When you drive a new car nearly every week, the neighbors can get jealous. But for me, it also means more chances to experience even more dumb and annoying aspects of the automobile experience. Here's another list of things I hate about cars.

1. Space-wasting ashtrays. Ashtrays take up valuable cockpit space when hardly anybody smokes anymore. Don't dump the 12-volt socket inside, just the ashtray. (Take a look at my column, "My Dream Cockpit Controller", for an expansion on this idea.)

2. Mechanical transmissions. Transmissions with mechanical linkages could be replaced by shift-by-wire transmission selectors on the dash, plus paddle shifters behind the steering wheel for those who feel the need to shift for themselves.

3. No digital owners' manuals. I mean the complete set of quick reference guides, warranty books, and navigation system guides, not just the main manual; these should all be available online.

4. Bad PDF manuals. Online owner manuals in PDF format, in which Page 1 isn't the cover page. Otherwise, where when you tell Acrobat to go to page 83, you wind up on the actual page 79 or thereabouts.

5. No PDF hot links. Come to think of it, PDF manuals shouldn't be allowed online until every page reference is a hot link.

6. Dumb button placement. Some hazard-warning and door-lock buttons mounted on the center console will be stepped on and activated by the family dog when you leave the car to pump gas or drop a letter in the mailbox. If you leave your only set of keys in the ignition, odds are that Rusty will quickly step on the lock button as he runs from window to window, but won't in a million dog years set a paw on the button to unlock the doors.

7. Overly reflective wooden consoles. Polished wood consoles reflect not only the cabinetmaker's craft but also reflect the sky, the clouds, and worst of all, the sun. Go back to the soft luster of a lightly oiled wood dash, leather, or a nice plastic injection mold (that doesn't look like plastic). The more coats of urethane there are on top of the wood, the more you can't tell it apart from plastic-coated petro-wood anyway.

8. Nag screens. The ones that won't let you use the LCD until you click to acknowledge your consent, even when the car stalls in traffic and you restart 5 seconds later. I'm waiting to see convincing evidence from insurance companies, automakers, or liability lawyers that nag screens have saved even one life. If something keeps the backup camera or backup sonar display from being seen, that's a drawback for safety.

9. Where's the Map button? Some navigation systems lack a dedicated Map button, for the clueless among us: If they can't make a $1,500 nav system work, they might at least benefit from seeing a map of the surrounding area.

10. No LCD screen controls. We need them in nav systems that lack an intuitive way to adjust volume or brightness. If nothing else, when the nav system voice is speaking, you should be able to adjust it with the radio's volume control. Or does that make too much sense?

11. Unintelligent night settings. Since it's too much trouble to figure out where nav-system settings for day (bright, with a black-on-white background) and night (dimmer, with a green- or-white-on-black background) live in the menu tree, at least make the automatic day and night settings smarter than just shifting to night mode when you turn the headlights on. For instance, the nav system should be able to tell when it's raining heavily but still bright outside. The solution is a brightness sensor, of course; automakers say they're loathe to add to the cost of a car with another $3 sensor, but when you're tagging the customer $1,500-plus for the nav system, that really isn't an issue.

12. Dumb speaker systems. Many Bose upgrade audio systems place a pair of speakers at the tops of the driver's and passenger's seats, flanking the headrest to enrich the sound. The technology exists for each speaker to be controlled separately in a Bose system, but so far no automaker has asked Bose to direct navigation directions and other car announcements to the driver's speakers, or direct cell phone voices to either the driver's or passenger's speakers. Bose says it's the automakers' choice, but maybe Bose should whisper some sense into the automakers' ears. Friends don't let friends design underfunctioning cars.

Want to know what else Bill Howard hates about cars? Click here.