I Appreciate This Feature And I’m Sure My Fellow Elders Will, Too: Quick Jump
It’s Friday, and after yesterday’s rather dark post that saw more words than originally intended, we’re chasing after a good mood today.
The focal point surrounds a Buick that I have owned for years, a car I’ve grown to appreciate and even wrote about on the dark web. Since then, I’ve uncovered another trick that brings giggles and deepens my adoration for what is really a humdrum automobile.
What’s fun is the time and effort it took to replicate this because it resembles something of an Easter egg. It turns out it only comes on at speed, which makes more sense in hindsight as I write this.
Because I am a forgetful person, and so is, I’m sure, the majority of the population over the age of 65. Chances are a chunk of them did this, too. The action I am referring to is flicking on the indicator and forgetting to center it before it self-cancels.
That is when this cute little prompt pops up:
I only found this out because I was getting ready to pull off at my intended highway exit, and this activated at speed. Armed without a stopwatch, my guesswork timed that this kicked in after thirty seconds of the turn signal being on.
It’s a small but useful feature that I cannot find in the owner’s manual, or even in the online forums, which tells me that this was intended to hopefully never be used. The fact that it’s not mentioned in the internet-sphere also indicates (hah!) that this was a last-minute decision that could be installed in the car’s computer brain with a few lines of code.
When I wrote about my car on the other site, I mentioned this was a years-long collaboration between America and China. When General Motors killed off Saab and Hummer, Buick was saved because it is a very popular brand in the People’s Republic. So naturally, joined forces sought to develop a sedan that could work on other side of the Pacific.
All the while, Buick was shedding its image as an ‘old people’ brand, pumping out commercials to do just that. When I wrote about it almost two years, it was on the motive that my LaCrosse, a 2012 model, was one of the best used cars to buy from the previous decade. Naturally, I can attest to the ownership experience.
So little things like this make a car all the better in my opinion. Automobiles have thousands—sometimes tens of thousands—of parts so Ford’s recalls are no surprise as they become more complicated today. That’s not to say cars back then weren’t complicated.
Quality control, materials, company verve, but sometimes you just get lucky. My LaCrosse was built in Kansas City, so I think the latter is especially true.
Who cares? I’m keeping it. Thanks for reading.
-TA