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The 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 t

The 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 ago
Truth. 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 ago
  I'm tentatively morbidity curious what happened to the VW bug, Fits and other cars this friend came in contact with.
  - zbrozek 5y ago
    I'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 ago
      My 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.
      - mschuster91 5y ago
        At that point they're a danger for others on the road.
      - exikyut 5y ago
        With my other comment upthread taken into account, and some awkward but necessary discussion about mental health gotten out of the way, I wonder if it might be an interesting idea to try track/rally racing. My thinking is here that if your friend has ADHD, that naturally imposes a "don't want to develop focus on details because not interesting" <-> "unaware of details in everyday life because no developed subconscious awareness of them" problem. Track and rally racing could neatly solve both sides of this status quo by merging them a la "oh no must learn to focus on details so as not to flip car and die". The idea would be to create a situation that is interesting enough to supercede the "I will treat this situation like a TV remote I have no idea how to use and push all the buttons on it until it works" instinct, by tuning the mental stimulus on the situation to correct for the inattentiveness threshold. A bit like putting music on to concentrate, just... faster. It's crazy enough it might work, *if* the caveats and risks can be managed. Apparently race drivers have the lowest reflexes of any sport. That sounds both like a good skill to have if you're inattentive, and kind of mutually incompatible with inattentiveness in the first place (like if you're a race driver it would basically just kick the inattentiveness out the window to some extent). Obviously this is a vErY bAd iDeA on its face, and would only be wise after some analysis of mental dysfunction and if this person was prepared to listen to everything the trained driver in the passenger seat was instructing them to do (in terms of pacing and learning and not simply just going "yay!" *floor accelerator*).
        5y ago
  - RajT88 5y ago
    There are so many stories... I will start before the Bug: Daewoo Nubira: Drove it until the brakes fell off. Among other oopsies. VW Bug: Among about $5k in damage from various bad decisions, eventually somehow got T-Boned on his way to traffic safety school. (Too many speeding tickets) He literally rolled up to traffic safety school in a wrecked car. Fit: I have asked a few times about the Honda fits. First time went like, "Hey is that the same Fit as before?" "No, shutup." No longer driving a Fit. Not sure what he has. It has been a colorful friendship.
    - KennyBlanken 5y ago
      Maybe at some point you should suggest to your friend that they start taking driving more seriously before they kill someone. I'd be stunned if they haven't injured someone yet. I just don't get how "bad driver" is a haw-haw thing instead of a "what the hell wrong with you" thing.
      - RajT88 5y ago
        It's both. I try to exert some good influence where I can, but in general I do worry a lot about that particular friend.
    - exikyut 5y ago
      My initial response was to suggest that next time you do anything like truth-or-dare, dare him to install a dashcam and press the save button and send you the footage every time. But that's obviously not really going to have a hilarious endgame at the end of the day, it's not like it'd be a lucky dashcam that's always in the right place at the right time capturing other cars. It'd just be awkward for everyone. Objectively speaking (in the interests of constructive assistance) I wonder if this person may be somewhere around "low but definitely non-zero" on the Kevin Spectrum (ad-hoc definition taken from https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/219w2o//cgbhkwp/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/219w2o//cgbhkwp/). If