New car - IRRITATING!

My philosophy is to never buy a car that doesn't have a strong enthusiast base for mods and fixes. Jeep is that way, and I presume Porsche is as well.
StraightnLevel said:
Porsche ECUs are tightly locked down, and you have to be a licensed Porsche shop or dealership to change any of these settings in the ECU
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On the Jeep, you simply have to buy a "security gateway bypass" cable. The security gateway sits between the OBD port and the ECU, letting you read but not change things. With the bypass cable you can change some, but not all, settings.
Deelee said:
It's just part of my post-start-up flow to start engine, wait 30 seconds for the disable auto-stop to become available, hit disable auto-stop function button.... No way to turn it off by default.
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Grrr, yes, auto start-stop is one of those things that's hard coded and can't be turned off. But for the Jeep at least, there's a module you can buy that plugs in between the button and harness that remembers your last choice (i.e. off) and sends that to the ECU once it's online at startup.

Now if I could just get it to not turn the radio on by default if a Bluetooth device isn't found at startup...
 
Dana said:
.

On the Jeep, you simply have to buy a "security gateway bypass" cable. The security gateway sits between the OBD port and the ECU, letting you read but not change things. With the bypass cable you can change some, but not all, settings.
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The new Porsche ECUs will not allow any changes unless it is connected back to the factory with a valid security key. They track everything you do to the car, and will not issue a key to anyone outside their ecosystem. You cannot even reset the oil change timer without going to the dealership and paying their fees. It's the subject of a current "right-to-repair" lawsuit, but has yet to be adjudicated.

What really annoys me is that my wife's Macan that we picked up only a few months ago allows all of these settings to be locked in permanently. I assmued that this car would be the same....and I got screwed.
 
Take it back. Give the dealer your complaints.

That, or just sell as is. Supposedly these cars are so popular people are on a waiting list to get them. You should be able to recoup almost all of your money (you'll probably lose out on the tax side).

Expensive lesson.
 
asicer said:
Next rant: "I have $60mil in the bank but the ATM will only let me take out $600 at a time"
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I'm surprised how sympathetic I am to @StraightnLevel's complaint. I'll never buy a $170K car. I'm just not a car guy, almost to the point of finding that kind of thing bewildering. But there are things that I pay a premium for and I do expect them to work properly as a result.

And that quote still the funniest thing I've read here in weeks.
 
MackMooney said:
after about a 2 days i complete ignore the start-stop, just doesn't bug me at all.
BLUETOOTH auto switching between the radio and my car in the middle of call, now that, that's an irritant

OP, I have the fix for your problem : https://www.chevrolet.com/performance/corvette/zr1
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You're joking, right?
GM got caught tracking customers' cars and selling that tracking data to insurers and marketing firms. No way I would ever buy a track day car from them.
 
chevy is just working their best to get my money, the zr1x is just frickin insane, meaning i really want it 8). now they're working on releasing a grandsport with 700hp and ALL the buttons, with the refined styling. smh, the wallet event horizon is getting closer and closer
 
MackMooney said:
chevy is just working their best to get my money, the zr1x is just frickin insane, meaning i really want it 8). now they're working on releasing a grandsport with 700hp and ALL the buttons, with the refined styling. smh, the wallet event horizon is getting closer and closer
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Yeah, I love the ZR1X... not even going to pretend I can afford it! I'll pretend I can afford a Z06 or a Grand Sport for now, probably buy a Stingray and have the center-stack exhaust put on it and love it! Honestly, the Stingray is more car than I'll even need, but the wider bodies on the higher-end cars look really sweet!
 
I suppose one can try to rent a recent model of a car to see if one is comfortable with it. It is more difficult for more expensive vehicles than the local Hertz or whatever. Perhaps Turo has such cars for rent. Drive it for a week and see if it has objectionable "features".
 
schmookeeg said:
What, like, with the receipt? As if in line at the Walmart Customer Service desk?
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Is there a law that prevents taking a vehicle back to the dealer?

