Why cars have become less fun

Despite the efforts of engineers, many factors have contrived to make cars less enjoyable than in years gone by. Here are 10 of them:

1 PASSIVE SAFETY TESTING

Cars have to pass these crash tests if they are to stand a chance of selling and providing the systems to enable them to do so adds huge amounts of weight, which then makes them less able to avoid the accident in the first place, but nobody measures that the customer doesn’t care.

2 EQUIPMENT

Give people the choice of a light, responsive car with minimal equipment or an overweight sluggard dripping in gadgets and most customers will choose the supersize option every time.

3 SIZE

Increasingly, people want to be seen in big cars because it suits the image they want to project. Also, people today are generally larger than they were a generation or two ago and need more space as a result. And more space means more weight, more width and less fun.

4 EMISSIONS

There are engineering geniuses out there who can still make wonderful and entirely emissions-compliant cars, but all the equipment adds weight and detracts from the character of an engine.

5 TURBOCHARGING