Kids have the silliest, usually irrational fears. I used to fear toilets, thinking that I’d fall in and drown even though I knew how to swim. Apparently, I also wasn’t alone in having a fear that I’d fall out of a moving vehicle.
Brian wrote about how the Nissan Altima is getting recalled for faulty door strikers, which could cause the doors to open while driving. Sid Bridge:
The biggest surprise in this article is that an Altima failed at striking something.
Hautewheels:
Back in the 70’s, we had an old rusted-out Suburban that had this very problem: taking a hard right turn would cause the front passenger door to fly open. Dad was in the Navy and was gone to Vietnam and my Mom didn’t have the mechanical know-how or funds to get it fixed. So as the oldest child, my job was to tend the door. Whenever Mom got ready to take a right-hand turn, she’d give me the signal and I’d grab the door handle and hang on. Also, the wheel wells were rusted through and when my sister and I got to ride in the way-back, we’d drop small rocks and army men and stuff down onto the tires to watch them get whisked away at high speed. Rusty clapped out cars are loads of fun when you’re a kid!
JJ:
For our 7 year old readers: rest assured that, at least at highway speeds, the wind will keep that door from flying open.
Alexk98:
…a technician noted the striker wire loop had separated from the door striker plate during a door fit and function check on a Model Year 2025 Nissan Sentra vehicle. Nissan implemented containment measures, initiated a yard audit and launched an investigation along with the supplier.
It’s incredibly easy to give Nissan a hard time for their quality issues, but this should be applauded. Having worked in manufacturing environments as a design engineer, it’s extremely common for technicians to not report quality problems, either because management/engineers don’t care or because they fear they will end up behind on their production targets. Sure, we shouldn’t have to be giving out gold stars for doing what is correct, but based on reports about Tesla manufacturing punishing anyone that doesn’t act in lock-step with Elon’s looney demands, it’s nice to see not ever company is irreversibly ruined.
Thomas wrote about how a high-mileage Audi RS 3 can be had for Honda Civic money. Taargus Taargus:
In a previous article I commented that my biggest fear as a child was volcanoes.
As an adult, spending 26k on a performance Audi with 140k miles on it would have me waking up in a cold sweat, just like Dante’s Peak did back in ’97.
Topshot image graphic: Nissan
I was fearful that in a convertible we would be killed by a meteorite without the protective steel roof.
Finally, my fear of volcanoes has paid off. And you know, my fear of Audis.
I missed Alexk98’s comment in the original thread but dead-on. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve screamed and hollered and begged as a (mostly software) quality engineer not to release this, what is this for, etc, etc, only to have the software (and occasional hardware) march right on through to production only for customers to say “why did you choose to release this, what is this for, etc etc.”
Every shitty job I’ve had the last two years, I’ve begged to do more, be part of a bigger picture to fix deeper issues, and the most encouraging response was a vice-president telling me “that’s above my pay grade.”
For fuck’s sake.
The second hardest things to do in my career is tell a customer that we screwed up. They throw a massive fit about how we should have known, should have had processes in place etc. They go to management and demand they do something and management comes down hard on us even if sometimes the reason for the screw up is that they demanded we try something different o save time/money.
The only thing harder is telling a customer that THEY screwed up. Because obviously, they didn’t. Had to be our fault, had to be something we did wrong. More importantly, Deadlines in a week, they screwed up and they need a month to fix it. Guess who gets blamed for missing the deadline in a week? Not the customer. The customers know that most companies grade employees on being on time with deliveries and use this to try to get us to take blame for their screw ups.
I can’t remember how many cars my family owned that had the opening door on a turn, sometimes more than one on the same car. I used to think that was what bungee straps were invented for. To be honest none of these cars were owned by my parents just what us kids started getting around the age of 12.
You just reminded me of my neighbor’s VW Fox. It was the late 90s and the car was shared by at least three teenagers in the house. Both the doors on the passenger side didn’t seem to latch well, and more than once I saw the car come barreling down the street and whip into the driveway hard enough for the doors to fly open and one or two teenagers come spilling out onto the driveway. It was funny in the moment, but a bit sobering to think about it happening on the highway or a busy city street.
They needed Bungees
We always had the opposite problem with our teenaged cars. I had a friend who could only open their driver’s door from the outside, and the passenger door from the inside. Then the driver’s window stopped opening, so every time he got out of the car, he had to crawl over to the passenger side.
I had family members who worked for AMC, so there was always fine American Motors products in the driveway. Some had doors that wouldn’t open, others had ones that wouldn’t latch
A friend had a Dodge 600(?) as a first car. Every time he went through a turn, it said “A door is Ajar”. Everyone knew it was a faulty sensor. Until one day he took a turn at speed and one of us fell out when the door popped open. We all wore our seatbelts all the time after that.
“she’d give me the signal and I’d grab the door handle and hang on. “
But what was holding YOU in the car?
Just the seat belt, which was one of the few working safety features in that old truck.
Taargus vs the RS3, starring Tom Hanks as Taargus Taargus 🙂
I’d watch that.
Me too lol
Fine, but who’s playing the RS3?
I’d probably cast Bob Odenkirk there. It’s a quirky level of intensity, hilarity, and dysfunction that few actors can match.
A VW golf in makeup
Thanks Mercedes! It was nice to re-live that childhood memory and the fun we had in that old Suburban. It may have actually been left-hand turns that caused the door to open but either way, it was exciting as a 10 year old to be entrusted with the responsibility of holding it closed. It had another quirk: when turning in the other direction, the horn would blow. Embarrassing for my Mom, but hilarious to me and my sister.
Left hand turns makes mor sense. There was a left turn and weird camber change that would open the door on our MG pretty regularly.
We had a Chevy pickup that did tha horn blowing thing. The horn wire inside the steering column just wore out. It wrapped around the steering column when you steered, about six inches longer and it wouldn’t be so tight as to wear through the insulation.
I was going to say it probably LH turns that tried to open the door.
There was some quirk, maybe in the ergonomics, of late-60s Mustangs that, when driven hard at autocross events and hill climbs the windshield wipers got activated. I saw it a number of times but don’t know where the wiper switch was in those.
The first winter after our reassignment to Upper Michigan, our ’69 Galaxie 500 would freeze solid – and the doors would come flying open when making turns. That’s when Mom because a stickler about seat belt usage, and we had to hold those big coupe doors closed by hand.
The reason for this was the window seals in the doors were shot after just a few years of being parked in the blazing sun of Central California – and without a garage or carport in base housing, snow and ice would accumulate in the doors, freezing up and disabling the door latches and locks.
That spring, Mom marched Dad down to the Ford/Lincoln/Mercury dealer in Sault Ste Marie to order up her new 1972 Mercury Monterey Custom sedan.
When we moved back to California my parents bought a house with a garage – and that Mercury (and later, Volvo) was always parked inside.