Physiology

You do not want to hear a clunk from your left front when tagging a small bump while going around a corner, especially if you've just poured mid-four figures into chassis maintenance and upgrades. So Momoko has been a guest at the dealer for the last week, first getting a new transmission mount and now waiting for turnaround on a warranty claim for a possibly defective front strut.

And I've been driving a new CX-30 AWD Turbo with the Premium Plus package, the service loaner cheerfully provided while we sort this out (apparently pouring mid-four figures into chassis maintenance and upgrades earns you a bit of goodwill from the dealer), and I have not been enjoying myself.

It's taken a few days to understand exactly why I have not been enjoying myself, though.

Dear reader: Before you dismiss this as another tired anti-crossover whingefest and go do your taxes or something, be advised that isn't one of those. Nor is it a cranky rant railing against a full battery of modern safety/convenience sensors and warnings, which could certainly be written and which makes driving this thing feel like you're sitting next to a neurotic shoulder-tapping droid (speed limit 55! something's next to you! here, let me turn the headlights on! something's in front of you! here, let me project how fast you're going so you can't miss it, and it's still speed limit 55!) but again, not now.

I think I've figured out something that concerns myself specifically, but I wonder if it's a subliminal but still present concern for a fair number of people.

Historical background: I have a very, occasionally annoyingly sensitive inner ear. I was always the kid that got carsick in our big Buick station wagon. The enjoyment of an otherwise fantastic whale-watching trip off Cape Cod a few years back was mitigated by my distress when the boat started to pivot all over the place and my stomach did much the same. This may have been part of the issue with the motorcycle, especially with the way the rear tire wavered over pavement seams.

And it did not, and does not, take long in the CX-30 for some sense of uneasiness and a mild headache to settle in place.

I seriously wonder if being up that much higher than usual for me, and especially the way my head waves around when turning and going over rough pavement, is giving my sense of equilibrium a pretty meaningful and unappreciated workout.

More history: When official family car duties shifted from the Buick to a first-generation Ford Taurus with its vastly better body control, my motion-sickness issues simply stopped. I've never owned anything taller or more upright than either my dear departed Mercedes W123 or maybe the Jetta, and neither of those were what anyone would call high-riding. I have been a passenger in any number of taller vehicles, though, and few if any have been memorably endearing.

Much more recently, one of the thrilling upsides to the new suspension on the 3 - Racing Beat springs, about 20% firmer and a half-inch lower than stock, and Koni Special Active dampers - is the firmer ride motions and subsequent reduced roll. (Seriously, the package is an absolute home run. Better steering feel, much better turn-in, reduced impact harshness (!), it is exactly what I wanted and expected and I don't get to say that often enough in this life.)

Go from that into the CX-30 and its fairly lumpy ride and the way that I'm getting wobbled around at a very unusual-for-me amplitude, and I think a good part of my dislike for crossovers is about a very innate sense of motion and how I simply do not correlate with their very design.

https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=120357

Expand this a bit. Maybe it's me, but I don't think it's only me: does the popular preference for a higher seating position that drives so many crossover sales have a quiet downside in subtle but real occupant discomfort, at least for a fair part of the population?

The nuances of tuning - powertrain, chassis, seats, all of it - and perception of same do not get a lot of attention or respect in a very spec-sheet-heavy culture like ours, despite their outsize effect on our actual appreciation for a vehicle. The plight of so many owners of really good cars is convincing their peers that it's all the intangibles of driving and using that make something so gratifying.

It's a game of subtleties and understandings, and also a fair number of judgement calls and personal preferences. Not everyone is going to be fully in alignment with the feel of, oh, random example: a 1995 BMW M3. There's actually grounds for some to prefer the additional layer of isolation and padding and tranquility in something like a Volvo sedan, especially over long distances if that's someone's reality.

But it sometimes takes time to fully perceive an issue or preference, and even more to understand why that exists if that can be done at all. And modern vehicle sales are specifically not designed to allow customers to get a really through sense of a vehicle, because a developed personal preference is usually the enemy of a quickly closed deal.

And then back to crossovers. Not the numb handling, not the excess fuel consumption, not the projected image of rugged yet refined individualism as a reflection of manifold social anxieties, but simply the higher seating position that so many people say is the great benefit of the genre and its effect on one's sense of equilibrium.

So: Given the overwhelming popularity of these creations, I wonder if a subtle epidemic of mild motion sickness is a small but real part of why we as a society are so grumpy and irritated lately.

There are any number of other elements of daily life that combine popular surface appeal with quiet but real liabilities (looking at you next to me here, iPhone) but most of them aren't as physical. Fewer still are as hard to accept when you're trying to remind yourself that the cause of the problem is actually supposed to be an advantage.

So as I wait for Momoko to be restored to full health and uneasily consider what's available as a future consideration that works for me, here's to hoping that properly low cars maintain a meaningful place in the market. We need more balanced and harmonious options out there.