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The Good Can be Bad

By
eric
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I’ve been driving the ’26 Kia K4 hatch this week (review is here, if interested) and as I was driving it, I realized how much better it is in so many ways than my old muscle car.

And yet, it is also worse.

The Kia handles better, for one – which is remarkable because the K4 is an entry-level car with some “sporty” attributes while my ’76 Trans-Am was, when it was new, the best-handling new car you could buy (even besting the Corvette). It was also pretty much the top-dog high-performance car you could have bought back then, at least from an American car company.

The Kia can easily be driven much faster, with less effort – assuming a competent driver – than the speed limit on twisty roads than my Trans-Am, which requires someone who knows how to drive to keep it on the road at the same speed on the same twisty roads. And yet, it is much more fun to drive the Trans-Am.

Why is that?

I think it has to do with the ease of driving any new car much faster than the speed limit; it is too easy – which is a working tautology for boring. Almost anyone – literally – can drive a car like the K4 at 50 MPH on twisty roads with a posted 35 MPH speed limit. The car’s steering is that accurate. Its grip is that good. The four wheel disc brakes are exponentially better than the disc/drums my old car has.  And – of course – the Kia has a bevy of safety nets to keep you from losing control, even if you are a terrible driver. The ABS prevents the wheels from locking up during a panic stop and the car from skidding off the road. The stability control corrects your line when you over (or under) steer in a curve.

This imparts unearned confidence. It is also . . . boring. For pretty much the same reason that reading a child’s book when you are an adult – See Spot Run – is boring. An adult is no longer engaged by the things that engage the attention of a child.

Hopefully.

The Trans-Am is fully engaging to drive at lower speeds, because it is not as good – in the “limits” sense – as even an entry-level, front-drive car like the Kia. The wheels spin easily. It is just as easy to lock them up. The car is much more of a challenge to keep under control.

And yet it is more fun to drive precisely for that reason. This is a weird but inevitable development. It would be weird, after all, if the “limits” of even the average new car were not higher than those of the high-performance cars of 50 years ago. Just the same as it was inevitable my ’76 Trans-Am, when it was new, was a much better car than the cars of 50 years prior. It was much harder to get a car made in 1926 to reach the speed limit – and much more challenging to keep it on the road at the highest speeds it was capable of. Which in most cases was around 75 MPH, all out. It was hair-raising (and challenging) to drive a 1927 car at 35 MPH on twisty roads. Fifty years later, it was easy to do the same in a car like my ’76 TA, which could easily cruise at 55 on the highway. Today, a modern performance car – a Mustang GT, say – can cruise easily at 100 MPH. In fact, a lot faster than that.

It feels as easy – as unchallenging – as driving my Tran-Am at 55 on the highway.

It follows that, to get much excitement out of driving a new performance car like a Mustang GT – or even the base/four-cylinder-powered Mustang, for that matter – it is necessary to drive it really fast. Too fast for most people’s capabilities, though the car’s capabilities give these people the unearned confidence to drive very fast, because it seems so easy to do it. This of course increases the danger – an irony, when you reflect that a less capable car such as my Trans-Am is regarded as “unsafe” by many on account of it not having the safety nets that modern cars have. Yet, it is precisely because it does not have these safety nets that it is in a very real sense safer to drive – because the car’s “limits” are lower and the car lets you know they are. You adjust your driving accordingly – assuming you’re not suicidally reckless.

A modern sporty car such as the little Kia can make drivers suicidally reckless without their realizing it – until they drive fast enough to exceed the car’s “limits” and the safety nets can no longer catch them.

. . .

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Related posts:
  1. What Speed Limits Aren’t . . . But Should Be
  2. Texas May Go To 85! (Clovers Stroking Out All Over)
  3. Speed Limits Back to Where They Were in 1970!
  4. The Speed Limit Cargo Cult
  5. On “Speeding”

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

52 COMMENTS

  1. Here’s the ultimate takedown of Ferrari’s exciting new electric golf cart: it’s too Californian!:

    ‘Ferrari’s first-ever fully electric vehicle triggered some fans who said it looks more like an iPhone than an Italian supercar.

    ‘The $640,000 Ferrari Luce, which was unveiled on Wednesday, looks like a distant relative of many Apple products. It was built with the help of Jony Ive, the person who designed the look and feel of the Cupertino company’s iPhone, iPod and Macintosh through 2019.

    “Legend has it that if you pull the Ferrari badge off the side of the new Luce you see an Apple logo underneath,” one user wrote on X.

