Rental Car Ruckus 2: Electric Boogaloo

[JPolen01]

I finally got my civic back from the body shop this past Friday. Only 2.5 weeks late, so success? It's a dealer body shop expected paint job on the entire front end and roof. For a 6 year old car it looks fine even with the dealer installed swirl marks...

Anyway, during the 3 weeks they had my car I was driving a 2018 Civic - model unknown because I really didn't care (it was a loaner). It had a sunroof, remote start, and car play so I am guessing it wasn't a base. Honda throws in a lot of standard equipment now so it could have been. I digress. 

This car was absolutely AWFUL. The 1.5L turbo coupled with a piss poor CVT transmission (aren't they all bad?) is a terrible, terrible combination. The engineers and whoever signed off on this should be stripped of all future design duties. The turbo lag is apparent. Then waiting for the CVT to catch up and decide what to do is even worse. Step on the pedal and there is a solid 2 second delay for the engine/trans to react. The CVT goes climbing forever, because well no gears. The sound these two make together is awful and the lack of sound insulation is stunning. I put about 1000 miles on it and averaged 28.8 mpg. Mostly city driving. Not awful, but I expect a bit more from such a tiny motor.

The OEM tires on this thing are trash. Slight rain or wet pavement? Touch the gas and tires spin for days...weird on a new car with 4k miles. Also note that at 4k miles the windshield wipers chattered like crazy. This is a brand new car...

The interior on this car is not going last. With 4k miles on it you can already see the door panel/center console fabric wearing. The interior plastics are also very cheap feeling. The center console has a weird configuration with a waste of space underneath of it. It's next to impossible to access it due to the strange design seem here:

The center console slides up and back which is nice to rest your arm on. However, once you slide it forward you lose a cup holder. So if you have a passenger with a drink you are SOL for your armrest. That was wearing immensely as well. 

Apple Carplay is garbage. Going to Atlantic City, my passenger wanted to play music and navigate so he plugged his iPhone in. Every time he got a text the car screamed the message at us and didn't allow him to use his phone to respond. I guess it cannot decipher between a driver and passenger so it doesn't allow anyone to use the phone normally? Apple Maps also blows. If they allow 3rd party apps it might turn into something useful. Until then, no. 

Let's talk about the remote start. A nice feature to have when you live in MD and it's 94 degrees with 107% humidity for a week straight. When you use the remote start, this stupid ass car resets the AC controls to a disgusting 72 degrees no matter what you left it set at. What is the point of even having remote start? On a hot day 72 degrees is not cool enough to bring the temperature down in a car that has been sitting outside in the sun for 8 hours. On a cold day 72 is not warm enough to make it comfortable after sitting outside in 20 degree temps all night. Leave it at what I set it out when I got out of the car! 

I turned off the Lane Keep Assist feature as soon as I got into it. I don't need the wheel jerking the car back into the lane because it thinks I am not paying attention. I left the collision assistance on and my god it is sensitive. Driving on the highway a vehicle 2 car lengths ahead taps their brakes? Better beep and flash a brake sign at you to let you know. Coming up behind someone at a stop sign going 2mph? Better let you know you have to stop! 

Overall, for people like us, this is a terrible car. Not even qualified for boring daily driver status. I would much rather drive an older civic for that purpose. I can see why people buy these. It has some bells and whistles the average car buyer would like. And the average person, like my brother, doesn't know that there are better combinations of engines/transmissions out there.

[WRXtranceformed]

Loved the review haha

We also permanently turned off our lane keep assist on our CX-5 because it does NOT like construction zones. At all. It's downright dangerous in some situations and almost put my wife into a wall, so if it goes for good

[Sijray21]

what made me really look at interiors was comparing my 8 year old VW interior to carmax cars interiors in the past couple years. i've learned a lot as to what i like in an aging interior... I was surprised to see that Acura aged well as well as leather Hondas, but cloth Hondas did not. Aged Lexus interiors felt aged, aged Ford wasn't bad if it was leather (if you don't look at the climate control buttons), and the German luxury brands mostly did a good job.

[JPolen01]

Oh another thing that pissed me off is the no volume knob. I thought Honda figured this out after putting no volume knob in the CRV. Nope. On the left side of the infotainment unit there is a up/down digital button. No feedback. It sucks. The volume control on the steering wheel is fine for the driver, but the passenger always, without missing a beat, grabs the temperature knob and fucks everything up.

[Sijray21]

Oh another thing that pissed me off is the no volume knob. I thought Honda figured this out after putting no volume knob in the CRV. Nope. On the left side of the infotainment unit there is a up/down digital button. No feedback. It sucks. The volume control on the steering wheel is fine for the driver, but the passenger always, without missing a beat, grabs the temperature knob and fucks everything up.

i saw that Honda was inconsistent with that volume knob change... The 2018 Ridgeline had the knob (where the 2017 did not), but Honda didn't make the change to the car line-ups?

