QOTD: After Buttons, What Feature Needs A Comeback?

Several automakers have pledged to put more physical controls back into cars.
VW, Mercedes, Hyundai and others admit they went too far with touchscreens.
Cars have lost many more simple, reliable and practical features over the years.

VW, Hyundai, Mercedes, and Polestar are just some of the automakers who’ve admitted that they went too far with touchscreens. Many drivers voiced their frustrations that simple features like HVAC controls and even gear selection – in Tesla’s case – have migrated to the screen, and brands have actually listened. As a result, buttons are making a comeback, but what other features should be exhumed from the car feature grave?

One I’d vote for is a physical dipstick. It’s about as low-tech as you can get. It’s a stick that you dip into your engine or gearbox oil sump to tell you if there’s enough in. What could be simpler? Okay, so you need something to wipe the oil off first to make sure you’re getting an accurate reading, but it’s way faster to check your oil level using a stick than wading through multiple menus and waiting several minutes for the car to perform the check.

Pop-out or roll-down liftgate windows are another incredibly useful feature that have almost completely disappeared from modern SUVs, at least in Europe. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had surfboards, lengths of lumber, and all manner of other stuff poking out the back of my workhorse second-gen Honda CR-V.

It’s such a handy feature I find myself vowing never to buy another car without it. And my dog, who likes travelling with the glass open, is probably happy about that. Where I live, though, it’s going to be tricky to stick to that promise, unless I’m happy to be relegated to old cars forever. Because you won’t find pop-up tailgate glass on a modern CR-V.

QOTD: After Buttons, What Feature Needs A Comeback?

BMW recently dropped it from its wagon lines, too, and even scrapped the similarly useful split tailgate from the redesigned 2027 X5 SUV. U.S. drivers are luckier than Europeans and have more options, including the Toyota 4Runner, Lexus GX, Chevrolet Tahoe, Ford Expedition, and Jeep Wrangler.

Just Give Me The Essentials

Sticking with the glass theme, the smokers among you might advocate for the return of quarter-lighter glass, or vent windows as they were known in the U.S. And anyone who finds the glare of modern screens too distracting or annoying at night probably wishes more models could be easily switched to a “night mode” like the one Saab used to have, where everything but the speedometer was blocked out.

Some modern cars do have this, but even then, it’s not always easy to find. My Mk4 VW Golf has a simple thumb wheel on the dash that lets me dim the entire dash without me even having to look to see where the control is.

Looks Fast Even Standing Still

But there’s also the reverse of this situation. What about those times when you want to see more of a car’s instruments, like when it’s parked up at a car meet with the ignition switched off? Remember there thrill of peering into a parked car as a kid to see the speedo’s top marking? Most modern car interiors are about as interesting as an iPad with a flat battery until you fire up the ignition, and that includes modern hero models from Porsche and Ferrari.

That’s something Bugatti aimed to fix with the Tourbillon’s stunning mechanical gauge cluster, which mimics the workings of a pricey wristwatch. But most of us are a couple Powerball jackpots away from Tourbillon ownership. It’s just never going to happen.

Fetch The Spare. What Spare?

What we might all experience at some point, though, is a flat tire. Thirty years ago, it was a mild inconvenience. Whip the spare out of the trunk, hoist the car up using the supplied jack, and you were back on the road in no time. But few cars have one today, an omission that saves automakers a few bucks and few grams of CO2.

You know what really sucks, though? Getting a flat and lifting the trunk carpet to find that in many case there’s something that looks like spare-wheel well right still there. But it’s filled with a giant polystyrene block containing a tiny can of tire foam (that’s no use on that gash your sidewall just suffered).

What features that have disappeared or almost disappeared from new cars would you like to see make a return? Whether it’s rotary heater controls or an old-fashioned key-start instead of a soulless button, drop a comment below and let us know.