relevant, my next thought is whether some degree of cognitive issues may run in the family. I've noticed that one of the significant impacts of the developmental delays and perpetual catchup associated with my high-functioning autism has been a deeply-ingrained awareness of not just feeling "behind the curve" like I'm perpetually scrambling to keep up, but having hard evidence left right and center that I really am not simply Getting Gud. If this person grew up in either a hostile environment that cultivated a belief that it was impossible to ever do anything right, or simply a situation devoid of leadership to the extent he was left going round in circles due to lack of (for want of a better way to say it) developmental autocue, I could totally see some really terrible social anxiety, self-loathing, social detachment, and compounded awkwardness and depression developing from that. Getting traffic-jammed at the entry to a speedway that always seems too fast to merge onto, or stuck in front of a street curb with duckling legs that never grow to the point of scaling, can have an impact over the long term - The Show Must Go On, and staying relevant isn't really a question in the fight for survival, so the only really viable option is to hack it and pretend that everything mostly works. Extrapolating this status quo and envisaging the worst-case-scenario end state, I'd imagine it would be like waking up one day and realizing the biggest themes in my life were a) the giant delta between how much I pretend to have sorted out and what I can really keep up with, b) how much I'm pretty much blindly depending on some circumstantial alignment to happen soon to provide some opportunity to catch up and maybe get some confidence, c) the terrifyingly disproportionate amount of calling life's bluff I'm doing on a regular basis and d) how much I have have to cram this stuff into the nearest can and sit on the lid in order to cope. If the situation I was in resembled the above, attempting to discuss it (particularly considering (d)) would probably produce a reactive and shouty mess. It would be very difficult. But it could prove life-saving.
- paganel 5y ago
  Props to your friend, I think it really takes some determination to destroy not one, but two Honda Fits (or Jazz, as it's called over here in Europe). Nice little cars, I was looking at maybe purchasing one but unfortunately their "fame" got to them so that the latest generation/variant is a little over-priced compared to other models from the same class, or so it seems to me.
  - a2tech 5y ago
    As my friend discovered all it really takes is letting it sit in your driveway for a year (COVID) and the squirrels getting at the wiring...
  - soylentcola 5y ago
    Still, count yourself lucky. In the US, they stopped selling them, opting to push people toward the HR-V instead. I'm not much of a car guy, but I have a Fit which I bought used for under $10k cash, low mileage, etc. The HR-V is significantly more expensive and doesn't offer anything I particularly need for the added cost, so if I were to replace my current Fit, I wouldn't be likely to buy an HR-V.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
knight17 5y ago
I think you are right, here is Popular Science (December 2002): "The Element's rubber floors can be hosed down, ...." https://books.google.ca/books?id=0BvVSP2ugU4C&lpg=PA47&dq=honda%20element%20water%20hose%20down&pg=PA53#v=onepage&q=honda%20element%20hosed%20down&f=false https://books.google.ca/books?id=0BvVSP2ugU4C&lpg=PA47&dq=ho...
- dghughes 5y ago
  I had looked at a Honda Element it was meant to be a utility vehicle of sorts meaning you could get it dirty and clean it easily. The floors as I recall were tough, rough, bumpy plastic very thick. It was obvious the intention of the vehicle with a flat rear floor in the rear of the vehicle was meant to be used to carry things not just people.
Arrath 5y ago
I will say I absolutely preferred my 'farmer spec' base model truck that had, among other things, plastic on the floor rather than carpet. Much easier to vacuum and brush out the dried mud and dirt. Never did try to take a hose to it.

