What’s The Weirdest Thing About Your Car?

Autopian Asks Weirdest Thing
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Here at The Autopian, we like weird. From Jason’s Changli to Mercedes’ flock of smarts, we take the peculiar under our wing, and are proud to do so. However, a car doesn’t have to be innately strange to have weird things about it. Today we’re asking you about the weirdness within your car, whether overt or covert.

If you’ve been following along for a while, you’ll know that I have two cars. One is the stereotypical chariot of entry-level city professionals circa 2006, and one is the stereotypical chariot of thin Bay Street-based squash players circa 1999. We certainly aren’t talking Citroen SM levels of weird here, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t strange features on them. Unusually, both of my cars speak German through their climate control panels.

On my 325i, there’s a button marked “REST” for restwärme inside the right HVAC temperature knob. Press it, and hot coolant will be circulated through the heater core while the vehicle is parked. I’ve actually written a whole article on how this system works, so if you’re looking for some longer reading during your lunch break, I highly suggest checking it out.

Boxster Manuell

On my Boxster, if for some reason I ever decide the set-and-forget approach of automatic climate control isn’t right for the situation, I can take over manual control of the HVAC system. If I do that, the word manuell lights up in the climate control display, indicating manual climate control operation in an exceptionally German manner. Of course, the photo above isn’t of my Boxster since it’s in storage, but you get the idea.

So, what’s the weirdest thing about your car? It could be an unusual feature, strange labeling, or perhaps you drive a Matra Murena, in which case, can we be friends? Celebrate your car’s weirdness in the comments below, and we’ll be sure to celebrate along with you.

(Photo credits: Thomas Hundal, Cars & Bids/YouTube)

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296 thoughts on “What’s The Weirdest Thing About Your Car?”

  1. My truck has that crazy pushbutton climate control system. Totally out of place in a bare-bones work truck, but if you equipped it with AC, that’s what you got.

    It also has a weird shift pattern.

    L 2
    1 3 R

    Would be a stadard 4 speed H, except that you rarely use low, so for practical purposes, it’s a dogleg 3 speed.

    1. The transmission in my ’70 International pickup is the same with respect to the position and relative utility of its four forward speeds but reverse is all the way to the right and forward instead of back. As a bonus, the factory shift knob has no markings on it whatsoever, so for anyone who doesn’t know the pattern the whole experience becomes a fun little game of exploration.

  3. On a Jetta GLI I used to own, when using the voice command feature, you’d have to speak to it in a British accent or it wouldn’t understand you.

      1. Mine was an MKVI GLI. Oddly enough it was perhaps the most reliable car I’ve owned. Although that does remind me that you had to feed it oil between oil changes because it burned it for some reason.

  4. Ford C-Max PHEV. It has LED lighting in the footwells, cupholders and doors that turn on when the headlights are on, and you can cycle between ~8 different colors.

    2. MyColor, Ford called it. And you can even actually create custom colors if you don’t like the 8 choices. My Mom’s Mustang has it, and I (years ago) created a Barbie-pink hue that she adores.

        1. I forget exactly how to access it (my own Fords are lower tech), but once you get the button sequence right, it activates a + / – sequence for each of the color values so you can get exactly what you want. If yours has a screen, it probably works even easier.

  5. Just the cars, by age:

    My 1983 Austin Maestro Vanden Plas has a talking digital dash of essentially no utility. Changing modes for its digital display is accomplished by pushing various buttons, at which point the voice announces which button was pushed. That’s it. For example, pushing the button for the time of day will display the time while the voice announces “TIME.” It does not speak the actual time, merely the fact that time has been selected. I understand it was nonetheless revolutionary in its day.

    My 1982 Austin Allegro 3 has Hydragas suspension, the successor to the Hydrolastic system as used in, for example, some classic Minis. It works rather well but isn’t quite the marvel that it was touted to have been. Occasionally I have to repressurize it with a 50-50 mix of antifreeze and alcohol, which seems to be an adequate substitute for genuine Hydrolastic fluid.

    My 1980 KV Mini 1 is a 400-pound voiture sans permis with rack-and-chain steering, cable-actuated mechanical brakes, a supercharger for pressurizing the fuel tank (no fuel pump), a CVT driveline that rubs grindstones against the rear tires for propulsion, and a single-cylinder air-cooled two-stroke engine with a spark advance system that allows it to run happily in either direction, thereby enabling the car to go in reverse simply by starting the engine the other way. I’m not sure which of these features is necessarily the weirdest (probably the grindstones) but really the whole thing is a small bundle of oddness built in a factory that employed a total of three workers who were armed with very little beyond a welder and a sheetmetal brake, which explains the absence of compound curves (or indeed, for the most part, curves) in the bodywork.

