Life Gets More and More Annoying

As you get older, you really do start to notice how the world is entirely geared towards young people, and in the weirdest of ways.

Take, for example, the design of the trusty motor car.

Now, I appreciate that there are target markets. For your young twentysomething lad, who thinks he looks cool when he drives sporting sunglasses, there are obviously certain design cues which work.

Fog-lights, for example, which Simon and I spent the entirety of last winter complaining about (the unnecessary usage thereof), are apparently de rigeur, because the aggressive twentysomething likes to thrust as much light as possible in your face (also because they are scared of driving in the dark, due to lack of experience and the general wimpishness beneath their aggression). As well as fog-lights of course, you have to have those arc-weld bright Xeon lights.

Also on the subject of lights, comedy rear-light clusters seem to be fashionable. A red light can no longer be red; an indicator light can no longer be orange. No, no, no, no that would be too obvious. Lights should be white. Or black (i.e. completely invisible in daylight).

These things, fog lights, over-bright lights, comedy back lights, all used to be the kind of add-on kit that boys would love. They'd buy a garish magazine with some totty on the cover and pore over the small ads looking for computer chips to make their car go faster, and as many ridiculous accessories as possible, in order to achieve a fully tricked-out Citroen Saxo.

Uncomfortable wheels was the other thing I wanted to mention. When the pneumatic tyre was invented, it brought a new level of comfort to the motorist, rolling over the bumps in the road, smoothing out the ride, generally adding to the experience. Only now, your fashionable wheel has to have as little air and rubber as possible between it and the road, because it "looks better."

I expect to see all this kind of crap on the vehicles operated by the younger driver. But now they've started to creep into the general population, as it were. A modern family estate, for example, doesn't seem to be complete without comedy rear lights, uncomfortable low-profile tyres, white dwarf stars for headlights, and fogs without an off-switch.

All that, and the ugly metal inserts on the dashboard (yeah, I had that in my '72 Beetle, thanks, because it was cheap) means that it is becoming increasingly difficult for the non-twat to find a car that doesn't scream look at me! I'm stupid!.

And you wonder why that might be, concluding that it must be down to twentysomething designers talking to twentysomething marketing people, in a cocoon of ignorance about the world beyond their MaxPower bubble.