surprisingly interesting ( for me anyway ) Top Gear article about automotive technologies that were supposed to be the future and went nowhere.
click the image below to be taken to the article
i hope @OldFriendSaysHello doesn’t see number 13:
Rear-engined cars
‘But what about the Porsche 911?’ Fair enough. But let’s be real: it’s only a rigorous adherence to tradition that’s led to Porsche doggedly sticking with an engine slung out behind the rear axle and refining it to such brilliant effect, rather than just switching to a front- or mid-engined layout decades ago like all its rivals did.
Indeed the 911 is just an overgrown VW Beetle that was commissioned by Der Führer himself. This format was intended by Hitler to be a family car with two child seats in the back which is what 911 still has, except that nobody actually uses the 911 as a family car ( well i saw one nigger who had his kids in the back of a vintage 911 but Nigger fathers do not count ).
If you do not need the rear seats in your supercar just put the engine in the middle where it belongs and where every other supercar places it including Porsche for their non 911 cars.
From the entry level 718 to the Halo Carrera GT and 918 even Porsche puts the engines in the middle … except in the 911 …
Now the 911 does benefit from larger development budget than most other supercars which used to be enough to keep it relevant until C8 Corvette came along now the 911 is only really relevant outside of US
I think you would have to be insane to pick any version of 911 over C8 Corvette if you live in USA
I also do not see any new 911s any more now that C8 has been out in a variety of configurations. I see a lot of older 911s but you simply get more car for the money with C8 if you live in USA.
The 911 is now strictly for people who want a manual transmission since 911 is the most traditional supercar and probably will keep a manual option until it is discontinued.
So yeah 911 is still “cool” because Heritage and because Manual but it is not a modern car anymore - it is a WW2 era Beetle tuned with the latest German engineering.
#27 is interesting too
Yoke steering (hopefully)
We can only keep our fingers crossed. Yoke-based steering is still too new an idea to really say if it’s just a passing fad or something that’s here to stay, but we hope it’s the former. Not that there’s anything wrong with the steer-by-wire systems that facilitate a yoke’s use – in fact, they have huge potential to provide much more depth and variability to the way a car drives – but is there anything wrong with them being controlled by, y’know… a steering wheel?
i asked Google AI why F1 uses Yoke and it said because there is no room for a wheel:
there is plenty of room for a steering wheel in a Tesla but Elon knows people who buy Teslas are children and will be like " wowza so kewl it has a yoke like F1 "
honestly i feel more sorry for people in Teslas than people in Wheelchairs because it is better to be physically disabled than mentally disabled.
driving a Tesla or using Apple is like wearing a giant sign that says " i have stunted development "
