The automotive industry has its own trends and fads just like any other industry. Largely in part because of the lack of interest and the comparatively slower development within the industry itself, people just don’t notice them as much as current fashion, political, or economic trends.
If asked, most people would probably cite electric and self-driving vehicles as the number one trend in the world of cars. This is certainly true, but these types of cars are still very much in their early stages and haven’t fully developed yet.
That said, we’re going to look at 5 trends and fads in the car world that just don’t make a whole lot of sense. Here they are:
Engine Noise Enhancement Systems and Tubing 
Photo: Courtesy of BMW USA
If you’ve never heard of this one before, that’s fine. It’s subtly, becoming more and more common, and it’s a little pointless.
Car manufacturers are adopting the idea that it’s fun and sporty to be able to hear your engine a little more while driving. Therefore, many models add some tubing that directs engine noise into the cabin. It’s ironic that the culture has also pushed for quieter, more comfortable vehicles as well, so we will have to let you figure that one out.
Some cars pipe artificial sound through the vehicle’s speakers. Electric cars have gone to the lengths of playing artificial engine noise through the speakers to give some frame of reference to the driver. In cars like the BMW i8, you can even choose which car’s engine you would like to hear as your own. Perhaps you want to hear the growl of a Corvette with a V8? Maybe a Ferrari V12 today? Either way, you can make it sound as you wish!
All of this is a little silly to me. I don’t think it’s really a bad thing, but it’s just one other component that doesn’t really provide any real value.
The efforts to create comfortable and quieter vehicles make this trend a little counter intuitive. To be fair, not every car has this feature and not every car needs this feature. To me, the best noise enhancement for any car has been around for years. I like to call it, “the switch that rolls the windows all the way down.”
“Sport” Models
Photo: Courtesy of Car and Driver
The Honda Fit Sport, Nissan Sentra Nismo, and the Honda Civic Sport fall into this category. The Honda Fit and Nissan Sentra certainly don’t fall into the sports car category. While the Civic isn’t a sports car either, it’s probably the sportiest car in the group and it’s still more bark than bite.
Today, a car available with a “sport” trim usually means nothing more than a few cosmetic changes, negligible performance “upgrades”, and sometimes even a little weight gain from added components.
The Fit, probably the most fun car mentioned above, doesn’t offer any mechanical or performance differentiation in its base trim than its Sport trim. The main differences are black painted wheels and the addition of some spoilers and both exterior and interior color accents.
The Sentra Nismo differs little from the Sentra SR Turbo, a needed upgrade from the base Sentra. Though, with the Nismo badging and pedigree, we think it should be quite a bit different than even the turbo model. The Nismo offers some upgraded suspension work and a lot of fluff in the form of the typical Nismo paint scheme and some spoilers.
The new Civic is no slouch, but it is still just a run-of-the-mill, small car. The Sport version gives you a hatchback body style, a rear spoiler, and twin tailpipes that definitely look more ominous than they are. It does share components with the Si, but not actually being the Si, we can’t truly get behind its credentials.
There are many cars on the market that bear the same “sport” moniker as the ones above. If appearance is how you judge a car’s ability to “sport”, you may ignore everything I just said.
I think it goes deeper than just appearance. I think for a car to be a “sport” model, it has to have a few more basic upgrades than just a few blacked out rims and a fancy looking exhaust. I want it to feel just a little bit more special than the regular version of the car. Not everyone wants that though. They want the appearance for the same price and efficiency as the regular version.
I have a solution. For an example of a car that is “sporty” without actually being a sports car, I highly suggest you test drive a Mazda 3.
Tiny Engines 
Photo: Courtesy of The Truth About Cars
With the push for more efficient vehicles, traditional combustion engines have become smaller. Additionally, large vehicles that only a couple years ago had six and eight cylinder engines, are opting for four cylinder turbocharged units to power them.
