Re: Ashtrays

At the moment our Bundle of Joy is not old enough to secrete things into ashtrays or into map pockets. She is securely and neatly constrained by the no-name child seat. I dread the day she is able to clamber about and test Citroen´s faint commitment to trim fastenings and fixings. The rear asthray is especially vulnerable to being kicked free of its frail moorings. Luckily the seats are covered in leather so they are quite robust. But I presume they face a rough and chocolatey interregnum between now and safer times.

I´ve had very few oportunities for smoking and driving lately. This is a depressing state of affairs.

Re: Ashtrays

There seem to be a surprising number of XM estates in my area. I´ve seen four different ones in the last week. One is a V6 and the others are diesels. My suspicion is that this is an anomalous situation. I don´t think the estate was all that common. I nearly bought a V6 estate and went so far as to have a look. That was in 2003. While I´d like a 2.0 litre estate, the V6 would have been a financial disaster for me as I ended up doing huge trips to from Cologne to Denmark for the next three years. And the V6 was a tricky engine. It´s a fine car but you´d need deep pockets to manage the beast.  The XM estate is a bit too fastback, isn´t it? And the rear doors were botched about to fit with the raised roofline.  

Re: Ashtrays

Thanks for the research.

Look at the placement of the warning triangle button compared to the cupholder. Did that really get past all the eyeballs in VAG´s safety and regulations department? If you put a McDonald´s Huge Gulp cup or a can of Red Cow in the left holder the button will be blocked.

VW have overloaded this part with functions. If you put two drinks in there, connect the socket to your oPod and have a Villiger Export smouldering head down in Lambert & Butler ashes then you will be asking too much of this contraption. Imagine all of that and looking for the warning flasher while attempting to decelerate from 180 kmph down to standstill on the busy autobahn into Hamburg on a wet Friday night.

The ashtray part probably doesn´t hold 50 ml, does it? My standard test for this is to remove the tray and use a measuring jug or measuring spoons to estimate the contents. The most generous ashtray I´ve so far encountered was the Renault 25 with a whopping 250 ml capacity. Ah, those were the days (so they were).

I´m presenting a course in ergonomics shortly and may very well choose this as a lovely example of design overload. Once again, thanks for the contribution to what is now the internet´s premier resource on ashtrays.

Re: Ashtrays

Good photos and a helpful addition to the database, Mr K. The materials are pleasing. The chromed lighter and the lid sit nicely in the overall context. Do you know if the ashtray is in any way illuminated? I wonder if the receptacle itself is too small though (though no smaller than the Ford Mondeo´s). What I would have done would be to extend the ashtray cover across the entire width of the console and thereby increase the width of the tray itself. There also seems to be unused length: the ashtray area could be extended rearwards by 2 cm it seems. The result then would be a single lid making up the last part, the rearward section, of the console. The volume of the receptacle could then be doubled.  Another small detail is that ashtray itself ought to be chromed steel or glass rather than black plastic which can get smirched after a while.

All that said, I am deeply thankful there is an ashtray. I visited a Mazda Ford Suzuki dealer and found out that all the mid-size and smaller cars were bereft of ashtrays. The new C-Max is ashtrayless, sadly. That´s a deal breaker for me.

How was the rest of the car?

Re: Ashtrays

That helps my interpretation of the photos. Still, they seem to have painted themselve into a corner. To make a bigger ashtray would mean defining its requirements earlier on in the the design process than they evidently did. They needed an engineer to say "We have a goal of an ergonomically correctly placed, illuminated ashtray with a minimum of 200 ml capactity..." and this had to be a hard point determined long before other secondary considerations were taken into account. I´ll have to find a Jaguar dealer to inspect the ashtray myself.