    My 1976 Volvo 66 GL is essentially a badge-engineered DAF 66 and therefore is equipped with a Variomatic transmission, which is to say a CVT that uses two oversized (and exposed) fan belts for propulsion. These are not, as it turns out, fun to change.

    My 1967 SAAB 96 three-cylinder, two-stroke, four-on-the-tree, freewheeling, fully-caged race, rally, and street-driven car is, um, actually pretty normal, all things considered.

    1. For whatever reason the thought of your ’83 Austin Maestro shouting ‘TIME’ at you when you push the button to see what time it is really tickled my funny bone! I’m not sure if I should be relieved or worried that no one found it out of the ordinary that I was sitting in my office alone laughing like a madman…

    3. It works rather well but isn’t quite the marvel that it was touted to have been. Occasionally I have to repressurize it with a 50-50 mix of antifreeze and alcohol, which seems to be an adequate substitute for genuine Hydrolastic fluid.

      That’s a bit disappointing—I’d heard it called Citroën ride without the Citroën faff, but it seems like it’s just as flawed as all the rest! In your experience how does the ride compare to a hydro Citroën? I’d always thought Hydragas was clever for being essentially passive compared to Citroën’s constantly repressurizing system. I’m surprised no rendition of it has survived to modernity.

      1. I’ve never driven or ridden in a Citroën, hydropneumatic or otherwise, so I can’t say. All the people I know who have experienced both do think the active system is better but not all of them agree it’s better enough to justify the greater complexity.

  6. Does it count if you installed it yourself?

    On my 2019 Miata I put in an aftermarket active exhaust (Flyin’ Miata Hush-o-Matic). Out of the box it just uses vacuum to open the bypass when you step on the gas hard, but I bought it with a little PLC that opens and closes the bypass. It decides when to do this by listening to the CAN bus and switching modes based on the wiper control ring position. Turn the wipers off and turn the ring to minimum, and the bypass is always closed, turn it to maximum and it’s always open, intermediate positions and it opens at 20, 60 or 90% throttle.

  7. I know this isn’t what I’m supposed to write, but my 2018 F150 XL has nothing weird about it. I can’t think of anything. Everything is just plain and logical! Same goes for my NA Miata. Nothing. Just simple, straightforward, nothing confusing. I like this aspect of dull cars! Maybe that’s the weird thing: nothing weird.

    2. My NA had a quirk where the shifter could pop out of the 5th/reverse gate before the fork overcame the reverse detent, so it would pop back into reverse and you wouldn’t be able to get the shifter in to pull it back out, so the only way back to neutral was to unscrew the reverse light switch, which was a button pushed by the shift fork, and use a stubby screwdriver to push the fork back to neutral. Had to crawl under the car for that at least 3 times, and only one was at home. Another Miata quirk is that there’s a HUGE removable ashtray, but no cupholders. Like they expect you to smoke a pack a day in lieu of hydration.

        1. I’d seen a few aftermarket cupholder kits before, though I had a tragic parting with my Miata before I ever got a chance to start upgrading things.

  8. 24 Hornet R/T: An absolutely incredible amount of customization for the screens, displays, 3 different styles of gauges, live data on actual power usage displayed as Percentage of power requested in the style of a tach on the cluster, and live data of power usage from the Engine, battery, and Climate system all in KwH.

    I’ve never seen a car offer up this much data to the driver, I have a thing for gauges the same way Torch likes Taillights, and it’s a joy.

    BUT

    There is NO way to tell the battery charge other than a vague bar gauge that just says “E” or “F”

    Only when plugging the car in can you see what the actual state of charge is, and thats just wierd.

