Interesting that you mentioned rust, thank goodness the members here don’t see that much these days… ha ha ha
My wife has HUD and I just don’t look at it and we have switched off the lane assist etc… and her Renault digital dash doesn’t have normal heater controls which is a real pain!!!
Three things I’ll never have on a car I’m considering buying, I’ll walk away;
. Automatic parking brake.
That useless Renault claimed to have Hill Start Assist, but it didn’t work unless the hill was something like a 1 in 4 and it didn’t have a proper manual option for selecting it other than the button down below one’s left knee.
An Alfa Romeo 159 Q4 we were upgraded to the next time I hired in France was much better, the auto parking brake could be set to manual mode. After pushing the button where a handbrake should be to park or hill start you just drove of with it on and it believed you and released (with an audible grunt), kangaroo start however.
. Proximity auto unlock (= please steal me)
A neighbour up the road has festooned his house and several others with HD cameras as part of his contribution to Neighbourhood Watch.
Last year, the cameras picked up two pedestrians casually wandering down the road very late at night, pausing by each car and apparently doing a lot of texting. The footage showed they also had a little box attached to the phone. When one of the cars unlocked one got in and drove it away. The other went back to the car they had arrived in and parked outside the neighbour’s house. Then he changed its number plates right under the cameras before driving off.
Except neither car one was theirs. Fortunately the footage was good enough they were identified and arrested the next day. They and some associates are still inside unless let out early.
.HUD
IMHO a HUD is one more way of making sure the car has a shorter service life and can be recycled sooner, but at the expense of personal injury to the occupants.
I went to some trouble to eliminate reflection in the windscreen obstructing my view of the road ahead on two of the cars I’ve driven.
Our Vextra had a light grey dash top, so some black felt stuck down onto it gave a clear view forwards.
A hired Corsa had a stupid shiny chrome V on top of the black dash, so some black tape sorted that, and I forgot to remove it before returning it a couple of weeks later - but the agent said “That’s a good idea!”
I’d prefer not to have;
. Power steering.
If my old 30cwt Series IV Humber Hawk could have light steering on its fat ER70 XJ6 tyres without power assist and handle like a mini, then why does a modern Mini need it? My old Astra with manual steering had a friction pad to slow it down and it was still lighter and much more relaxing to drive than the Vextra was with power.
.Tinted rear windows
Our Mazda3 has them, and thick C pillars, so I needed to add a reversing camera just to see out the back for parking! I compromised because it was a very, very good pre-reg deal, and still had a proper handbrake and push button key locks.
Humber Hawk - handle like a Mini ??? My recollection was that driving a Hawk was like trying to dock an aircraft carrier in a gale . Not so much Mini as hippo…
You know you are cracking on the years when you can actually recall the mighty Hawks being delivered to a Rootes dealer opposite your school.
Oh dear…
Have we mentioned cigarette lighter yet? They seem to have come and gone again in my time driving… 
Powered windscreen wipers (let alone intermittent - my Dad had me thinking he was a magician by saying “Now!” every 7 seconds in his new company Toyota Corolla!)
Talking of window wipers, what about headlamp washers and wipers. I remember working at a Mazda dealers, in the parts dept, when they first came out on Mazdas.
Already on Volvo
I drove my Uncle’s 60’s Hawk when I was about 20. You’re right John, the handling certain made an impression on me, but not in a good way. I also recall it had a four speed column change, something that is (almost) making a return with modern automatics which have the selector lever on the column.
JS
Leeds Lord Mayoral car was a Humber Pullman IIRC, when I started my apprenticeship in 1970. It used to frequent the fitters shop for servicing etc, until they decommissioned it not long after. Massive thing, didn’t look out of place alongside the ex military petrol engined Bedford wagons we had at the time! 
not a lot of driver aids on the wagons!
Barrie
The Mini Moke I had when I lived in Seychelles was a brilliant, brilliant little car.
However, as parts were hard to come by at times, for a few months I had
No starter motor
No hand brake
No windscreen wiper motor
Very little grip in the wet because there were no new tyres (the need for tread was removed from the MOT equivalent far a time!)
All in a car that’s essentially a chassis with a windscreen.
On an island that is mountains covered in rainforest.