Like I said, supposedly there are waiting list of buyers wanting these cars. One could go to bring a trailer.com and advertise it with a min reserve, or hire one of the many exotic car dealers and negotiate a broker agreement or sale. If the dealer wants to protect a customer base they may very well help the owner out of it (providing there is a profit involved).

The other lesson learned is test drive the car before signing documents. If questions arise then is the time to address them.

Going on an aviation forum and bitching solves nothing.
 
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Doc Holliday said:
Going on an aviation forum and bitching solves nothing.
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Sorry to burst your bubble, but you're wrong.

He gets a place to vent where people are willing to listen and maybe even offer moral support (we are already used to spending big money on toys, so the setting is appropriate to discuss spending even more money on another toy). He feels better at the end of the day and it didn't cost a dime.
And the rest of us get some education or entertainment out of it. Win-win.
 
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Overly cautious parking assist and adaptive cruise control, and the overly sensitive panic button on the key fob all **** me off. The auto-stop-start crap used to **** me off. But someone made a gadget to plug into the disable button wiring so it stays off instead of defaulting to "on" every time you start the engine.
 
AV8R_87 said:
Sorry to burst your bubble, but you're wrong.

He gets a place to vent where people are willing to listen and maybe even offer moral support (we are already used to spending big money on toys, so the setting is appropriate to discuss spending even more money on another toy). He feels better at the end of the day and it didn't cost a dime.
And the rest of us get some education or entertainment out of it. Win-win.
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Commiserating with your fellow pilot? Weird form of entertainment, but whatever.
 
StraightnLevel said:
Nope. As of '26, Porsche ECUs are tightly locked down, and you have to be a licensed Porsche shop or dealership to change any of these settings in the ECU - and they have to sign an agreement that they will not make those changes. This is due to some incredibly intrusive EU laws, and VW/Porsche are too lazy to set up different systems for the US. A lawsuit has been filed over right-to-repair, but that will likely take years to resolve.
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"Right to repair" hasn't yet included "right to modify factory firmware".
 
AV8R_87 said:
Sorry to burst your bubble, but you're wrong.

He gets a place to vent where people are willing to listen and maybe even offer moral support (we are already used to spending big money on toys, so the setting is appropriate to discuss spending even more money on another toy). He feels better at the end of the day and it didn't cost a dime.
And the rest of us get some education or entertainment out of it. Win-win.
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Contrary to the numerous studies that have shown venting actually makes you worse off.
 
schmookeeg said:
What, like, with the receipt? As if in line at the Walmart Customer Service desk?
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If this is true, then why not?
StraightnLevel said:
Because I spent $170k and got something very different from what I was sold.
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If you contract for one thing, and the seller delivers a different thing, you are under no obligation to keep it. On the other hand, one party's assumptions generally do not become part of the contractual terms.
StraightnLevel said:
What really annoys me is that my wife's Macan that we picked up only a few months ago allows all of these settings to be locked in permanently. I assmued that this car would be the same....and I got screwed.
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Doc Holliday said:
Like I said, supposedly there are waiting list of buyers wanting these cars. One could go to bring a trailer.com and advertise it with a min reserve, or h hi o yo one of the many exotic car dealers and negotiate a broker agreement or sale. If the dealer wants to protect a customer base they may very well help the owner out of it (providing there is a profit involved).
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I'm more likely to just keep an open search for a 997-series GT3 and work a trade when I find one.

The fact that these "features" tick me off doesn't devalue the car, so I have an asset that won't depreciate very much as long as I don't put any miles on it. I know that the 997 series doesn't have these issues, so that solution can make some sense.

Now, all of that being said, how can anybody talk about a basic 911 being a "luxury item" when we're on a forum that discusses airplanes? A "lowly" C172 turns dollars into noise faster than a 911.....
 
StraightnLevel said:
Now, all of that being said, how can anybody talk about a basic 911 being a "luxury item" when we're on a forum that discusses airplanes? A "lowly" C172 turns dollars into noise faster than a 911.....
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This is an aviation forum. Airplanes are seen as necessities here. Porsches are clearly luxury items. Now, in your Porsche forum, I’m sure they think you are insane for having an airplane. An obvious extravagance from that POV.
 
man mark it up 25k and sell, get's less valuable everyday
 
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StraightnLevel said:
Now, all of that being said, how can anybody talk about a basic 911 being a "luxury item" when we're on a forum that discusses airplanes? A "lowly" C172 turns dollars into noise faster than a 911.....
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Yes, but I could have bought nearly five 172s with what you paid for your 911. Even now, I could probably buy 3.

