Hey folks, welcome to the Garage Corner.
Have you looked inside a new truck lately? I went to a dealership last weekend because I made the mistake of thinking a 2026 model might just be a vehicle. Silly me. I climbed into the cab, and I didn’t see a dashboard. I saw a drive-in movie theater. It is just one giant, glowing sheet of glass stretching from the steering wheel to the passenger door.
Whatever happened to the volume knob?
You know exactly what I’m talking about. That beautiful, rubber-molded piece of plastic that you could grab without even looking. If a bad song came on the radio, you gave it a quick flick to the left. Boom. Problem solved. If your windshield started fogging up, you reached out, felt for the bumpy dial, and cranked it to the right.
Now? To turn down the music, you have to tap the screen, open the "Media" menu, swipe past three system notifications, and adjust a digital slider. By the time you find the button, you’ve drifted two lanes over and nearly rear-ended a hybrid. Progress!
Engineers today are obsessed with smoothing everything out. They want the world to be a frictionless smartphone screen. But humans aren't meant to live in a smooth world. We need texture. We need feedback. When you turn a real dial, it goes click-click-click. That click is the machine telling your brain, "I got you, buddy. The heat is on." A touchscreen doesn't care about you. It just collects your fingerprints.
And don't get me started on voice commands. I tried to change the temperature in my buddy's new SUV. I said, "Set temperature to 68." The car responded, "Playing '60s Greats on Spotify.'" So now I'm freezing, and Jimi Hendrix is screaming at me. That's not a smart car. That's a passive-aggressive roommate.
Look, there is a place for high technology. It belongs in spaceships, and it belongs in medical labs. But in a vehicle meant to haul gravel, timber, or just your family through a snowstorm? Give me a physical switch. Give me a heavy-duty lever.
We need to stop replacing things that work perfectly with things that just look fancy in a television commercial. Let’s bring back the buttons. Let's save the knobs. Because out here on the road, your eyes belong on the asphalt, not on an iPad.
I'm out of time, and I need to go wipe the smudges off my dashboard.
Until next time, keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road.