    ‘A meme circulated portraying the Luce with iPhone applications photo-shopped onto the top, and another showing the car upside down and plugged into an iPhone charger.’ — LA Times

    https://archive.ph/zVqoN#selection-2989.0-3033.15

    When you’ve lost the Californicators … it’s ovahhhhh! 🙁

  3. Spot on observation Eric.
    I bought the latest and greatest KTM 790 adventure bike, out in 2018. It changed the middle-weight adventure bike market. It had amazing tech like lean sensitive (axis) abs and traction control. I played with it. Set it to 10 and the back would step out the rear 6 inches and stay there. Set it to 3 and it would step out 1+ ft and stay there. I was a professional dirt track racer…………. but then I almost sent it and me over a cliff. Really.
    I am not a beginner. Roadraced high level for 5 years, off-road dirtbike racing at a fairly high level for 20+ years.
    I couldn’t believe what just happened. It was tooooooo easy to go fast. I was lucky to have the skill built into me. I layed it down, just in time, to get the foot pegs, etc… to dig into the dirt road to keep me from going over the edge. What the hell just happened?
    I figured it out pretty quickly and said to all that would listen “this bike is too easy to go fast, be very careful”.
    Sure enough, my bud is a KTM salesman, and within months of the bike coming out, he was seeing totaled machines come back in huge percentages more than normal. IDK how their riders faired. It was a wake up call to all thing tech.

    • Thanks, Chris!

      Also, apologies to all for the typos (again). I do my best to catch and fix these; it’s difficult given the press to write/publish in the Internet Era.

    • sorry, I was not a professional dirt tracker. The ‘bike’ instantly made me one, but without the prof. dirt track racer skills………..

  4. The new cars don’t have the soul like the old cars if your like me you get excited and have to check out a old car that goes by bent get that with new cars there all designed by the same ass hole that says let’s make a stupid looking plastic space ship.

  6. The connection is gone. The sense that you and a vehicle are one. The old trucks I had, doin dounuts out of dirt parking lots, stick and clutch, fuckin gone. The new egg shaped cars are as boring as the people who design them. Safety first. It’s a monochromatic, flatlining society of order takers/

  7. Czinger has a 3d printed organic looking chassis like I’ve never seen before.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MSMR2B1-FQ

    Impressive, though bloated with unwanted government impositions. Yes, it’s a supercar with a supercar price tag. I think if we had a free market, people like this guy would be able to produce what it wants on a mass scale. Government does all it can do to hinder those who would make life better for regular people.

  9. The original 240Z (circa 1970) had MSRP ~$3500 & made 151 hp from a NA straight 6 w/ (2) Hitachi (SU type) carburetors & 4 speed stick. They deliberately mimicked E Jags, for a fraction of the price.
    $3500/151 = $23/hp (1970 dollars)
    Current asking price on Auto Trader go as high as $50,000, depending on condition.
    $15,000/151 = $99/hp (2026 dollars)
    $50,000/151 = $331/hp (2026 dollars)

    The Nissan 370 makes 420 hp from a twin turbo FI V6 & 4 speed stick for ~$70,000.
    $70,000/420 = $167/hp (2026 dollars)

    According to BLS, the inflation multiplier 1970 -> 2026 is 8.81, so
    $167/8.81 = $18.96/hp (in 1970 dollars)
    $23*8.81 = $202/hp (in 2026 dollars)

    1970 E type Jag made 265 hp from a 4.2 l inline 6 & cost ~$5500 (coupe)
    $5500/265 = $20.75/hp
    A (hypothetical) 1970 Nissan 370 might have cost:
    $70,000/8.81 = $7945
    $7945/420 = $18.92/hp

    So, the Nissan would have been more expensive than the Jag, by quite a bit, but would have delivered 420/265 = 1.58 times the hp for ($20.75-$18.92 = ~$1.80)/hp less, whereas the 240Z delivered 151/265 = 0.57 times the Jag hp, but cost considerably less. The Jag did
    0-60 in 6.4 sec, whereas the 240Z did 0-60 in 8.0 sec

    • Hey, Eric,
      Sorry about the multiple posts.
      Please feel free to delete the duplicates.
      Your website is acting weird (?), at least for me.
      It “nannies me” with “you are posting too fast” & doesn’t put the intended post as a reply to existing, or point to it once uploaded. Anyone else seeing this, or is it just me?

  10. I would rather have an older model vehicle like your Trans Am, Eric, rather than a newer KIA. Yeah, maybe the KIA handles better, etc. But, driving an older vehicle like yours, Eric, especially if it is a manual trans, forces the driver to cultivate better driving habits. This newer vehicle I have is my first automatic, and lemme tell you, what a lazy way to drive. There is much more engagement on my part when I drive my older, manual trans vehicle, and especially when the snow and ice cover the roads. And yeah, the price? Good grief. I would rather spend that $70K for something that is actually worth spending that amount of money on.

