I definitely mentioned it. But, please let SM keep hearing it from us. It drives my kids crazy. It drives me crazy. Maybe it’s my kids driving me crazy because they are going crazy about the window not going all the way down.
. Oh, and my dog doesn’t like it either!
Another consideration for short drivers (both my wife and son are in the 5-2 range) is to have the seat rise high enough to give them a sightline over the steering wheel and minimize the blind area in front of the hood. My '23 Tundra is better over-the-hood vision than most large pickups we tested, but thankfully the forward facing camera shows on the dash screen when below 10mph.
I'm not a farmer, but I live in the mountains. I have a Tundra and RAV4. Chipmunks ate a hole in the gas tank input pipe, just stood on the springs and chewed away. Rodents took all the insulation off the firewall of the RAV4 and built nests in the fuseblock cover and in the heater intake ducts. In the Tundra they filled the heater with so much insulation that the fans couldn't turn. Taking that apart means disassembling the entire dash ($2000) plus parts -- they chewed up the plastic holders for the cabin air filters and surrounding parts. So my message to SM is to rodent proof just as much as IH Scout should have salt proofed. Block the air entry points with 1/4" mesh just like the Scout 80s did.
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To my mind (and eyes especially) analog gauges are preferable. It's o.k. if the information is presented on a screen, it is the format of seeing a needle and a certain angle that gives instant feedback. Ideally I'd prefer a combination of both. It always struck me as odd that many vehicles had a gauge labelled "AMP" but actually showed voltage, but that aside it is easier for me to glance at the meter display and note that when the needle is slightly to the right of vertical it's o.k. If I see just a number (say 13.4) I need to recall what the permisable range is 10-14.5 or 11-13 or 9-15 or ???. When you get the results of bloodwork from your doctor, the printout always shows the established limits and even gives you an H or L for each item; that's because we have no hope of remembering any of them. So back to my point, I can glance at a bunch of analog needles and see that they are all at their accustomed angles, but to glance at a screen full of digital numbers, requires my eye to stop and read and my brain to analyse each one.
You want even tighter than 1/4" mesh to keep rats out as well. I had to do this on the snorkel and the hvac inlet on my car because the Detroit suburbs are lousy with rats.
I can't stress this enough. A lot of driving a Scout is the tactile feel, sounds, etc of things, both outside the car and the car itself. There are newer cars that have really nice temp knobs that click as you rotate them/etc. My 2015 GL450 has very good controls and still has a touchscreen for radio/nav/etc, but the climate controls, vehicle controls, etc are all physical buttons. Here is an example. I'm not saying to copy this aesthetic, but they did a nice job balancing physical controls with touchscreen stuff. The physical buttons and switches themselves also have a nice mechanical feel.Two Things
No Buttons or Gauges - I personally can't stand the interior of Teslas. I understand that lack of physical things cuts down on costs and can lead to greater customization (since its all digital) but I think we sacrifice tactile feel and feedback and can also make our eyes wander from the road. E.g. I think its OK to be opinionated about how a HVAC system should work. The interiors of certain cars, like Audi and Volvo, are really well designed and include buttons. Although I don't love the single turn wheel in the center console on some of them, but maybe I just haven't used it enough. The Rivian at least has the driving data behind the steering wheel (I'd say that's where it *should* be except for my Jeep has it center stack.
Lack of customization - For things that ARE digital, we should be able to customize much of it and be able to revert to factory settings JUST for that specific settings or subsettings easily (i.e. don't have to reset the entire system). This includes mostly the entertainment system, but things like delay before turning off a courtesy lights or time to warm up in the morning should be programmable.
