Please make a dumb car

- Brakes work perfectly well without computers.

- Airbags don't need computers, they work perfectly well by mechanical means.

- Power steering works perfectly without computers or any electrics at all. Every car I've ever owned had mechanical power steering without any fancy electroics including my latest one. Why tamper with something that works perfectly well?

- Engine starter? Cars have starter motors since just after the hand crank ers, computers were still nearly 100 years away when starter motors were introduced.

- Automatic windows are a damn menace, they are reliably unreliable. When one failed - fortunately the driver's side - I had my garage man retrofit a traditional hand windup one. On the three remaining windows I got him to isolate them so they only worked on their individual switches.

- Mechanical intermittent wipers have been around since at least WWII. No computers or electronics to go wrong and complicate matters.

- Central locking on my last two cars has been a disaster. You obviously have never experienced a situation where the locking gets out of sync and some doors remain unlocked - unlock the others and then the unlocked ones lock and vice versa.

- Where I live alarm systems are likely to get you a brick through your windscreen - not from burglars but from annoyed residents who are fed up with car alarm noise.

- Automatic lights are another menace, you often can't control them, they switch off when you want to leave the lights and so on. (It seems to me that the designers of these systems never anticipate what we drivers actually need. Perhaps they only test them in the most tame and predictable environments.)

All this gumph is unnecessary, it makes the car less reliable and more expensive to buy and fix. Moreover, they're impossible to fix when you're in places where there's no service mechanic or garage (out on the open road for instance - I've some excellent instances from long trips 3,000 - 4,000 miles anf of cars in convoy on rough roads. Cars with all these unnecessary gadgets were, without fail, the first to break down. And they were a disaster because none of us techies could improvise in the usual manner that we could do with a more traditional car, often we could be stranded for days whilst waiting a tow truck to come from hundreds of miles away. What's more that's hellishly expensive.

You people are just gadget mad.

- Brakes work perfectly well without computers.

- Airbags don't need computers, they work perfectly well by mechanical means.

- Power steering works perfectly without computers or any electrical stuff at all. Every car I've ever owned had mechanical power steering without any fancy electroics including my latest one. Why tamper with something that works perfectly well?

- Engine starter? Cars have had starter motors since just after the hand crank era, computers were still nearly 100 years away when starter motors were introduced.

- Automatic windows are a damn menace, they are reliably unreliable. When one failed - fortunately the driver's side - I had my garage man retrofit a traditional hand windup one. On the three remaining windows I got him isolate them so they only worked on their own individual switches.

- Mechanical intermittent wipers have been around since at least WWII. No computers or electronics to go wrong and complicate matters.

- Central locking on my last two cars has been a disaster. You obviously have never experienced a situation where the locking gets out of sync and some doors remain unlocked - unlock the others and then the unlocked ones lock and vice versa. It's a nightmare, any attempt to properly lock the car fails.

- Where I live alarm system are likely to get a brick through your windscreen - not from burglars but rather from annoyed residents who are fed up with car alarm noise.

- Automatic lights are another menace, you often can't control them, they switch off when you want to leave the lights and so on. The people who design and program their operation clearly don't use them except in the most tame surroundings.

All this gumph is unnecessary, it makes car less reliable and more expensive to both purchase and fix - and they're impossible to fix when you're in places where there's no service mechanic or garage (out on the open road for instance - I've some excellent instances from long trips 3,000 - 4,000 miles of cars in convoy on rough roads. Cars with all these unnecessary gadgets were, without fail, the first to break down. And they were a disaster because none of us techies could improvise in the usual manner as we could do with a more traditional car. Often we could be stranded for days whilst we waited for a tow truck to come from hundreds of miles away. Moreover, that's hellishly expensive.

You people are just gadget mad.