  11. Requiem for Ferrari:

    ‘The Luce [pronounced ‘lose‘] electric vehicle arrived in Rome on Monday night, making a big dump statement as Ferrari’s first fully electric car.

    ‘Maranello-based Ferrari commissioned LoveFrom, the British creative agency founded by former [Cr]Apple chief designer Jony Ive, to lead design on both the exterior and interior.

    ‘Bolting batteries into an existing two-door grand tourer, Enrico Galieira added, “would have been very simple, but it was not the [aim].” The five-seat, four-door layout — a first for Ferrari — means a new platform was needed.

    ‘Multifunctional next-gen Samsung OLED displays are rich in detail, with color depth unlike any other car infotainment system.’

    https://tinyurl.com/mpkhshbk

    Stupid guineas — talk about brand dilution! A four-door Ferrari EeeVee is the fakest and gayest thing I’ve ever heard of. Bright Samsung douchescreens are icing on Ferrari’s gay wedding cake.

    Death to the auto industry. I am so done with these EeeVee-peddling cucks.

    • ‘Shares of luxury carmaker Ferrari fell sharply on Tuesday shortly after the company launched its first fully electric vehicle.

      ‘Ferrari shares were last seen 7.7% lower, while U.S.-listed shares fell 4.6% in morning trading. The Milan-listed stock is down more than 32% over the last 12 months.’

      https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/26/ferrari-stock-shares-luce-electric-vehicle-ev-launch.html

      Die, Ferrari, die.

      Take your suck-ass EeeVee back to Maranello Faganello.

      Jony Ive should stick to designing iPhones.

    • The four-door, five-seat, EV Ferrari Luce, priced at a staggering 550,000 euros described by AIR Capital analyst Pierre-Olivier Essig as a “mix between a Honda Accord EV and a Tesla.”

      Because apparently destroying your brand’s reputation to appeal to people who will never buy your products is now considered a good idea.

      Maybe the next step will be adding full self driving in sport mode as that will surely help. /s

      • “A mix between a Honda Accord EV and a Tesla.” — Landru

        Stop it, please, you’re killing me! AH HA HA HA … yeah, I’d pay at least $30K for a chimera like that.

        Maybe $32K if it’s painted pink so I can wow the lads at “boys night out.”

        They’re not afraid now
        A disco bar in Italy
        Les boys are glad to be
        Upon parade now

        Les boys do cabaret
        Les boys are glad to be gay

        — Dire Straits, Les Boys

  12. I have never driven a Trans Am, so I have no idea what that was like. It seems like it could hold it’s own. Professional driver, James Garner drove a rebadged Formula (as an Esprit) for the 1970s detective show, the Rockford files. Growing up, i drove a 74 Gremlin and a 66 Mustang. The Gremlin was much better mannered through the twisties than the Mustang. The Mustang had more straight line power, so I liked that. I also liked the fact that you easily lay rubber in the Stang. I dropped the Gremlin like a bad smell. The Mustang handled like warm vomit, however. By modern standards, both were noisy, both had horrible brakes. Both were temperamental during start up and subject to vapor lock, but it didn’t often happen in either. Both were compact cars.

    Being a short guy like me, Dad was never a fan of large American cars, which he termed “bombers.”

    Back in the 60’s he traveled to europe and saw what they had. Having served in WW2, he would never have chosen a German car, but he liked them. They were compact in size, where you pointed the wheel is where they went. Their suspensions were taught. In the late 60’s he bought a Jaguar and brought it here.

    I was captivated by it’s presence. The wood and light beige leather inside. The larger chrome bumpers, etc. It was different from every other car around at the time.

    It would gulp premium gas. It was quiet on the road. The engine growled instead of burbled. The car was surefooted on twisty backroads and assuredly stable on the 70 mph freeways of the day.

    It represented a time and place that will never return, yet, all automakers seemed to copy it’s traits. Cars began to handle better, steer more quickly, and became quieter with the advent of overdrive transmissions. The engines, to date, do not lack power.

    Jaguar’s reliability sucked, but when the damned thing ran, there was nothing like it. That car and the Germans set teh standard for the world to follow way back in the 1960s.

    Maybe that’s the reason I don’t have a problem with modern machinery (well, until 2010-15 or so).

    • Older cars had “soul”, a “ghost in the machine” quality, if you will. A man and machine interface to both enjoy and transport. Much like the “Red Barchetta” in Rush’s song.

