Quote:
Originally Posted by rich weyand
That's what she said. 
I felt the same way when I first got my truck five years ago, but haven't felt that way in years. It was a different driving style then, not just in our trucks. You can hang your arm on the window sill (now they are all up to your ears) and steer with two fingers on the highway. You can palm the wheel around the corners in town. You can have your right hand in your lap on the highway and steer with your fingers from there.
The whole European style, rack and pinion, small wheel, high steering effort, hands at 10 and 2 driving style requires the wheel to be further out in front of you so you can get some leverage on it, and you need most of your arm length just to reach them. The car mags all thought this was great when they took the cars to the track, and that's what I preferred on autocross courses 35-40 years ago myself.
But I used to do a lot of cross-country driving in domestic cars in the 1970s, and I think the common driving position then was much easier and less fatiguing for off-track driving. |
I'm with you guys on new car/truck style, or the lack of it. Good aerodynamics have been the death of style. Plus people wanted their cars quieter, and that's pretty hard to achieve with style (air buffeting sound).
And I'll also agree that the 70s driving position was more comfortable. I've driven my truck across Canada about 6 times now. That's about 36,000 miles. It's really comfortable, just noisy. The only real problem is the self-retracting seat belts, but I have a bandaid for that.
But about the steering wheel position, I think most race cars are setup with the wheel close to the driver's chest to *increase* their steering strength. Just look at nascar cars. I think the wheels were moved away from the drivers as soon as air bags came on the scene. My guess is the manufacturers are worried about the injuries that might be caused by having the steering wheel too close to the person's chest when it deploys.