[BLINGMW]

One of our Fits for work has that volume slider too. Ridiculous. I'm waiting for some manufacturer to wake up and realize a center console should look like this

[JPolen01]

i saw that Honda was inconsistent with that volume knob change... The 2018 Ridgeline had the knob (where the 2017 did not), but Honda didn't make the change to the car line-ups?

Not sure...this is a photo of the 2018 Ridgeline RTL-E Crewcab w/ nav and it has no volume knob. It looks like the same unit that is in all of the Honda vehicles now.

[Sijray21]

oh, i was confused then. maybe i was thinking of the cr-v. I think they brought back the knob for a few 2019 models. Removing it was stupid.

[JPolen01]

The 2017 CRV has the volume knob. Not sure why it differs model to model. Not having it makes zero sense.

[HAULN-SS]

2018 crv has a knob

[Jake]

I had some credit card points to burn up and a weekend full of driving ahead, so I decided to see what the nice folks at Avis could do for me this past weekend. I get "Avis Preferred" membership through work, which meant I could skip the line at the airport when I arrived to get my car. I booked a "Chevrolet Malibu or similar" for three days, as my weekend had me putting about 400 highway miles on the car and I figured a longer wheelbase (compared to say, a Focus or whatever) would be more comfortable.

The Avis app lets you pick your vehicle before you arrive, so I logged on while riding the Metro to Reagan Airport (aka my pickup location). My choices on the app were a Passat, Kia Sportage, or (oddly) Infiniti QX60. I decided to hedge my bets and selected none of them, which meant I had to check in with the guy at the airport.

I wandered over to the Preferred booth and the Avis rep offered up a Sportage, RAV4, or Malibu. Sitting next to the silver Malibu was a white Dodge Charger with a "HEMI" badge on the fender. I kinda glanced that way and was like "what about that Charger? They're about the same size and all, right, and I don't need an SUV." He looked at me and goes "well, they're not in the same pricing class, but for this weekend, it is, go take it."

The white Charger's keyfob had gone MIA, so I went back to the desk after getting mildly excited about V8 gurgles, now resigning my fate to a silver Malibu with an exciting 1.4L turbo four. Somehow, he found another Charger a few rows over, in This Is Definitely Reckless Driving, Officer Red. The key was in that one, so I threw my bag in the trunk, hit the brake and pushed the starter button. "crankcrankcrank BLARGHGHRHRHRHRHUGHRUGHHH" Goodness this thing sounds awesome, especially backed up against a concrete wall.

Anyway, after a few minutes of listening to a glorious racket of an idle, I finally made it out of the airport parking garage and onto the George Washington Parkway, with my destination 2.5 hours away at the Omni in Bedford Springs, PA. 

Basic impressions of the 2018 Charger R/T after a weekend of driving:

• Dodge spent all their development money on the engine, transmission, steering wheel, and UConnect system, then scrambled to build a car around those bits
  
• The steering wheel is nice and thick, with paddles and good button placement
  
• The transmission is an 8-speed and is pretty responsive, either left to its own devices or paddle-shifted. It'll sit and bang against fuel cut in manual mode!
  
• The engine sounds fantastic and is torquey down low. It makes 385 HP (ish) but does feel a little out of breath if you push it, prolly because...
  
• It weighs 4200 lbs. And you notice it. This car does not "handle"
  
• Alpine sound system was pretty good and UConnect was easy to figure out
  
• The dashboard claimed I got 24 mpg, which sounds good given I was definitely not driving it very hard
  

I also managed to get behind the wheel of another 2018 Charger RT that was definitely not owned by a rental car agency and explored some performance driving abilities. I can confirm that the not-rented Charger RT will leave some sick 11s away from a stoplight if you hit Sport mode, turn off the traction control, and brake-boost it away from the light. It'll do it through the top of second gear. And that same not-rented Charger can be plopped in 1st gear in an empty parking lot behind the Marriott in Chantilly and rip some pretty good donuts.

Mmm, donuts.

[Goodspeed]

That all sounds glorious. I sat in one of these at the auto show and it felt like I fell down into cavern of black plastic, but I'd love to get one out on the road sometime, if only because I'm totally sold by their commercials. Jeff would be so, so proud!

[JPolen01]

I secretly want a white Hellcat Charger. They look so sinister...

[.RJ]

Co-worker here has a matte grey charger (the coupe version). Looks and sounds pretty damn mean.

[JPolen01]

Co-worker here has a matte grey charger (the coupe version).  

So a challenger

[Jake]

I can never remember which is which.

So apparently these have "Active Exhaust" which must do something when you poke the Sport button. In that mode, it'd do "DSG farts" to an extreme level on upshifts and even crackle/pop revving it in neutral. Pretty cool.

[Evan]

I secretly want a white Hellcat Charger. They look so sinister...

probably the best stock wheels ever

[.RJ]

Co-worker here has a matte grey charger (the coupe version).  

So a challenger

Yeah, that one.