      Newer cars are “possessed”, like federally mandated “demons”, with programs and features designed to subvert the driver, and ursurp control of the car. Drivers are simply prisoners or cattle, to be carted off to the places of their choosing.

      And the pea-brained public embraces the chains of the self-driving tesla and other electric foibles called cars today….

      Oy Vey!!! YMMV….

      • Yeah, I know. I marvel at how many adults liked to be parented like kindergartners or treated like prisoners. Modern vehicles are awful in that way.

  14. Not just Uncle Sam, also the insurance mafia and the lawyer racket.

    Imagine if more carmakers were like Enzo Ferrari, flat out telling customers “You cannot buy my automobile.”

    The Ford attitude is of corse more correct, drive costs down until anyone with a pulse (and maybe a few who don’t) is cruising around in cheap transportation under their direct control. Except that comes with risk, and a subset of anyone with a pulse is a group who won’t tolerate being held responsible for their actions. Unfortunately they also tend to be the ones who command a lot of attention from carpetbaggers and opportunists looking for a quick buck.

  15. Older cars are easier from MEN to work on (but of course, they needed to be worked on MORE). So I think there is a much stronger affiliation between a vehicle as reflecting one’s labor and one’s pride with older vehicles, especially performance cars like the T/A.

    However, there are indeed a number of praiseworthy improvements on newer cars compared to older ones:

    -Paint and corrosion resistance is better
    -Fuel injection — no more flooded engines, manual choke cables, etc., etc. and better performance to boot
    -Seats are more durable and comfortable — anyone remember 100+ degree vinyl on a hot summer day while wearing shorts???
    -Suspension. Mirabile dictu… the twin I-beam front axles on old Ford truck could get REALLY dicey on some washboard roads!
    -Fewer oil leaks
    -Better ignition — no more spraying down your distributor cap on rainy, foggy days with WD-40
    -Better HVAC for sure
    -Better performance — 200hp cars are routine today, a 200hp carbureted smallblock V-8 was something special 50-60 years ago
    -Emissions equipment has become durable and usually lasts the lifetime of the car as opposed to jury-rigged hoses and pumps slapped onto engines designed before emissions controls
    -Better tires — non more bias ply, LOL

    Yes, some of this has indeed become “boring.” But much of it is a godsend. I agree that peak auto development balancing practical ownership and maintenance with newer technology and affordability was probably from 1995-2005 or so.

    • I imagine there’s a lot of “change for change’s sake” in the automobile industry. Harley Earl probably started it with the annual lengthening of the tail fins, but it probably goes down through the whole company. People want to pad their resumé with accomplishments, so they fight to get their little alterations added to the model year. In some cases, like switching to PPG’s clear coat paint, it’s a great addition. In others such as, jamming in just one more airbag, not so much. But in a company full of uncreative managers, lawyers and yes men that’s what you end up with.

      • “ I imagine there’s a lot of “change for change’s sake” in the automobile industry.”

        I imagine you probably enjoy getting pegged by the wife.

        I hope we’re both wrong.

      • There’s change for change’s sake in pretty much everything.

        Just the nature of a consumer, technological system. It’s not new in cars, the model year cycle was their invention to build in a systematic demand to replace things.

        The 1950s car market was the transition from durable items to consumer items. Prior to WWII people bought things they needed only when they needed it to do a task. A wagon, livestock harness, a shovel.

        Post-War boom people bought things they didn’t really need based on some vague rationalized need. Initially it wasn’t a tough sell when the generation remembered a real austerity of the Depression and war years. So a set of cut crystal cocktail tumblers and designer mid century modern furniture was a major step up in quality of life, at least superficially.

        Capitalism guaranteed that every desire could be met and eventually at rock bottom price. It just took exploitation of labor and resources that drove both to the absolute cheapest.

        Cars are a reflection, perhaps a foundational, element. But everything has to churn, find the smallest detailed change, more and more insane changes just to differentiate your product from the previous model and those of your competition.

        Nothing is new anymore. It’s not just regulation, it’s lack of imagination, lack of needs that actually problems in need of solutions.

    • I’ll disagree on the seats. “Peak seats” was 20 years ago. First the leather craze now the child size designs where a 6’1” 200 lb adult (me) just doesn’t fit. Legs spilling over the sides of the seat base bolsters, swamp butt from the $@#* leather, seat back digging into my shoulder & left kidney since it’s also too narrow and has an airbag in the bolster instead of padding. The cheap leather now is too stiff and they’ve decided to charge extra for perforated seating areas thus swamp butt.

      I’ll take the cloth seats in daughter #2 aging KIA minivan any day over the cheap ass leather seats in my 2018 Grand Cherokee Limited. Even better the cloth bench in the 91 Silverado.

