"Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut?"

[elfs]

"Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut?" is the popular refrain many Linux users like to toss at people who run one of the proprietary operating systems, like Windows or MacOS.

Well, Volvo is betting that, if you're a woman, you would. Their concept car for women has the following blurb: "The no-open hood, which actually can be opened by a mechanic if necessary, is in response to the fact that drivers of new cars today, and conceptually in 10 years, don't need to look under the hood since most of the parts reliably run off electronics."

I have to admit that the ponytail crease in the headrest is an interesting point. "It's not about woman's lib: in an accident, the ponytail holder becomes a single point of contact where all the energy of an impact will be concentrated."

Comments

[kakoukorakos.livejournal.com]

Bentley and/or Rolls Royce had a "sealed bonnet" thing many years ago, IIRC. It was a symbol of quality to them.

But there does seem to be a trend lately about "maintenance free" things that are exceedingly difficult for end users to service themselves (the automatic transmission in the V-8 Toyota 4Runner has no dipstick, for example, the fluid lasts 100k miles, and you basically have to take it to a shop or get special pumps to do any maintenance yourself).

In my case, it might be a good thing if my vehicles came with their hoods welded shut, well probably most of my stuff would be better off sealed, because I tend to take everything apart.