makin’ that left turn around the world

the other day i followed a car from 183 to the deck split on i-35 in austin…

…and it had it’s left turn signal on the whole way.

for those that don’t know austin that’s a couple miles worth of journey, blink-blink-blink the whole fucking time. it reminded me of the malibu i used to drive when this site first started back in 2002. it was a 1998 chevy malibu ls with the v-6. the v-6 that notoriously leaked coolant after 100,000 miles so i was told to watch the mileage and then just “keep an eye on the coolant level” every week or two to make sure it didn’t overheat. side note – said coolant eventually leaks into the engine oil, cause catastrophic engine failure.

and that’s how we got rid of the malibu. or, more accurately, how it died. i didn’t actually get RID of it till eight years later when the ufc moved in and needed a parking spot since by that point i had three cars, and only the two convertibles (2001 chevy camaro and 2001 bmw 330ci) ran.

but prior to that it had a hidden feature that nobody told me about, and it wasn’t mentioned in the manual – if you drove more than a quarter mile with your turn signal on, the radio would mute itself to about ten percent volume so you could hear the clicking of your turn signal, and the car would start chiming at you like you forgot to put on your seat belt or something.

so here’s what i don’t get – how the fuck is that a feature on this…

…but not on this?

you’d think going newer and better (1998 chevy malibu vs 2011 bmw 535i) would get you even BETTER features, which it definitely has more bells and whistles and style and class and…well…i probably don’t have to convince you i’ve upgraded here, but it seems like that feature woulda caught on. but none of my bmw’s have it, and the corvette i was following (also made by chevy like the malibu) clearly didn’t have it, so how did this get ditched off the option list like some kind of cassette deck?