After driving endless cars in my life, I’ve realized there’s another unquantifiable stat that matters a lot towards my daily relationship with them: Predictability.
For example, my household includes a Subaru Impreza RS, It is not a fast car. The steering offers barely enough tactile feedback, and the brake feel yeah, “fine.” But it’s a great size, and if I throw it into an off-ramp corner with purposeful momentum, I know exactly what the chassis is going to do. It responds linearly. It respects my inputs. We’re on the same team.
What got me thinking about this was recently while driving a rental Hyundai Tucson. I don’t think anyone would claim that’s a thrilling drive. But I didn’t dislike it as I sort of expected to. The responses to inputs are slow but direct. There may have been drive modes but I didn’t care to find them. It just delivers a predictable amount of response to what you do. Within one minute, we had an understanding. We were equal partners in getting to this music festival.
And that brought me to a realization about why so many modern cars drive me absolutely insane: The partnership between car and driver isn’t equal anymore.
We Stop Being Drivers and Start Submitting Requests
A lot of modern cars just feel weird to drive. I don’t think it’s just a matter of getting older, either. It’s that their electronics have taken control of the experience, pushing the driver out of the loop and creating a fundamentally unequal dynamic. You hold the wheel, but feel more like the machine holds the decision-making power.
In a car built on real partnership, your inputs are absolute. You step on the pedal, a mechanical or direct electronic linkage responds, and the car moves in direct proportion to your physical effort. You and the machine are working in real-time sync. This mechanical directness is precisely why older cars “feel more honest”, there is no digital middleman filtering, delaying, or second-guessing your intent.
In practically all contemporary cars, your right foot isn’t actually driving the vehicle; it’s merely submitting a formal request to the onboard electronics. The computer takes that input, checks it against traction control parameters, active drive modes, emissions targets, and battery preservation algorithms, and then decides how much performance you’re actually allowed to have.
When the software’s priorities override your intent, the dynamic becomes toxic. I know this isn’t a new idea. I just never thought about it as messing with my subconscious by not being predictable.
The Problem With Honda’s “Smart” Hybrids
Take Honda’s current two-motor hybrid setup, the powertrain sitting inside the Accord, CR-V, and Civic. I’m sure it gets phenomenal fuel economy. It’s described as very “smooth.” And yet, every time I drive one, my brain hurts because the noises I hear and the vibrations I feel don’t feel smooth at all because it’s not meshing with my expectations.
Because the gas engine in Honda’s hybrid system acts primarily as a generator to feed the electric motor rather than directly driving the wheels most of the time, the sounds from under the hood have almost zero direct correlation to what your right foot is doing. And because of battery charge or current electrical output of the generator, it doesn’t feel consistent.
Maybe if I lived with it for six months, my brain would re-calibrate. But in the moment, it breaks the trust required for an equal partnership as I don’t know what it’s going to do.
Why We Need a 1:1 Connection
This is the exact reason we enthusiasts are so fiercely protective of manual transmissions. A three-pedal car is as close as you can come to being fully in control. You press the clutch, you select a gear, you release it. The mechanical feedback loop is 1:1.
For a non-car person, I think the equivalent frustration is the auto start-stop system. I see people hate on them on social media constantly. To the driver’s subconscious, it feels like the car is telling you it knows better, maybe not caring about the occupants comforts, and in someways behaving in an “unnatural” way.
Predictability Is the Root of Automotive Friendship
Not ever answer HAS to be a Miata and a car doesn’t need to be mostly analog to earn your affection. What a car actually needs to do to earn your trust is just do what you expect. And to do that, it needs to feel like there isn’t anything standing between you and the control inputs you are providing.
It would be great if we as a community could agree on creating something akin to an “Input Honesty Index.” A method of moving past subjective vibes and testing for real-time fidelity. Car reviews could list it right along things like horsepower or quarter-mile times, this metric would score a vehicle’s mechanical transparency. Imagine evaluating throttle lag down to the millisecond, scoring pedal force consistency to power produced, or measuring the something like precise noise-to-acceleration ratio in decibels, intrusiveness of start-stop systems. A top score wouldn’t belong to the fastest car, but to the one that delivers a strict 1:1 translation of driver intent to vehicle output regardless of drive modes or battery charge levels.
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