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I don't get it - would you would think you can hose out a consumer car like this, with the fabric seats and all that plastic trim? I've hosed out Land Rovers, b
by chrisseaton 5y ago
I don't get it - would you would think you can hose out a consumer car like this, with the fabric seats and all that plastic trim? I've hosed out Land Rovers, but they're clearly an off-road vehicle designed for wading.
- Barrera 5y agoIt's in the video embedded at the bottom. What appears to be a representative of Honda says the following about the then-concept car (0:40): "It's got kind of a wash-and-wear interior. You can kind of completely hose out the interior if you wanted to."
- mmaunder 5y agoThis is why "kind of" is such a popular caveat.
- cookie_monsta 5y agoAnd why "if you wanted to" is such a brilliant disclaimer.
- KennyBlanken 5y agoHe was also talking about the concept car, not the production car.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- assttoasstmgr 5y ago"I hit a skunk, Karen"
- bstar77 5y agoI was looking at one of these at the dealership in the early 2000's and the sales guy told me I could just hose it out after a day at the beach. It seemed plausible considering there was no carpeting and the seats could be folded up.
- cowmix 5y agoYup, I heard the same thing. My buddy bought one and he would hose his out all the time.
- seanalltogether 5y agoMy roommate did the same. I remember him telling me that was one of the key reasons he bought it as he was an avid camper and would take the dog along and let everything get dirty then hose it out.
- uuyi 5y agoHaving driven Land Rovers in the form of series, defender and discovery, I wouldn’t hose one out either. The upholstery rots and stinks and the fittings go rusty too. If you’re doing wading and off road stuff you need to tear the entire guts out and start again. And then the bulkhead equipped vehicles will fall to bits within a few years as well.
- chrisseaton 5y agoI've been hosing out my Defenders and wading them above the door seals for years and there's no significant rust yet. They have rubber floor mats instead of upholstery. But they are maintained professionally.
- uuyi 5y agoYou won’t find it until your foot goes through something or something falls off. I had a 1990 defender 90 which was 8 years old and the bulkhead was invisibly rotten in various places. That got very expensive very quickly. A friend has a more modern 110 that’s only 6 years old and has the same problem. This is not an issue in some areas and dry climates as a rule but in the UK it sucks owning one. I don’t own one now. I drive a little French go cart then I use my legs for off road. They last longer, don’t go rusty and run on dried fruit and sandwiches.
- KennyBlanken 5y agoThis is why I laugh when I see 90's era defenders selling for $80k in the states.
- richardfey 5y agoAre you Remi Gaillard?
- uuyi 5y agoI disclaim all responsibility for chucking bananas out of my French go cart
- drewzero1 5y agoIt was very widely reported that the car interior was designed to be washed with a hose. That would have been a big selling point for me except that it only had four seats, and it looked like a shed.
- ungamedplayer 5y agoIt's barely a shed. Check out the cybertruck for something that looks like a backyard shed.
- drewzero1 5y agoIt's not a bad thing necessarily, a rolling shed would be great for hauling things around and the Element especially has an amazing cargo opening when the doors open up. I should qualify that I'm used to driving compact to midsized sedans and wagons, so most CUVs look like sheds to me, but the Element especially so. Don't get me started on the Cybertruck though, it really does look like a pole barn.
- mortenjorck 5y agoThe author references the "hose" comment in the 1998 unveiling of the concept car that would become the Element, but I think they greatly underplay the degree to which this idea caught on with the public and in the press, especially in non-automotive publications. I'm pretty sure it was an issue of Wired in the early 2000s where I read about this futuristic new SUV from Honda with, among other clever details, "a floor you could hose down." It became an unofficial selling point for the Element, and I would imagine most people exposed to the meme never knew the vehicle was not in fact designed for such a use until they saw this blog post.
- RajT88 5y agoTruth. I recommended a Honda Element to a friend of mine who wanted a cute car, but who had a tendency of destroying cars. Among our friends, somehow the "hose down" talking point was common knowledge. This was maybe 16 years back, so I do not recall how we came to this idea. They ended up buying a stickshift VW bug. Which they abused in many weird ways. Destroyed a couple Honda Fits since the bug.
- exikyut 5y agoI'm tentatively morbidity curious what happened to the VW bug, Fits and other cars this friend came in contact with.