(but, yes, I got the joke)
 
Setting aside for the moment that, as opposed to this being a 1st-world problem, it's more like a 1/10th or 1/100th world problem, I do sympathize.

At the moment, I'm sitting in a hotel in Franklin, NC. SWMBO and I are going to spend the next couple of weeks in Shenandoah NP and New River Gorge NP, and we're traveling in her recently-acquired GMC Sierra. That thing has more freakin' bells and whistles and options and oddities, from adaptive cruise to lane assist to a $%^&@ buzzer in the seat that annoys me whenever I do something it doesn't like, and I need a bloody checklist to set everything each time I start it up. Barb got PO'd at the GPS the other day and used some, uh, harsh words, and the damn truck replied, "I make mistakes but I do learn." (Not kidding!)

The more I drive it, the more I like my old 1996 F150 that belonged to my dad, with it's manual crank windows, basic am/fm radio, and not much else.
 
Man, I’m completely the opposite of you guys. My car has to have all the buttons and every auto feature imaginable. If I have to do anything beyond turning it on and driving, I’m annoyed.

My wife swears by the heated and cooled seats, plus the segmented AC and the HEPA filter. And honestly, that HEPA filter is amazing — when I drive through a dust cloud and nothing blows into the cabin, it still surprises me. she sets her side at freeze while i set mine above frost bite

awesome that I can just walk up to the car, touch the door to unlock it, sit down, push a button, and drive away. don’t think I’ve manually touched a light switch, windshield‑washer or AC control in years. My next car WILL drive itself at-least on the highway, adaptive has been awesome but i'm def ready for the next level
 
Half Fast said:
The more I drive it, the more I like my old 1996 F150 that belonged to my dad, with it's manual crank windows, basic am/fm radio, and not much else.
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I have a 6 speed manual 2017 Accord SE as a daily driver and a 5 speed 2012 Miata for my Walter Mitty alter-ego. Neither of 'em has expensive sensors, adaptive cruise, or most of the convenience/annoyance/high dollar repair items that come stock with today's vehicles. I may be in my happy place.
 
What I find funny is that manufacturers pile all this ca-ca into their "performance" cars. True race cars are bare-bones, as light as possible/legal, with pretty basic systems (not counting F1 or prototypes).
 
Half Fast said:
What I find funny is that manufacturers pile all this ca-ca into their "performance" cars. True race cars are bare-bones, as light as possible/legal, with pretty basic systems (not counting F1 or prototypes).
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Well, not all manufacturers...
2010_Caterham_7_Roadsport_175_1.6.jpg

ariel-atom-25-years-interview.webp
 
kyleb said:
It's a silly amount of fun in an inexpensive package. Quick but definitely not fast.
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Yeah. Kidding aside, the 3rd gen is shedding it's boat reputation (which was probably a joke that people accidentally took seriously) and is starting to appreciate, I think. It's not *that* far off a NA or ND, dimensionally speaking.
 
asicer said:
Yeah. Kidding aside, the 3rd gen is shedding it's boat reputation (which was probably a joke that people accidentally took seriously) and is starting to appreciate, I think. It's not *that* far off a NA or ND, dimensionally speaking.
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The NA is tiny and underpowered in comparison (and old too). I don't like the styling of the NB (bland) or ND (too aggressive).Therefore NC. Also, it has airbags, ABS, and decent door bars since my 15 YO son will probably drive it some. It really needs an OD 6th gear - it just buzzes down the highway. Not an interstate car at all...
 
asicer said:
Well, not all manufacturers...
2010_Caterham_7_Roadsport_175_1.6.jpg
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If I knew I could get the suspension right, I'd build a Lotus 7 knock-off. My sense is that a lot of the "homebuilt" Lotus 7's don't have very good manners.
 
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