is a great idea, but initially it looks like it requires a skill set. Actually it would be great at parties to show up with deflated tires and voila! an audience forms as you and your car perform magic. Of course, the party probably needs to be at a gas station, so that you can have access to an air pump.

Several new cars, like this 2013 Audi S6.........

 

.......have a neat collision warning system. If the car senses you are about to be hit from the front or from behind, the car automatically makes adjustments to the driving postion in order to (hopefully) lessen the damage to the driver. Gives you just enough time to think, "Oh s---, I forgot to renew my insurance!", before impact. By the way, how many couples hug lovingly while looking at their new ride? Do you think this pic is staged? 

 

Even the lowly Ford Focus will parallel park itself.

 

Who would have thought that a car could actually do what I consider to be a matter of pride. Although this is a cool feature, I know if my car did this, I'd make sure I had a newspaper handy, so passersby could see me reading as the car parked itself. How cool would that be? I wished though that they had gone one step further and allowed you to hop out of your car before it proceeded to amaze the onlookers.

What "car tricks" will the future bring us next?

Until next time........