Car Width over the ages

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Mick F
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Re: Car Width over the ages

Post by Mick F »

............. and another thing.
Reversing.

Back in the olden days, you could turn round in your seat and drive backwards.
These days, if you do that, you can't see out the back! You have to use the door mirrors so the whole reversing thing is slower and difficult.

Put me in a car that I can see out of the back, and I can reverse as fast as I can drive forwards. I sometimes look for 2nd gear reverse when I drive our Clio. :D
Put me in the Fiat500 and the rear window and the rear side windows are too small to see well enough.

al_yrpal in his Stag can see very well rearwards I have no doubt. Great stuff IMO. :D
Mick F. Cornwall
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ArMoRothair
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Re: Car Width over the ages

Post by ArMoRothair »

661-Pete wrote: But with the old car it was easy to have a bike or two leaning up against the wall on one side. Not a prayer of that, now. So the garage is for the bikes and the car stays outside.


In our old family home our dad had a Renault 12 - mid range family car. With it parked in the car port, us kids could comfortably cycle past it.

My brother lives in the same house a generation later. He drives a Skoda Octavia which is probably a similar family-sized saloon car. To squeeze it into the car port he has to park the near side within a couple of millimetres of one wall and he can just manage to crack open the driver's enough to Houdini out of the car holding the edge of the door so it doesn't whack off the other wall.

This growth does really account for much of our current congestion. Where I live is Victorian terraced housing. When built it allowed sufficient room for carriages parked on both sides and carriages using the road. This worked okay until around the '80s, cars could pass each other. Now with bloat they can't.
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ArMoRothair
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Re: Car Width over the ages

Post by ArMoRothair »

This probably sums it up.

stoneydownplay_2015-Jun-18.jpg
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[XAP]Bob
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Re: Car Width over the ages

Post by [XAP]Bob »

No indication of the 40mph that the car is doing...
A shortcut has to be a challenge, otherwise it would just be the way. No situation is so dire that panic cannot make it worse.
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Heltor Chasca
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Re: Car Width over the ages

Post by Heltor Chasca »

ArMoRothair wrote:This probably sums it up.

stoneydownplay_2015-Jun-18.jpg


Brilliant
thirdcrank
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Re: Car Width over the ages

Post by thirdcrank »

Sixty years ago, when we lived over the shop where my mother was manageress, the owners of the shoe shop next door had a Humber Super Snipe. I can remember the reg: VNW 358.

Here's a pic of a similar car:
Super Snipe.jpg
Super Snipe.jpg (13.85 KiB) Viewed 810 times


Here's a "Dagenham Barge" in estate car version. This is the type of older car to compare with a Skoda Octavia.
Zephyr Mk4.jpg
Zephyr Mk4.jpg (11.04 KiB) Viewed 810 times

More recently, it seems to me that what happens is that within an individual manufacturer's range, the named models gradually get larger with each succeeding version until a smaller model is slotted in at the bottom. eg the Mark 1 VW Golf was a small car, which grew bigger and the Polo was introduced, which in turn had the smaller Up! below it in the range. The Toyota Yaris grew and the small Aygo was introduced.
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al_yrpal
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Re: Car Width over the ages

Post by al_yrpal »

Mick F wrote:............. and another thing.
Reversing.

Back in the olden days, you could turn round in your seat and drive backwards.
These days, if you do that, you can't see out the back!

al_yrpal in his Stag can see very well rearwards I have no doubt. Great stuff IMO. :D


..the Stag is ok with the hood down. My Eurobox on the other hand is useless, a Mitsu ASX. The door pillar really obscures your sideways rear view badly and you have to be careful pulling out. However the mirrors are good and it does have a rear camera which is really useful reversing and parking. No chance of getting it in my integral garage though, thats full of bikes and spanners etc anyway. :lol:

Al
Reuse, recycle, thus do your bit to save the planet.... Get stuff at auctions, Dump, Charity Shops, Facebook Marketplace, Ebay, Car Boots. Choose an Old House, and a Banger ..... And cycle as often as you can......
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Lance Dopestrong
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Re: Car Width over the ages

Post by Lance Dopestrong »

661-Pete wrote:This touches a sore point with me. I changed my car a few years ago - from Peugeot 306 to 308. You'd have thought that was a straight upgrade, similar level of model, similar performance, etc. etc. I checked all this before I bought - but I didn't check the width! The new car is significantly wider, and won't go in our garage. OK, well, it will, just, if I clear out all the junk first. But with the old car it was easy to have a bike or two leaning up against the wall on one side. Not a prayer of that, now. So the garage is for the bikes and the car stays outside.

So it looks like the point about space on narrow lanes is significant, too.

Some years ago my wife downsized from a 407 to a 308. Some downsize - got stuck in the car port the day she got it home.

I have a lot of gear to lug that needs to be with me most of the time, hence the Patrol. Even if I didn't need it id still have one because I like them. Because I cycle so much I struggle to do 4000 miles a year in the Troll, so overall I'm taking up a lot less road space and churning out a lot less pollution than my Sister who does 30,000 miles a year in her 1 litre Kia. The use to which you put it, and the amount of use are probably far more critical than the style of car itself when one is concerned with congestion.
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blackbike
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Re: Car Width over the ages

Post by blackbike »

People width has grown over the ages.

