10 Features We Find Outlandish
CARS.COM — Sure, we like a nice heated steering wheel, backup camera or push-button start as much as the next driver. But as high-end features become increasingly common on low-end cars, it takes more and more to satisfy us — and impress us.
Related: Top 10 Most Ridiculous Concept Car Features
We chose the most outstanding, or just plain outrageous, features available on current-model vehicles on the market. And boy, did we come up with some doozies.
Here are our Top 10 most outlandish features:
10. Video Rearview Mirror
Debuting on the 2016 Cadillac CT6, the center rearview mirror displays a streaming video of what’s behind the vehicle, improving the driver’s field of vision by a reported 300 percent and removing passengers, head restraints, pillars and the roofline from the driver’s line of sight. What it won’t show you, however, is whether you have lipstick on your teeth before you walk into an important meeting.
9. 30-Way Power-Adjustable Seats
The all-new-for-2017 Lincoln Continental offers 30-way Perfect Position power adjustable seats — with thigh extenders. We can’t really think of 30 distinctly different ways to sit, but we get it: You’re a beautiful and unique snowflake, and somewhere within that seemingly excessive number of positions lies a perfect combination for your butt … and only your butt.
8. Retractable Umbrella
The Rolls-Royce Dawn’s pop-out umbrella is spring-loaded into the front fender and accessible when the driver’s door is opened. It has a silver handle embossed with the RR logo, and it’s nicer than any umbrella likely to be drip-drying in your foyer. This may seem absurd, but for $335,000 it would somehow be more outlandish if there weren’t a retractable umbrella in the door.
7. Hot-Stone Massaging Seats
The Mercedes-Benz S-Class’ hot-stone massaging seats use more than a dozen individual heated air cushions in the seatbacks of the front and rear seats, mimicking that heavenly hot-stone massage you got that one time at the day spa in Vegas. Cars.com editor Joe Bruzek, however, didn’t exactly think the hot-stone massage seats were the shiatsu, remarking that they “just feel like a child or weak person punching you in the back. Not relaxing.”
6. Rear-Cabin Surveillance System
The redesigned-for-2018 Honda Odyssey now offers a backseat spy-cam system, CabinWatch. Big Brother may always be watching, but now parents can actually watch big brother — or, well, little brother, et al. — from the front seat with this tech-age take on the conversation mirror. Sure it’s a little creepy, but now when your son denies pulling his sister’s hair, you’ll have surveillance footage as evidence.
5. Yachtlike Cargo Floor
The Land Rover Range Rover’s Macassar-wood-lined cargo floor, offered on the Rover’s top trim level, approximates the look and feel of a yacht. And for people who opt for a $5,100 cargo floor on their $200,000 vehicle, that’s a legitimate desire.
4. Falcon Wing Doors
The Tesla Model X’s Falcon Wing doors (Tesla’s interpretation of gull-wing doors) were an awesome idea, especially if you’re a fan of the DeLorean from “Back to the Future.” But it wound up being more like “Back to the Drawing Board” for the Model X after owners complained that the Falcon Wing doors were, among other things, failing to sense a low ceiling or tight parking space.
3. Cabin Fragrance System
The Mercedes-Benz Maybach S’ customizable cabin fragrance system is one outlandish feature that just makes scents. Other high-luxury sedans, such as the BMW 7 Series, also offer a similarly fragrant feature, but only the Maybach lets you fill your olfactory with the exclusive exotic aroma of the Southeast Asian agarwood tree.
2. Gesture Control
Emphatic gesticulators beware around the BMW 7 Series’ gesture control function. You may find your stereo suddenly getting very loud, and then have to feverishly to reverse whatever hand movements you just used to punctuate your brilliant point.
1. Backseat Bottle Service
Again with the Maybach S, passengers can keep things poppin’ with a factory-furnished silver champagne flute set and three-bottle wine chiller. As the author of this article, I take exception with the shortsighted consensus by my colleagues that this is somehow “outlandish.” I mean, what are people supposed to do — drink room-temp champers out of Chinet cups? Know we no propriety? Are we savages?
