8 Ways Your Car Is Deliberately Trying To Annoy You

1. Hiding your things from you

I lose stuff all the time. You know when you were a kid and your mum would always say "you’d forget your head if it wasn’t screwed on" but then you grew out of it? Yeah, well I didn’t grow out of it. The main problem is that I hate having anything in my pockets, so I take my keys, phone and wallet out at every opportunity. And inevitably forget where I’ve put them. There are so many cubby holes and slots and bins for things in modern cars, I always find myself rummaging around the car trying to find whatever I’ve lost. I swear the car moves things when I’m not looking.

It’s even worse now that most cars have push-to-start ignitions, meaning your keys aren’t safely tucked into the steering column while you’re driving. Once in the car, I’ll put them in the centre console, and leave them there when I get out. I then go to lock the car and oh yeah, keys are still inside. One of these days a car is going to lock itself when I shut the door and leave me stranded.

2. Seatbelts that won't pull forward

Seatbelts are officially great. They stop you from flying face first through the windscreen in the event of an accident, which I’m sure you’ll agree is pretty damn nice of them. Unfortunately, they can be a massive pain in the backside when you’re in a rush.

Pull too hard when you want to slot your belt in, and it’ll think you’re having a crash and will tighten up, refusing to budge. No matter how much you try to fiddle with it, you just have to accept defeat, let it retract, and slowly pull it forward once more. Rage inducing.

3. Having a rubbish gear shift

Manual is always better, right? Wrong! There are many fantastic manual cars, but there are also a fair few disappointing ones. There’s nothing worse than jumping into a car that lets you swap cogs yourself, only to find the shift action is rubbish. When you’re trying to press on, but you can’t jam the stick into position, it can ruin everything.

4. Not starting on a cold day

Old cars are great because they come from a time before the kind of modular platforms that inspired today’s copy/paste car design. This means they typically have more character, which tends to be a classic car owner’s way of making it sound like they actually enjoy the fact their car never works.

This is never more infuriating than on a cold day when you just want to jump inside your car, get out on the road and have the heater blasting. Instead, you’re greeted with a pathetic whirr or apologetic chugging from the engine as your turn the key. It’s clear that your car hates you and doesn’t like to see you happy.

5. It still doesn't work after you've 'fixed' it

Your car’s been making a funny noise all week, so instead of spending your weekend socialising, you spend your hard-earned free time on your hands and knees taking your engine apart to fix the fault. You’ve diagnosed the problem, replaced the part, and put everything back together. And it’s still making the noise.

It’s enough to make you want to curl up in a ball and cry.

6. It always breaks down at the worst possible time

Weather’s great, you’re only five minutes from home, and your car’s running like a dream. Once you’re out of town, in the middle of nowhere, with rain sheeting into the windscreen as a gale threatens to blow you onto your side… that’s when your car decides to grind to a halt. Y u do dis?

7. Traction control kicks in at the worst possible moment

Traction control systems are getting better, but there are millions of drivers on the road who regularly have to put up with systems that were implemented before the whole thing was figured out. Early implementations would detect some slippage from the wheels, and would duly cut power from the engine.

Trying to dart out into heavy traffic can become life threatening when your wheels squeak for half a second causing your engine to cut out, leaving you to slowly roll out into the road, mindlessly mashing the throttle hoping your car will give you some power before you get T-boned.

8. Hyper alert parking sensors

This is the first world problem to end all first world problems, but it is infuriating. Parking sensors are handy as they make it easy to know how much space you have to reverse into - this is useful for inept drivers, as well as people like me who are in a different car ever week.

Sometimes, however, sensors are jumpier than a germophobe in a public toilet. Should a pedestrian have the audacity to walk near you, it’ll blip and bing like an EDM club banger. In the Ford Focus ST I tested recently, when you reversed it also had side impact warnings that go crazy whenever a car drives along your flanks. There were so many bleeps and bongs I became a nervous wreck every time I wanted to park up.

What parts of your car do you think are deliberately trying to annoy you? Let us know in the comments!