The 7 Most Overrated Features in Cars

Buying a car is a big decision, and automakers are trying to win you over in any way they can. That means employing gizmologists tasked with thinking up the latest bells, whistles, and doodads to wow shoppers. Although these are fun to play with, they don’t all improve your driving life, and some can actually make it worse.

With experience behind the wheel of countless cars, AutoTrader’s experts have toyed with dozens of gadgets, hundreds of high-tech toys, and thousands of automotive features, and these are the seven that we agree are the most overrated in the automotive world today.

All-Wheel Drive (AWD)

Kicking things off controversially, we open our list with the seemingly ubiquitous all-wheel drive system. While there’s certainly a place for AWD on the road – or, more precisely, off it – the degree to which it is beneficial has been overstated.

An AWD system may be preferable to rear-wheel drive when the going gets slippery, but front-wheel-drive systems are fully capable of taking a careful driver to most places they need to go. In fact, it has been shown in numerous tests that a good set of winter tires can help you stay on the road even better than an extra pair of driven wheels in the winter because having all-wheel drive does nothing to help you stop faster.

That’s not to say that AWD systems don’t have benefits; it’s just that the benefits aren’t as necessary as you might have been led to believe. AWD has been marketed as a safety feature, but it’s perfectly safe to drive without it, even in sloppy conditions. Plus, AWD costs more money and contributes to a higher fuel bill.

Paddle Shifters

Do paddle shifters actually make anyone feel like a racecar driver anymore? Sure, this technology has real racing roots, but these days, they do little to improve the driving experience.

The paddle shifters in a high-performance track-focused vehicle like the BMW M3 CS or in an EV to control the regenerative braking system make sense, but they don’t provide much value in a Volkswagen Tiguan. A humdrum commuter vehicle is likely to be left in whatever gear the car decides is most efficient, and that’s for the best. Automatic transmissions tend to be well-tuned these days and do a decent job of providing drivers with enough pep to get off the line confidently. And the unfortunate truth is that if the transmission is slow to react to your needs, chances are the paddles will be, too.

Enormous Wheels

As we know from endless design drawings, concept cars, and modified whips, bigger rims make vehicles look cooler. But this feature comes with a number of downsides, and they aren’t all limited to the cost of the actual wheels.

Beyond their higher price and a drop in fuel efficiency, larger-diameter wheels also require more expensive tires with less sidewall. That makes it harder for a vehicle to soak up bumps and means that when your wheel hits a crack in the road or a pothole, occupants hear a loud, jarring thud. That can be the difference between a car that seems to glide over the road in perfect comfort and one that loudly interrupts the podcast you were listening to every time the road is less than buttery smooth.

Massaging Seats

Everyone loves a massage, and the idea of receiving one while you barrel down the highway is attractive. Unfortunately, the reality is that most massaging drivers’ seats fail to live up to their potential.

Rather than feeling like a much-needed back rub to release tension and make you feel more relaxed, most seats poke at you disinterestedly, making them more annoying than helpful. AutoTrader Editor-in-Chief Jodi Lai agrees with me on this point, and from a straw poll taken around the office, we aren’t alone. While some people do like the feature (Road Test Editor Dan Ilika swears by them), the option is expensive, making it highly disappointing if it sucks. So before you tick that box on the options sheet, take your massaging seat for a test ride to be sure it works for you.

Automatic Parking

Much like massaging seats, driver assistance systems that complete a parking maneuver automatically sound like a better idea than they turn out to be. Although there are vehicles out there that park themselves well, the nature of driving inevitably means that these systems require too many steps between entering a lot and walking away from your car.

First, you have to find a spot, then your vehicle has to agree with you that it is, in fact, a parking space. Then you have to stop, fumble through some menus in an infotainment screen, go back to the home screen when you realize that you went down the wrong menu rabbit hole, find the right submenu, wave the impatient driver waiting behind you around, shift into the appropriate gear, and then you can finally ease off the brake pedal as you wince when your car gets too close to other parked vehicles. You may eventually end up parked correctly, but the promise of a seamless, easy experience has been shattered as you reckon with the fact that it probably would have been easier just to do it yourself.

Sure, using an auto-park system gets easier with practice, but isn’t that also true of parking?

Sunroofs

We all dream of an airy cabin that lets natural light in, but the reality is that sunroofs bring with them a shocking number of downsides besides the additional cost of getting one. If you’re a fan of sports cars, you’re no doubt already shouting about the weight penalty of a heavy piece of glass way up high on the vehicle, but that’s just the start.

Beyond adding extra weight, sunroofs also require a thicker ceiling, infringing on cabin volume and robbing tall drivers of valuable headspace. They also flood the cabin with sunlight, which is hot and makes your vehicle less comfortable when it’s been sitting for a long time.

As vehicles age, sunroofs are another failure point that can allow water to leak into your vehicle, shortening its lifespan. If you’re on the fence about a sunroof, think twice before shelling out for one.

In-Vehicle PA Systems

Finally, our list ends with a feature you may not know about if you don’t have kids. In the arms race to make the most family-friendly vehicle possible, minivan and large SUV manufacturers have started offering drivers the ability to speak to rear-seat passengers via the speakers.
While this sounds kind of fun, the reality is that minivans aren’t that cavernous, and most people are fully capable of being heard by passengers in even the third rows. Worse still, the systems can be temperamental, making their exclusion from the options list an easy way for savvy buyers to save a little money.