    1. I will say that modern Dodge cars and trucks seem to be really good about this, and it is seemingly underappreciated among enthusiasts.
      I noticed this when I got a base model Ram 1500 v6 as a last-minute rental to avoid being stranded at the Dallas airport at midnight. We bombed that poor truck down the interstate at 85+ mph for hours on end to get to San Antonio before dawn. As I was poking through the menus of information that the dash could show you, I found a screen that had all the major powertrain measurements (temps and pressures for oil, coolant, transmission fluid, etc.) in a table of numbers. And unlike the ‘analog’ gauges of most cars that are just dummy lights in a fancy dress, these were live values in engineering units. From watching that info I learned that the Pentastar V6 has an actively controlled oil pump – at normal cruise RPM’s the oil pressure would float around 35 PSI or so, but any time the engine got above something like 3500 RPM (at the speeds we were going it had to downshift twice any time it smelled a hill) the oil pressure would shoot up to over 80 PSI! I knew it was actively controlled because it had a hysteresis built in: In 8th would have 35 PSI pressure, and still around that level downshifted once into 7th. Once it downshifted once more into 6th the oil pressure shot up to the 80 PSI level while climbing the hill. As the truck crested the hill and it upshifted to 7th, the oil pressure stayed up at 80-ish PSI (it varied a bit with engine speed), and then once it was up in 8th again the oil pressure went down to 35 again. So the oil pressure in 7th was low if the engine speed had recently been low, and high if it had recently been high – thus it must be an actively controlled pump. Neat!

      1. Yeah, you ought to see the new ones, you can literally make the instrument cluster a wall of numbers if you want lol. The diesel trucks let you configure 6 different gauges on top of the Fuel, Temp, and RPM/ Speed, so you can have Turbo Boost, Exhaust Brake HP, Trailer Brake gain, Trans Temp, Oil temp, and Coolant Temp all sitting there in one spot. As a bonus, you can also have all this on the Radio screen as well. It’s nice if nothing else to have options.

        1. My father’s new Grand Cherokee has it too (along with a bizarre-for-the-vehicle “sport” mode that stiffens up the steering/suspension and gives the engine a growl-ier sound)!

          Like you say, it’s not obvious or easy to find, but after playing around for awhile, I was able to create your wall of numbers myself.

          It’s almost distracting, but was like driving around in a NASCAR racer. I loved it, thought felt it a little out of place on a Grand Cherokee. Hornet seems much more appropriate.

          My father of course would hate it, so I saved it as a preset for myself. 😉

              1. Put SRT Grand cherokee springs on it, use the factory 20” wheels, and good tires.

                If that doesnt work, remove the radiator cap and slide a miata under it.

  9. I’ve had a few Tempo and Topaz models in my life. In the US in 1988, the front seats got the automatic shoulder seatbelts. But, the Tempo/Topaz had an optional driver’s side airbag (side note: the Tempo/Topaz were the first Ford car to be offered with an airbag starting in late 1985).

    If you equipped your car with an airbag, it had to be a 4-door with the 2.3L 4cyl and the 3-speed automatic. You couldn’t get cruise control on the car. And the really weird part was the drivers side got a manual 3-point lap belt while the passenger side got the automatic shoulder belt. I think it was the only car that you could get with just ONE automatic shoulder belt.

    1. That’s interesting, I feel like in later years they just defaulted back to all motorized belts, since that’s how most of them were built anyway.

      However the single motorized belt award goes to Chrysler – they had not one but two lines with a motorized passenger belt, adding it near the end of their model runs: the 1994 Sundance/Shadow and the 94-95 Spirit/Acclaim. Only U.S. ones, not in Canada. That was the year the passive restraint law fully went into effect, but the ironic part was that Chrysler had made a driver’s airbag standard in those cars in 1990 rather than passive seatbelts and made a big deal of it in advertising. (They also kinda had to, for convertibles. Edit: although come to think of it, some pre-90 LeBaron coupes did have door-mounted shoulder belts.)

      On that note too – they redesigned the Omni/Horizon dashboard for 1990, added a standard driver’s airbag, and then dropped it after that year.

      1. Fascinating, I wasnt aware of that happening with the Sundance/Shadow and Spirit/Acclaiim. I do remember very vividly when Chrysler added driver’s side airbags to all of their passenger cars. The automotive nerd in me did a reasearch paper in 8th grade honors english (we could chose our own topic) about the airbags in the Chrysler cars.

        1. I did something similar in 7th grade language arts – a project about Iacocca, after reading his autobiography. Average middle schooler activities, lol.

  10. My rav4 hybrid. The startup 12 voltage battery is hidden under the back seats. If this battery goes bad, you cannot start the car which is just booting the computer up. If you can’t boot, you can’t move the shifter. On top of this, there is no regular battery or jump spot in the engine compartment. You just have a very expensive brick on wheels due to one small battery. Even more fun when that brick is in your garage and you need to get it on the tow truck.