Hyundai offers a 1.6 liter engine in their Veloster and Elantra. You can get a 1.5 liter engine in the Honda Fit, Civic, and Accord. Even Ford offers a 1.0 liter three cylinder Ecoboost engine in their Focus.
Cars that are traditionally known as high horsepower performance cars like the Mustang, Camaro, and Jaguar F-Type are now available with four cylinder engines. Chevy also just announced the coming of a four cylinder Silverado.
Times have changed, and the four cylinder is now the king. Not only that, but many four cylinder engines have become smaller themselves.
With all this added efficiency comes some drawbacks. Trucks and SUVs like the Silverado are not lightweights. Even cars like the Mustang and Camaro are pretty heavy. Smaller engines have to work harder to move a heavy car.
The solution is that everything is turbocharged. Turbos are great, but in a truck the size of a Silverado and with an engine as small as 1 liter, the engine still has to be able to live and function with a higher-than-normal load.
Turbos help, but there’s an unintended consequence. Most people aren’t going to care, but it used to more of a novelty to have a turbocharged car or to put one onto your existing car.
Now that everything has become turbocharged, the turbo has been cheapened. It has become normal.
The rise of the four cylinder, as good as it can be, has brought the demise of the larger engines we’ve lived with for so many years. As much as we don’t like it, that’s just the way it is.
Fake Cosmetics
Photo: Courtesy of Car Throttle
Most people won’t even realize just how many fake pieces of trim are on their vehicles. Honestly, most people don’t care either. We care, and we think it makes a car come across as cheap.
The biggest offender has to be the rise of faux exhaust outlets. I would rather have an unfinished piece of pipe hanging from the back of my car than have plastic exhaust outlets that mask an unfinished piece of pipe hanging from the back of the car.
Lexus, Honda, and even Mercedes have all sacrificed quality for aesthetics. In reality, most exhaust piping is unnecessary anyway, whether it’s finished nicely or not. If an exhaust is finished, at least it can be simplified and still look nice.
Everybody wants the nicest looking car with the nicest interior and sharpest exterior styling. The bar has been raised so high within the automotive industry, people have lost the idea that simplicity can still be better and work for longer than unnecessary equipment that adds weight simply for aesthetic purposes.
Exhaust might be the biggest our biggest pet peeve, but there is a wide range of other fake cosmetics that just have no function. Air vents that aren’t vents, interior “buttons” that don’t do anything, and “carbon fiber” interior and exterior trim are all repeat offenders in this category.
Buttons, Buttons Everywhere 
Photo: Courtesy of Cars.com
Buttons are everywhere, and they perform a variety of functions. As many as there are already, they are becoming more common for things that have traditionally been turned on or off with levers, switches, or other devices.
Buttons have taken over for transmission levers, four wheel drive systems, and automatic opening and closing of the trunk. Even things like the emergency brake have been the victim of “buttonization”. It may be cool, but it is a bit strange. At times, it’s even a little unnerving.
We don’t see any problems with levers and switches. It made us feel important, grabbing the transmission lever and moving it into the “D” position, feeling the car strain to go forward as it pops into gear. Now, all you get is a light after pushing the “D” button, telling you that you’ve completed a task, yet never really knowing whether that task has been complete.
This one isn’t that big of a deal, nor is it a major problem after you get used to pressing everything. We just think it adds complication. “Buttonization” is something being done that solves a problem which never really existed.
Argue with me if you’d like, but pulling a lever up to put on the emergency brake never really hindered me from doing anything else in the car. It didn’t take up so much space that I wished there wasn’t any lever there at all. If anything, it assured me that my brake was on.
It may be funny to a lot of you that we go on about these things, but some of them really are silly. Everybody is different and they will all have their own preferences.
Cars are better now than they ever have been. We aren’t the engineers, and we have no doubt that they know what they are doing. We just make observances and wait for the day that all of this will fade into the past and re-emerge a few years down the road as the next big trend.
Just like any other trend or fad, these things will pass, but not before they take hold of the industry and give us something to talk about for a little while.
