Radio automatic turnoff: nothing can go wrong go wrong go wrong

GM just doesn't sweat the details. There's lots of niggling little things to hate about the Impala, not the least of which are the doors that you can't push fully open from a seated position but love to swing shut on you while you're halfway out of the car, and the parking brake that goes out of adjustment between oil changes.

NB: my experiences are with an '05, maybe the reskin changed some of these issues. But I'm still hoping for a different car next time around (only 8500 more miles! I can't wait!)

nate

If all you want is the basic mileage, (not the trip odometer reading), there's no need to use keys. Just push the button next to the odo & it will show the miles for about 10 seconds.

Irritating, to say the least.

There is a time limit on the retained accessory power, no matter whether you open the driver's door or not. If you would sit there and wait, you will find that the radio eventually cuts off no matter how tricky you get exiting the passenger door.

Ed

All I can say is my experiences are what they are... having grown up in PA (and even now my driveway has a steep slope) I set the parking brake every time I leave the car, and it's been adjusted at least twice already and it's not working again - feels like there is a spring or something in the linkage somewhere, doesn't feel directly connected to the cable. I can push the pedal all the way to the floor and it doesn't keep the car from rolling back onto the park pawl. I'll ask the garage to tighten it up whenever I think of it and it'll work for a while and then within a month it'll stop working again.

Still not as annoying as the driver's door that actively tries to kill me every time I get out of the car. there's a nice boot print on the map pocket where I kick it every time I open the door to keep it from swinging shut on me before I can get out of the car. (learned that trick right quick after spilling about half a cup of coffee into my hard hat and all over a roll of drawings.) Problem is that it tends to shut itself even on level ground, and the first "catch" in the hinges isn't strong enough to hold the door open, but a normal person's arms aren't long enough to fully open the door until you are already out of the seat.

I forgot to mention the keyless entry that requires about 5 button presses to unlock the door... can't count the number of times I've nearly peeled off one of my fingernails on those #$%^ door pulls thinking the door was unlocked when it wasn't... speaking of which, why did it take GM so long to move away from those horrible flapper style door handles to a proper loop style like everyone else? (I believe those are actually required in ECE countries) the old chrome loop-and-button things were perfectly fine too, why mess with a perfectly functional design?

What's the deal with providing a rear window defogger but no heated outside mirrors? It's way easier to scrape ice off the rear window than it is those little mirrors...

I swear, my 50 year old Studebaker doesn't have nearly as many ergonomic utter and complete failures as Vlad the Impala and is more fun to drive to boot. (of course, it would be nice to *have* outside mirrors, rear window defogger, windhshield washers, air conditioning, etc...)

I suspect that more uplevel versions of my car might have some of the things I'm missing, although I think GM might have shot themselves in the foot by selling such El Strippo vehicles as fleet vehicles... people who drive fleet cars do occasionally buy personal use vehicles as well, you know, and my impression of GM based on this car isn't particularly good. And, of course, higher trim levels can't fix fundamental problems like the design of the doors and handles, although I did see that they provided proper door handles for the '06 facelift.\

I'm just bumming that the supposed Zeta-platform RWD Impala keeps getting pushed back/maybe cancelled... I can't imagine how that couldn't be a VAST improvement over the current platform.

nate

Not really a bug, just a function of the retained accessory power feature. Once you get used to having retained accessory power you tend to stop, turn off the engine then roll up the windows, turn off the wipers, close the sunroof (hopefully not all on the same day) or just wait to hear the last bit of your favorite song. Problem was that while the driver was doing this stuff the kids opened the doors cutting off the accessory power so the driver had to put the key back in again to finish whatever he/she was doing. Now they have changed it so only the driver door will cut the power.

Retained accessory power has a fixed time limit so even if you walk away and leave the radio on everything cuts off after a while. I think it is something like 15 minutes.

Steve B.

Hi!

I'd be very surprised if the radio would play until the battery was dead. This is not exactly a new feature (my 2003 S-10 has it!), and in every manual I've seen, GM says the retained accessory power feature will turn off in twenty minutes.

It works on my truck...

William

It actually isn't a new feature at all. My 1996 Bonneville has it.