      • PS: seating, cloth vs leather. The 35 year old Silverado cloth literally looks like new, there is one wear mark on the driver’s side seat back about a half dollar in diameter. The 2018 Jeep leather already looks tired and very creased on the drivers side.

        • Detroit leather is a sick joke. They get dozens of seats from a cowhide, bonded to whatever substrate. They are nice for a couple years, by the time they’re over 5 they all split, crack, and break open.

          • Hey Erine,,,Might try cleaning and some leather conditioner. The fake and gay leather on our 1998 regal looks like the day it was purchased.

            • Thanks, Ken, but I have tried it. Usually I drive old stuff I got cheap at around 200k for work cars. So by the time I get them, the leather has already separated from the bonded substrate. In fairness, regular maintenance of the leather would probably make it last longer.

              But the bonded leather is still nothing compared to the real hides in my 88 Allante (Leather Recaros) or the 50’s English stuff (Jaguar and Alvis).

  16. Probably the greatest advance of automotive technology in the past 50 years has been the near-tripling of specific output [horsepower per cubic inch], while increasing fuel economy and reducing ’emissions’ too.

    Arguably, suspension and handling upgrades come in second. Microprocessors enabled active suspension and stability control that wasn’t possible with electromechanical relay logic. Now it’s routine to select among several flavors of tuning, such as Comfort, EcoSmart and Sport. But most are missing an ‘off’ switch.

    Too bad that this fantastic mechanical progress is nullified by unacceptable features such as safety nannies, bloated weight, and cellular telemetry. Auto making is a fully mature, 125-year-old industry. Having partnered with Big Gov for the past several decades, instead of with its customers, it is making appliances festooned with unwanted features which I, for one, will never buy.

    The replacement of ‘car buff’ journalists with nonbinary EeeVee pimpers mirrors what’s happened. By excluding its most passionate customers with unfriendly, proprietary technology, the auto industry has sealed its fate. Don’t bail it out in the coming Depression: liquidate it. 🙂

    Two legs good; four wheels b-a-a-a-a-d-d-d.

    • Amen, Jim –

      I can tell you that, were I a young guy trying to get published today, it’d be a damned hard thing to do. YouTube does allow a few of Our Kind to make it through the screens that otherwise prevent Our Kind from ever seeing the light of day, but the organs – Car & Driver, Motor Trend, Wards, Automotive News, et al – are utterly soaked in soy.

            • Hi, Eric,
              My intended point was that Rodent Track is *not* Jalopnik, and in fact evidently employs real “car guys” to review “real cars”.
              No soy allowed, except “soy entusiasta del automóvil”.

              Note that the NISMO Z is the “performance” version of the Z car, with or without a manual transmission.
              https://www.roadandtrack.com/reviews/a45263720/nismo-z-first-drive-best-nissan-decade/
              >The new NISMO Z only comes with an automatic transmission, which to some, including one Editor-at-Large for a true enthusiast publication, is a dealbreaker. As a person with “Gas” and “Clutch” tattooed on the appropriate calves, I am bummed.

              Evidently, the NISMO Z is intended to play in the same sandbox as, e.g.. the BMW M240i Coupe
              I don’t like their chances, given MSRP on the M240i is ~$60,000.
              Cheers,

              • Morning, Adi!

                I’ve pretty much punched out (Eject! Eject! Eject!) from the new performance car market; lots of very quick/very fast and very boring, overpriced and over-teched cars are available, none of which do a thing for me, emotionally. The contrast between them and a car like my old Trans Am is startling. I think if more people had the opportunity to drive something like my car they’d realize how lifeless modern performance cars are. I suppose I’m ruined, not just because I have my TA but because I have driven so many cars that are something like Sidney Sweeny in terms of what they make you feel, just to look at them. A Ferrari 308 is slower than a new base four cylinder Mustang. But – Jesus! – there is just no comparsion.

    • It’s everything. Peak audio equipment, peak hand tool, peak backpacking equipment, peak photography seems like a decade or two ago. There were real things to improve but the economy can’t just stop when they reach a nice level. If Toyota had stopped and been Toyota in 2000 they would be out of business other than being a replacement part supplier. Same with Nikon or Craftsman or Sony or Dell or anyone. In fact Craftsman did exactly this. They’d saturated their market with affordable prices, reasonable quality tools and they went belly up. There is no alternative in a consumer-driven economy for without the churn-and-burn there is no economy. Since we’re not agrarian with modest desires you have to have a constant demand to replace a widget, move papers around or sell a service, be that tourism or sports or other unnecessary (strictly speak) ‘thing’.

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