[ScottyB]

Nissan has thrown a lot of decent nameplates into the abyss and one of those tragedies is the Sentra.

this was 1990.  Sentra meant light, tossable, affordable, and the SE-R got a 7000rpm SR20, an LSD, and 4 discs.  the pleb-spec versions were honest and decently built.  they were good enough they finally stopped making this exact car only 2 YEARS AGO in Mexico.


and now, in 2019, this is the fat, lifeless, middle management transportation capsule it has evolved into after a string of increasingly depressing attempts to produce a mediocre cheap car.  shown here in Xanax White


i've been forced to drive this for 4 days.  it is worse to drive, unquestionably, than the PT Cruiser i had to rent 10 years ago.  its utter contempt for emotion, feeling, and innovation gave me a genuinely interesting perspective on what its like to experience a machine that was born out of so many board room meetings somewhere in the cubicle labyrinth of Nissan Corporate™ where Account Managers and Marketing Experts get together in cold, harshly lit presentation rooms, in their bland slacks and blouses and sit hunched over stale coffee to discuss in quiet voices, how to sell more cars to Hertz.

here in 2019 we are presented with a car that comes with 124hp, a CVT power transferring device of some kind (with P, R, N, D, and even L), rear drum brakes, and some kind of unusable dashboard infotainment unit whose screen looks like the same matte plastic one on an Etch-A-Sketch. 

i'm certain a very large team of people put considerable hours into creating this vehicle.  all that time drafting the shape of every part.  days upon days with armies of people building and testing and modeling in CAD.  the inventory management.  parts supplier deals.  crash tests, regulations, shipping logistics, dealer allotments.  its all pointless.  this car is invisible.  when the last one rolls off the line it'll get a balloon tied to it and then everyone will forget it existed.  i've already forgotten what it looks like.  i only remember the cherry B.O. air freshener smell.   

anyway, so here is how it drives.  you don't drive it.  you simply operate it.  there is no emotion, at least from the car...you are simply left to either die trying to figure out the infotainment screen or you simply sit quietly to yourself, looking deadpan out the front windscreen left only to the tumbling features of random thoughts scattering through your mind as you lifelessly, almost soundlessly move yourself onward to some place.  wondering how you got here, in this seat.  trying not to touch all the cold, hard plastic.  where is the volume, you wonder, as you hunt for a way to inject any pleasing sound into your life (the cabin is surprisingly quiet when the engine isn't thrashing).  none of the buttons are legible.  nothing makes sense.  the Casio Keyboard gloss black trim snipes sharp beams of sunlight directly into your corneas.

then the time comes to accelerate.  you are constantly on a sickening rubber band.  the CVT attempts to mask the utterly unacceptable lack of power the engine makes by sending the tach soaring to 5000 RPM, and holding it there, until you're ready to let off but at this point the car is catapulting forward on a freewheel and you have to hit the brakes to keep from going 10, 15mph past your mark.  then attempt to get back up to speed again when you brake too much.  again the CVT sails the tach upward and you ride another surge amongst a cacophony of grating, industrial barf coming from under the hood.  it sounds like its in pain. to add to this insulting thrust, Nissan had its head up its ass when it decided to add fake "shift" detents to the CVT operation. it pretends to slip its way through 5 fake gears. almost impossible to predict how to accelerate when its constantly lurching and hunting instead of just picking an RPM and staying there.

i am sad now.  this car makes me full of sad.  i drive it and wonder, what would it take to cause someone to pay money for this, and if they did, what must their life be like if this is an acceptable way to spend their time?  their precious life, the only one given to us, spent in the seat of this depressing container that cannot hold a speed and seeks only, ever, to find a lower RPM, always trying to be not there, in the background, trying not to exist.  its like the engine is trying to hide, so it can simply disappear, with whatever hapless dignity remains.

the steering cannot hold a line.  i think the rack, or subframe is moving on its bushings.  there is no on-center feel.  there is no strong return to center.  it is a rudder, or perhaps more of an adjusting hoop to help you simply not crash.  

i took it down a local windy dirt road twice.  surprisingly easy to rotate.  i liked the suspension travel.  it won't let me ebrake pull it in a turn without sounding an alarm but it was fun to know that was probably the wildest thing this car will ever do.  

i return it tomorrow.  i feel like i learned some things.  i'm hoping to forget most of it.

[Ryan T]

My wife has a 2017 Altima and it is only slightly better than what you have written above Scotty. The Hyundai Elantra we traded in on it was 10x more responsive to drive. But, it makes my wife happy, and regardless of how much I tell her the car sssuuuucccckkkkssss to drive, she continues to be happy. And, happy wife, happy life. If I had to find one thing that Nissan did right on these cars (not sure if the Sentra has it or not) is the zero gravity seats. They are designed to keep your body in a neutral position and minimize slumping and spinal bending while also supporting your hips, thighs and shoulders to reduce fatigue. I thought it was total hogwash when the salesman (an old high school buddy) was telling me about them. But he was right, you can crank out a 10 hour drive in this car and not feel like shit. But other than the seats, the car is nothing more than an appliance.