CARS and other vehicles have been with us for more than a hundred years and over that time, a lot of traditions, cultures and myths have arisen too.
While they are complex machines made up of many different moving parts, we still carry stories about carries that are no longer relevant because of years of technological improvements. Despite this, there are also many myths which were already false when they were first spoken. Here are three car myths.
Warm a cold engine before driving
Only much older cars needed to be warmed before driving and only in much colder weather than we get in Mzansi.
Unless you need to melt 5cm-thick ice off your engine, you don’t need to warm it up.
Larger cars are safer in a crash
This is not true. Studies show that vehicle weight is much less important to safety than most people believe. Smaller, lightweight cars, such as the VW Up and Suzuki Ignis are incredibly safe thanks to improvements to safety technology.
Manuals use less fuel than automatics
Yes, automatics did use less fuel than manual gearboxes but this was decades ago.
New gear technology, such as the continuously variable transmission, has definitely ended the fuel-saving advantage manual gearboxes had over automatics.
