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Comment by jakeogh | Hacker News Reader

I want a analog car with full mechanical linkage.

No airbags, can't be sold in any developed country by an OEM. You could get a motorcycle!

Argh. I really like airbags.

I think that's stupid frankly. It hinders the manufacturers of high performance cars that use different safety systems (6 point harness, helmet, HANS device, etc) because it requires them to add a safety system that is redundant and/or could cause harm to the driver. Arguably a six point harness and neck immobilizer is safer that a three point harness and an airbag.

So typical that rules get in the way of innovation. It wouldn't be so bad if we wrote the rules in the terms of outcomes and let the market decide. Just define an acceptable F=ma profile and let the inventors invent rather than impose a solution.

You can't do airbags with analog electric launch?

Disable the power steering pump on any car from the late nineties and you'll have one.

>full mechanical linkage.

Not even hydraulics?

Works for drum brakes.

I drove a car with a manual transmission and no power steering in the early 1990s, a Honda Civic of some kind. Primitive, but it was also a bit of a delight. A very physical and mechanical thing. The lack of power automation was rarely a problem. However, it asked more of the driver them I amused to nowadays, and would be extremely unpopular if they even still made such a thing.

I'm in love with my Honda, it's a 2000 though. I intend to keep it as long as possible, newer cars just don't "feel" right to me.

You have just described a car like a Suzuki Mehran (manufactured today in Karachi, Pakistan) and similar small cars manufactured in India. They're immensely popular in the developing world because such cars are frequently the first proper enclosed, 4-seat vehicle a newly middle class family can afford.

Driving such a vehicle is not entirely fun. My first was a Kaiser 1967 Jeep CJ-5, the short wheel base version, before they started the safety etc. updates with the CJ-7 (the -6 was a contemporary with of the -5 a longer wheel base).

Note also this was a light vehicle; turning the wheels was quite hard unless you were moving a bit, and the brakes required a tremendous amount of force, it took me a long while to not hit contemporary '70s power brakes too hard.

What else: the windshield wipers were powered by engine vacuum, and slowed down when you accelerated (this one had a V6, so it was pretty powerful, and pretty zippy 0-30 MPH, only 3 gears forward so it lagged after that). Oh, yeah, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11919653 cars thought that era had electro-mechanical turn signals. In the case of this Jeep, the turn signal control was kludged onto the steering wheel, there was a little rubber wheel which contacted the steering wheel shaft to disengage it after you'd turned.

And not entirely reliable, 10-12 years old when I drove it, it had a towing hitch on the front, which was used more than once.

Really I just don't want to fly by wire. Analog control would be fine with hydraulic assist for steering and brakes.

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