    2. At my old job we had a bunch of old Prii, 12v batteries in the back, rear hatch had electric switch. So when it was -20F and the cars sat for a week, I got to disassemble the rear of the car to get to battery to bring it inside to charge. Real smart planning.

  11. My Dad has a 52 willys that uses a foot-button to engage the starter. I understand this may not have been that rare on cars of the era but sure was weird to get used to.

    My Honda Fit rolls the drivers (only) window all the way down with one push of the button, but I have to hold it all the way up – why not both? It also sometimes has an alert that I’m going over 5k rpm. Its a little voice in the backseat squealing “VTEC Yo!”

    2. Auto-up is more useful to me than auto-down, but typically gets excluded if they don’t want to include an anti-pinch function for the auto-up feature to reverse if something gets in the way.

  12. 2023 Mazda3 AWD: auto parking brake only engages when the car is turned off, and it also has two fuel gauges (one actual fuel gauge and one that shows estimated range remaining as a percentage of total estimated range)
    2008 Saturn Aura 3.6XR: GM’s irritating TapShift shifters, where pushing it forward upshifts and pulling it downshifts, on both paddles, rather than one for upshifting and one for downshifting like everyone else

  13. Ferrari 612: can only open the glove box with a button and the car turned on. Also, TPMS system shows “failed” if the car is clod. If you start the car when it’s warm, it works fine.

    Porsche 914: to put in gas you must open the hood. The hood pull in the car has a lock on it. The trunk can be latched without being locked and just opened by pushing the lock in if unlocked.

  14. Jeep JK power window buttons. The location and I did not find the hard one-click feature that took the window down automatically for a very very long time.

    1. Which therefore moved the Next/Previous buttons down off the lower center spoke of the steering wheel, instead of being behind the left spoke like the volume buttons are on the right spoke.

      1. yes…a buddy of mine drove my volt the other day (I rarely come around in it because on the weekends I drive my JKU) and he hit it to change the song and said “WTF does this damn button do?!”

  16. Helped my coworker replace the touchscreen panel on her Grand Cherokee’s head unit (notorious overheating panel issue). Plugged everything back in and random things seemed to be missing from the interface – like the backup camera and the seat heater controls. Turns out after the head unit is unplugged and plugged back it has to “relearn” which physical features the car has and enable those interfaces. Everything slowly came back over the course of about 15 minutes.

  17. My e350 work van has this bug where, when you flex it torsionally, the dash lights go off, then on.
    being 4wd & having over 200k, I’m like ‘Eh’. Except, they didn’t come back on this morning—and now I have no radio nor illuminated hvac controls.
    muscle memory for the hvac, and when I turned Spotify on, Sugar Man by Rodriquez came on, so I ain’t care.

      1. Her coworkers agree with you, and I’m pretty sure they’re not really joking. Wife doesn’t want to get rid of it though – it’s her in-town runabout and she forbids me from selling it (which I did once already – long story). Even when I talked about replacing it with a new-ish Bolt this year, the first question was “That’s fine, but we’re still going to keep the Escort, right?”

        Meanwhile, I’ve had several neighbors ask if it’s for sale.

        And then there’s our daughter, who doesn’t even have her license yet, but does have a project-C4. She’s already eyeing the Escort as her “school car” if we get the Corvette fixed up the way she wants. Gonna have to fight mom for it.

        I guess that’s the truly weird thing about the little Ford econobox – how many people still want to drive it.

  19. Weirdest thing to me:
    I have ventilated seats and a button for driver-only HVAC. If I use that button with the AC, the air pushed through my ventilated seat is not cooled. I get why it works that way, but it seems like a weird choice.

    Somewhat normal thing that really surprised my dad:
    He looked under the hood, looked surprised, then asked if it was a manual. It’s not, but I can see why the DCT could appear that way when just looking at the fluid reservoirs and such.

      1. Kia Niro PHEV. Which was why my dad was confused by the thought of it being a manual, since he assumed (correctly) that the hybrid would absolutely be an auto.

    2. On that same note – on the 2nd gen Forte, they offered heated seats for both front passengers, but ventilated only on the driver’s side. Some other H/K models might have been the same.
      Pontiac did something similar with a seat heater for the driver only on the 97-03 Grand Prix.