RajT88 5y ago

Truth. 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 ago
I'm tentatively morbidity curious what happened to the VW bug, Fits and other cars this friend came in contact with.
- zbrozek 5y ago
  I'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 ago
    My 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.
    - mschuster91 5y ago
      At that point they're a danger for others on the road.
    - exikyut 5y ago
      With my other comment upthread taken into account, and some awkward but necessary discussion about mental health gotten out of the way, I wonder if it might be an interesting idea to try track/rally racing. My thinking is here that if your friend has ADHD, that naturally imposes a "don't want to develop focus on details because not interesting" <-> "unaware of details in everyday life because no developed subconscious awareness of them" problem. Track and rally racing could neatly solve both sides of this status quo by merging them a la "oh no must learn to focus on details so as not to flip car and die". The idea would be to create a situation that is interesting enough to supercede the "I will treat this situation like a TV remote I have no idea how to use and push all the buttons on it until it works" instinct, by tuning the mental stimulus on the situation to correct for the inattentiveness threshold. A bit like putting music on to concentrate, just... faster. It's crazy enough it might work, *if* the caveats and risks can be managed. Apparently race drivers have the lowest reflexes of any sport. That sounds both like a good skill to have if you're inattentive, and kind of mutually incompatible with inattentiveness in the first place (like if you're a race driver it would basically just kick the inattentiveness out the window to some extent). Obviously this is a vErY bAd iDeA on its face, and would only be wise after some analysis of mental dysfunction and if this person was prepared to listen to everything the trained driver in the passenger seat was instructing them to do (in terms of pacing and learning and not simply just going "yay!" *floor accelerator*).
      - 5y ago
- RajT88 5y ago
  There are so many stories... I will start before the Bug: Daewoo Nubira: Drove it until the brakes fell off. Among other oopsies. VW Bug: Among about $5k in damage from various bad decisions, eventually somehow got T-Boned on his way to traffic safety school. (Too many speeding tickets) He literally rolled up to traffic safety school in a wrecked car. Fit: I have asked a few times about the Honda fits. First time went like, "Hey is that the same Fit as before?" "No, shutup." No longer driving a Fit. Not sure what he has. It has been a colorful friendship.
  - KennyBlanken 5y ago
    Maybe at some point you should suggest to your friend that they start taking driving more seriously before they kill someone. I'd be stunned if they haven't injured someone yet. I just don't get how "bad driver" is a haw-haw thing instead of a "what the hell wrong with you" thing.
    - RajT88 5y ago
      It's both. I try to exert some good influence where I can, but in general I do worry a lot about that particular friend.
  - exikyut 5y ago
    My initial response was to suggest that next time you do anything like truth-or-dare, dare him to install a dashcam and press the save button and send you the footage every time. But that's obviously not really going to have a hilarious endgame at the end of the day, it's not like it'd be a lucky dashcam that's always in the right place at the right time capturing other cars. It'd just be awkward for everyone. Objectively speaking (in the interests of constructive assistance) I wonder if this person may be somewhere around "low but definitely non-zero" on the Kevin Spectrum (ad-hoc definition taken from https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/219w2o//cgbhkwp/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/219w2o//cgbhkwp/). If relevant, my next thought is whether some degree of cognitive issues may run in the family. I've noticed that one of the significant impacts of the developmental delays and perpetual catchup associated with my high-functioning autism has been a deeply-ingrained awareness of not just feeling "behind the curve" like I'm perpetually scrambling to keep up, but having hard evidence left right and center that I really am not simply Getting Gud. If this person grew up in either a hostile environment that cultivated a belief that it was impossible to ever do anything right, or simply a situation devoid of leadership to the extent he was left going round in circles due to lack of (for want of a better way to say it) developmental autocue, I could totally see some really terrible social anxiety, self-loathing, social detachment, and compounded awkwardness and depression developing from that. Getting traffic-jammed at the entry to a speedway that always seems too fast to merge onto, or stuck in front of a street curb with duckling legs that never grow to the point of scaling, can have an impact over the long term - The Show Must Go On, and staying relevant isn't really a question in the fight for survival, so the only really viable option is to hack it and pretend that everything mostly works. Extrapolating this status quo and envisaging the worst-case-scenario end state, I'd imagine it would be like waking up one day and realizing the biggest themes in my life were a) the giant delta between how much I pretend to have sorted out and what I can really keep up with, b) how much I'm pretty much blindly depending on some circumstantial alignment to happen soon to provide some opportunity to catch up and maybe get some confidence, c) the terrifyingly disproportionate amount of calling life's bluff I'm doing on a regular basis and d) how much I have have to cram this stuff into the nearest can and sit on the lid in order to cope. If the situation I was in resembled the above, attempting to discuss it (particularly considering (d)) would probably produce a reactive and shouty mess. It would be very difficult. But it could prove life-saving.
paganel 5y ago
Props to your friend, I think it really takes some determination to destroy not one, but two Honda Fits (or Jazz, as it's called over here in Europe). Nice little cars, I was looking at maybe purchasing one but unfortunately their "fame" got to them so that the latest generation/variant is a little over-priced compared to other models from the same class, or so it seems to me.
- a2tech 5y ago
  As my friend discovered all it really takes is letting it sit in your driveway for a year (COVID) and the squirrels getting at the wiring...
- soylentcola 5y ago
  Still, count yourself lucky. In the US, they stopped selling them, opting to push people toward the HR-V instead. I'm not much of a car guy, but I have a Fit which I bought used for under $10k cash, low mileage, etc. The HR-V is significantly more expensive and doesn't offer anything I particularly need for the added cost, so if I were to replace my current Fit, I wouldn't be likely to buy an HR-V.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

knight17 5y ago

I think you are right, here is Popular Science (December 2002): "The Element's rubber floors can be hosed down, ...." https://books.google.ca/books?id=0BvVSP2ugU4C&lpg=PA47&dq=honda%20element%20water%20hose%20down&pg=PA53#v=onepage&q=honda%20element%20hosed%20down&f=false https://books.google.ca/books?id=0BvVSP2ugU4C&lpg=PA47&dq=ho...

dghughes 5y ago
I had looked at a Honda Element it was meant to be a utility vehicle of sorts meaning you could get it dirty and clean it easily. The floors as I recall were tough, rough, bumpy plastic very thick. It was obvious the intention of the vehicle with a flat rear floor in the rear of the vehicle was meant to be used to carry things not just people.

Arrath 5y ago

I will say I absolutely preferred my 'farmer spec' base model truck that had, among other things, plastic on the floor rather than carpet. Much easier to vacuum and brush out the dried mud and dirt. Never did try to take a hose to it.