- zbrozek 5y agoI'm also interested! I know a few classes of car destroyers. Some of them get into serious crashes. Some of them are more persistently mildly abusive or inattentive and do a lot of cosmetic and cleanliness damage. One person I know does ultra marathoning and uses his car like a locker room, so it smells like a great multitude of new bacterial species. Another one does zero maintenance and runs things until they don't go, ignoring all the warning messages.
- RajT88 5y agoMy friend is for sure the inattentive type. This extends to road conditions. Getting stuck on medians, taking a corner in the rain too fast. Not noticing a tree while parking. Not noticing brakes making horrible screaming sounds. Not noticing after weeks of screaming sounds that the car starts diving for the left lane.
- kube-system 5y agoWranglers have fabric and plastic trim, and they specifically advertise that the floor can be hosed out. The difference is that it has drains (and floor != seat).
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- djrogers 5y agoThey do not advertise that (at least not in North America) - the carpet will get ruined.
- kube-system 5y agoThey do. I checked before I posted my comment. Page 32: > WASHABLE INTERIOR Not only is the carpet weather resistant, but it can be removed to reveal drain plugs that, when opened, allow the floor to be easily hosed out. Standard. https://mydigimag.rrd.com/publication/?co=US&pid=497&pc=J-JL-web&bt_field_name%5B%5D=source&bt_field_value%5B%5D=null https://mydigimag.rrd.com/publication/?co=US&pid=497&pc=J-JL...
- jupp0r 5y agoYou can order them with vinyl flooring for that very reason IIRC.
- yencabulator 5y agoThe carpet is specifically mold-resistant and even removable. I guess if you're in a humid climate, you need to make sure it dries fully as soon as possible; not as much of a concern in the Southwest.
- HeyLaughingBoy 5y agoThe drains I remember well. I spent a couple hours trying to get a friend's Wrangler extricated from a mudhole deep enough to where the floorboards were submerged in water that was just above freezing. Wasn't fun keeping a foot on the gas pedal to keep pressure on the now-underwater exhaust. After we finally got him winched out of the hole, all the water immediately drained out.
- yazboo 5y agoI don't know where the meme came from but I've heard it from two independent Honda Element owners, and it comes up on random SEO-spam blogs as a benefit of the Element if you're searching for "dog-friendly" cars. I never thought to question it myself - the trunk area does look like something you could hit with a hose. Glad this made #1 on Hacker News before I bought one!
- mmaunder 5y agoOnly time I hosed out a car is my uncle's car when it ended up in the ocean. Was low-tide and tons of seagrass on the boat launch. Lost traction and just slowly slid all the way into the ocean. Actually turned out OK after a serious fresh-water bath and carefully drying out everything. Hosing out a car under normal circumstances is insane. I recently worked on a Dodge 12V diesel 1994 truck. Removed all interior carpet and WIPED out all the nastiness and vacuumed up the bits etc. Got it down to the metal and really nice and clean. Then layered up on Dynamat in prep for installing a high-end sound system and got a great result. Unless you've destroyed the vehicle anyway by dipping it in sea-water, don't hose out your car. A really great check to do if you're buying used is to look under the driver's seat for rust. It indicates flooding. In the case of pickups, it means they either submerged it or used it as a mudder. Red flag. Walk away.
- irrational 5y agoHow do you see the metal under the drivers seat? Every car I have owned has had wall to wall carpet, including under the seats.
- tokai 5y agoyou remove the seats?
- irrational 5y agoLOL What? Do you seriously remove the driver's seat when you are car shopping?
- tokai 5y agoDon't you lol what me. You are making this about car shopping. mmaunder wrote about removing the carpet to clean. Ofc you don't remove the carpet of a car you want to buy. I would never had guessed that you meant 'see the metal' in a car shopping context, as it's as easy as breathing to flip some carpet over and get a sense of the floors state.
- Wistar 5y agoAbout 2005 or so a co-worker bought a new Toyota FJ Cruiser, kept it for a week and then showed up with a Honda Element. When I asked him why he said, "The FJ is just too fussy. I go hiking and fishing with the dogs and, with this Element, I can just hose it out." Apparently not.
- jupp0r 5y agoThat's funny because FJ cruisers are very sought after vehicles nowadays.
- Wistar 5y agoI have spent quality time with a couple different FJ Cruisers and it is a vehicle of which I am not very fond. The seating and interior, especially the headroom, is not comfortable for me and has poor outward visibility. More than those things, though, is that its driving feels coarse and unrefined on the street. It may be great offroad but it is not a rig I'd buy for my mostly street use.