Genuinely lots of fun. Compared to having to toboggan-start a car and then drive it up a mountain in torrential rain with no doors, roof or wipers even basic driver aids seem a bit of a luxury!
Anecdote aside, there were friends out there who hated Mokes because they didn’t have any driver aids really (and were a bit unsafe!) but for me that was a huge part of their appeal. I’d still much rather have an NA than an ND for that reason, and love our old VW T4 Caravelle more than I would a T6. I understand the benefits but even though you can have a modern car that is involving to drive it all feels a bit…detached…when so many things are done for you.
Emma, my Moke. (During better times when the tyres had tread!)
With the original cross-plys, I agree 100%. The Dunlop ER70 SP Sport radials transformed it, the change was amazing. I could flip it through the roundabouts on the old A40 into London (when it was still de-restricted) without dropping below 50. With the old tyres it would have just slid and grumbled, 30 if you were lucky. Even parking was a lot easier with the radials, no heaving needed. That Hawk had double wishbone front suspension and anti roll bar, but cart springs on the back and anti roll bar.
It was a very well built car with a mostly sophisticated design, but let down by some very strange
weaknesses, such as screw fulcrum pins on the front suspension instead of bushes or ball joints, and a low geared transmission that allowed the obsolete longstroke engine to over-rev at only 70.
I could see why they had their following but also why the firm went bust.
Column change allowed for a bench front seat, so it was a six-up car.
I changed the gearbox intermediate bearing (pin cluster) to a balled bush, and also no4 piston (weird T-Slot type where the crown collapsed) to a normal Hepolite.
It was the easiest car to work on I ever owned, with a superb workshop manual I still have. (That Rootes manual puts all the recent boiler-plated fuzzy-photo Haynes offerings to shame.)
Vacuum powered wipers on my old Fords. They were a variable speed safety feature, because they made you drive slower in the rain; foot flat = no vacuum = no wipe.
But also no screen wash I carried a squeezy bottle and used to lean forward out the drivers window to put some liquid on the screen!
Eventually on my MK2 Farnham Estate Zodiac I retro-fitted a wash-kit from Holts, yet another switch added to the dash alongside the long-range driving spot, the fog lamp, reversing light and Redex Lubrocharger+Vacuum gauge (pic lifted from Google).
Screen wash! Don’t you just plough into puddles and hope the water splashes the screen?!
AH now there’s two that haven’t been mentioned, I was reminded of them this morning when I got into my partner’s car 
. Being different heights I had to adjust the steering wheel height and adjust the seating, so adjustable steering and electric memory seat positioning.
This only became necessary when airbags were added and the wheel went further away to rub against ones legs.
When buying the Vextra we said “No sale, this car doesn’t fit us”.
The dealer said “Iit’s standard because of the airbag.”
I pointed out “The Volvo, BMW, Audi and VW cars we’ve already looked at had it, why not GM?”
He went very quiet, then made a phone call, and came back with “Next year’s Vectra will have it. I can do you a deal on a pre-order.”
We ended up with a GLS Vextra with all the bells and whistles for less than the basic equivalent model price on all those other cars sans these extras. First time that car broke down was twenty years later, and so I scrapped it, rustfree. 
The most helpful driver aid during my driving career has been the addition of synchromesh to gearboxes
My dad 's Hawk always had a lingering smell of vomit. I assume this was due to my car sick prone sister but , having sat in another Humber recently , maybe they all did.? I do remember the interminable journey from home , near Castleford in the West Riding , en route to the summer holiday on the Lleyn Peninsula . Pre M62 it took about 8 hours and the poor old Hawk’s 70 somehing bhp (from a 2.2 litre 4 ! ) struggled over the Pennines … And Snowdonia …
The Rover 3 Litre dad replaced it with was a quantum leap - powerful , classy(in looks equipment and design ) , superbly comfy and lovely to drive .
Apart from the steering which tried to break your wrists with kickback if you hit a bad bump .
One last driver aid which would only be obvious if were driving a car pre about 1950ish.
Headlamp beam control operated on the steering column and not with a foot operated switch.
Always difficult to find making you dazzle the oncoming motorist who then “flashed” you in revenge.
Have we had I-STOP🤔
Designed for the environment but more useful for the tight Fuel savers😉
Very clever the way it works on the Mazda. Not sure how the other manufactures work. Had it on our diesel Golf which may have been starter motor related?