  20. My Hyundai has a slot above the speedometer, like a bridge that arches over the display. Doesn’t seem to serve a purpose, and actually might be making the LCD harder to read by exposing more of it to direct sunlight

    My Chevy has a second key that’s only for the spare tire, nothing else- not the usual GM practice of separate keys for doors and ignition, same key for those, just one different one for a lock on the spare tire. Also has no internal trunk release, so you have to turn off the car and get out to open the trunk. Also has a little thumb tab/lever under the dash instead of a shifter, which throws some people off, thinking there isn’t any gearshift at all.

    My Ford goes another direction with two remote trunk release buttons, one where you’d expect it, down low on the interior of the driver’s door, and a second one as a big, round, brightly colored button in the center of the dash. I guess that’s there to be reachable for both front seat passengers, but the driver has his own.

    1. On the trunk releases: A rental car I had once (Mexican market Jetta Clasico in 2014ish) took us 3 weeks to figure out how to open the trunk.

      We could pop it with the button on the keyfob, but that didn’t work if the car was on, and there was no release inside, so if someone needed to grab something out of the trunk (a frequent occurence with what we were doing) our procedure was shut off car, press button on key, restart car.

      Eventually, completely by accident I bumped the VW logo on the trunk lid, felt it move, and then realized that if you pushed on the bottom of the logo it rotated in and opened the trunk.

      1. I loved stumping people with the trunk back when I had my SportWagen, only one of my friends knew how to use it from the jump because an ex of his had a Beetle

  21. My car is practically void of any labels or symbols (’63 FIAT 500D). If you haven’t read the manual, you will have no idea what any of the switches or levers do. A few of the dashboard lights are also not labeled so if a light is flashing you’ll have no idea what it means.

    Other than that, everything makes perfect sense.

      1. Yes! I know a few owners that did just that!

        I did have the opportunity to drive an L. On the D, they at least put words around the four speedo lights…lucci, benzina, generatore, and olio. When I drove the L even that was gone!

  22. Hmm… Here’s why I find weird in my fleet:
    1968 4-4-2: This was the only year for the newer fastback A-body Cutlass where it got quad headlights with the turn signal lights in between the headlights and slit-style taillights. It was kind of an awkward transition before the ’69 came out with Olds’ iconic split grill. The look is definitely love it or hate it. Also last year for the dash-mounted ignition switch. That one always trips people out.

    1980 Triumph Spitfire: Horn in the turn signal stalk… and I thought only Ford did that. The trunk has a cardboard partition separating the back from the gas tank. There’s just one little green flashing light on the dash that comes on when you use either turn signal (sometimes. You know. Lucas).

    1993 Miata: Found this a little weird – removed the center “tombstone” from the dash to get the stereo out and tried to drive the car without reinstalling it. The tombstone has the button for the hazard flashers and the button to raise the pop-up headlights without turning the lights on. Oddly enough, the headlights will not pop up at all if that switch is disconnected. I have a rare part – it’s a plastic cover that clips onto the front of the stereo. The idea behind the cover is to make it look like your car doesn’t have a stereo so would-be thieves will leave it alone.

  23. S2000 has a switch on the driver’s door panel labeled simply “ON”. It completely disables the passenger door window controls, from BOTH the driver and the passenger. Forums are full of “my passenger window stopped working”. Craziness. It also has a strange flip-up cubby above the center console cubby which is where you’ll probably find your owner’s manual Kevin. And a pair of sunglasses from 2003.

    2. My dad’s 02 Tundra extended cab also had a passenger window lockout. I think it’s a legal requirement for cars that have a back seat, but the rear windows were popouts, so they just put it on the passenger window.
      What’s really funny is that it also prevents the driver window controls from working on the passenger window.

  24. A few things. Jeremy clarkson famously opined about the button count, and there are MANY buttons, including 2 to raise or lower the radio antenna. I have a seperate heater core for the 2nd row, but I don’t know if that is too weird. Probably the strangest is the Tuna can. You just don’t see that anymore and its widely regarded as being one of the best off-road airboxes around.

    https://www.youtube.com/shorts/S8EGdLoeVZw

  25. My MKII Cortina had a windscreen wiper switch that doubled as a mechanical pump for the washer jets.
    My Fiat 850 used the crankshaft pulley as the oil filter, plus had the unusual arrangement of leaf spring front end and coil spring rear suspension.
    Currently the weirdest feature of my fleet is the pushbutton auto in my 1962 Valiant.

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