- jupp0r 5y agoInteresting, I haven't had the opportunity to ever ride in one.
- stjohnswarts 5y agobecause you wouldn't hose it out with everything in it, only after you removed the seats and such. personally I never would, as it doesn't take that much extra elbow grease to just use a pail and wash cloth/dry cloth.
- caymanjim 5y agoThe whole floor is covered by a plastic sheet. It looks like it's safe to hose out, and unless it's damaged, it will hold pools of water. I never intentionally hosed out the whole interior of mine, but I did spray a lot of water around the front seats when I first got the car from someone who never cleaned it. The water pooled up to the point that I had to scoop it out and towel the rest. I suspect it was a bad idea, but if you saw it you'd think it's the best way to clean it.
- KennyBlanken 5y agoIn most cars it's okay to get the carpet pretty wet for cleaning, but you need to suck it dry with a wet/dry vac or proper carpet extractor and b)immediately dry it out as much as possible, like leaving it in hot sun with the windows and sunroof all cracked a bit and a fan or two circulating air around. Letting the car get pretty hot and then driving it around for a bunch with the A/C on will help, too. Car AC systems are very powerful. However, some car companies put control modules in the passenger footwell (like engine control modules, sometimes ABS or airbag controllers), so it's worth looking at a parts diagram or googling around first.
- maxerickson 5y agoApparently lots of people? 2009: https://www.elementownersclub.com/threads/forbes-article-perpetuates-hose-out-myth.59722/ https://www.elementownersclub.com/threads/forbes-article-per...
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoBecause most work vehicles (which the element more or less is) can be hosed out if you know where the stupid little rubber grommets you have to pull are. I clean my van with a 5gal bucket of water and a mop.
- ryandrake 5y agoHonestly, with the terrible manufacturing quality these days, plus the fact that everything has unexpected electronics crammed everywhere, I wouldn't "hose out" any product and expect it to work again, unless the only purpose of the product was to hold water.
- treesknees 5y agoJeep Wranglers have drain plugs in the floor, they're totally OK to hose out if you want to.
- notatoad 5y agoi have never owned or even ridden in a honda element, but the fact that you can hose it out is distinctly lodged in my memory. if it's not true i assume it wasn't claimed in an actual ad, but it was definitely a widely circulated fact at some point. in general i'd assuming hosing out a car is an awful idea, but if for some reason i had a dirty honda element, i'd probably hose it out.
- insaneirish 5y agoI have never owned an Element. I have never considered buying an Element. I would say I have above average awareness of the car market and am a competent DIY mechanic. With that preface, I have recommended an Element to multiple acquaintances on account of (seemingly) being able to hose out the inside! Whatever the root of this perceived 'capability', the dissemination of it was remarkably effective. If you asked me why I thought this, I would say that my recollection was that the official marketing campaign highlighted it as a feature.
- cplusplusfellow 5y agoIn 2003/2004, when the Element was initially marketed to the US market, I specifically recall seeing ads that indicated I could do such. Nearly bought one for that reason. Bought a Civic SI instead.
- tlavoie 5y agoWell, and it's hard to beat a Civic Si for fun driving, if that's your thing. (2009 here!)
- cplusplusfellow 5y agoMine was an 03, hatchback model. Very fun to drive and the stick shift was on the dashboard basically. I only wish I had spent more time driving it more interesting places, instead of to work in that wretched city.
- tlavoie 5y agoYeah, when I started looking at them, the sales guy at a dealership directed me to where I could find an on-ramp to bomb around. (After going very slowly to get there, past the usual speed traps.) Since then, I've moved to an island on the west coast. Roads are where the terrain allows, and nothing is straight or on a grid. Perfect!
- relaxing 5y ago
- iambateman 5y agoIt is a very common myth that you can hose out a Honda Element. I know people who owned them and specifically told me you could hose it off. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- medion 5y agoJust pressure washed out my 30 year old Land Rover today, outside AND in. Goes like a charm!
- wil421 5y agoDesigned for wading usually means it keeps water out. It doesn’t always mean water proof. If the windshield is removable I would think the inside would be more water proof than a vehicle that can wade, like a Wranger (water resistant inside) vs my Grand Cherokee (multiple seals to keep water out).
- Dork1234 5y agoBack in the early 2000s car dealers were trying to sell it on the fact you could hose it out. No rational car person would actually considered it since under the rubber-maid flooring was normal padding. If the padding wasn't there the car would be just too loud.