Driving around in a huge, vulgar car is the only way some people can move quickly or look smaller than they are.
Tonyf33
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Re: Car Width over the ages

Post by Tonyf33 »

tatanab wrote:Increased width is due to two factors:
1. Equipment - electric windows take space as do side impact bars and side airbags need room to operate.
2. International market - Land Rover products got noticeably wider when taken over by Ford some years ago. An insider told me it was to suit the American market.

Why do people need large vehicles? I asked this of a work colleague who "needed" a Toyota Previa (probably considered quite small now) to move his 2 young children about. Apparently it is necessary to carry several cubic metres of "stuff" when transporting a child these days - ok, I concede that child seats are needed when they were not previously.

As someone whom has always had large quads since I started playing rugby at school and broad in the shoulders there's nothing worse than being on a journey of even relatively short distance in cars that are small and have small/pitiful seats and not enough leg room width wise. My mum owns a new Skoda Fabia, it's actually 1732mm wide and to me though the seats are cmfy enough the width for legs is much narrower than my 14yr old passat estate which is 1740mm wide (I have impact beams in mine too), when it came out it was considered to be a 'large' family estate yet now it looks like a 'compact' or mid sized car by comparison to many new fat bulgers.

Also I don't actually think it is the additional width being the problem, the mirrors and vision of new modern cars are much much better than 30, 40, 50 years ago, it boils down to attitude and to a degree the ability of the driver, anything else is a bulldust excuse.
mrjemm
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Re: Car Width over the ages

Post by mrjemm »

I always note how individual models of cars have swollen over time.

Clios.
Twingos (now bigger than early clios). Latest gen bit of an oddball, but last gen was HUGE leap from original (no UK release).
Pandas. Each version consierably bigger than last.
500... Well, like the Mini, it's not really related to the original beyond the badge, but compare them!!!

Talking of the 500, apparently it's based on the same 'subframe' (or whatever it's called) as the Panda. Yet the Panda (at least the last gen, which was the model when the 500 came out) is so much bigger inside, and actually narrower if anything. Far better to drive too. Shows to me that a lot of it is style over content. Such a bloater.

And then come the SUV styled versions of these cars... 500X?! Oh my. At least it's better looking in the flesh than the 'Mini' one (ha!). Why do they bother when they already produce such a fantastic small 4x4 in the Panda? (If that's your thing)... Yup, style over content.

Thing is, there have been some great small cars, and still are many out there. In France at mo and saw a 2CV yesterday. Not tiny, but narrow and so effective. Lots of micro cars about too. Japan produced the Kei cars, and over there, there's lots of other cool small cars that never make it over here. The true child of the original 500, the 126 disappeared without a trace, but when I was last in Italy and further East, there's still plenty of them (and their E European cousins). These, I think, became the Cinqecento (yup, means 500, dunnit)/Siecento through evolution, yet suddenly from them to the 500... Ewww. I still fancy a Suzuki SC100 one day... Oooh, am I thinking nicely about a car? Odd.

Be warned... I've read rumours of new 2CV and R5. How terrible if they do the same thing to them.

My, how I've wittered.
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chris_suffolk
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Re: Car Width over the ages

Post by chris_suffolk »

Just a thought, but are cars getting bigger because their occupants are getting bigger too? Which came first, lack of exercise in the general population, or large comfy cars to move them all around?
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jan19
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Re: Car Width over the ages

Post by jan19 »

We couldn't possibly get either of our cars in the garage. Where would we keep the bikes (we have 5, his 3, mine, and a spare our daughter occasionally uses)?

Apart from that, although one of the cars would fit in the garage - neither of our cars is big, because we just don't need a big car - the garage is set at an awkward angle to the house and trying to get in and out would be a real pain. We just use it as an extra storeroom.

I was amused though when one of our neighbours extended their house, which included a new integral garage. There was no way their car, a big 4x4 was ever going to fit in it.... :roll:

Jan
thirdcrank
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Re: Car Width over the ages

Post by thirdcrank »

ArMoRothair wrote:This probably sums it up.

stoneydownplay_2015-Jun-18.jpg


While that's obviously amusing, the squeezing of cyclists surely comes from the sheer increase in numbers of cars, rather than an increase in their width. A car may be useful to some people when on the move, but it's generally a nuisance when it has to be parked and that's aggravated by things like families with several cars or car owners who live in places like terraced streets without even a tiny front garden to pave over.

For various reasons, it's now come to be acceptable to park on the footway to minimise the obstruction to motor traffic. This applies whether it's a tiny car or a huge one.

Beyond that, I'm saying that some modern cars are big, but so were some older ones. The nature of a lot of car styling is to emphasise a bulky appearance and a front modelled on the faces of aggressive animals. Some modern cars such as SUV's increase the space for occupants by increasing height, rather than length and that can add to their bulky appearance, but I had an original Yaris which was pretty compact and gained space inside by being appreciably taller. I believe that feature was to meet a requirement in Japan that a car owner should have a space to keep it. Probably a good idea but a non-starter here.
brooksby
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Re: Car Width over the ages

Post by brooksby »

Another point to consider is that most modern SUVs (that people just have to have), actually have less room in them than older vehicles.

Our family car (my wife's car, really) is a 1973 VW microbus. A typical modern SUV is taller, longer, and wider, yet has only five seats and has room in the back for a suitcase. Our 'bus - even with the middle bench taken out (currently languishing in the shed) - has five seats, a cargo bay at the back, and then a space in the middle five feet wide by six feet long. We can (and have) fit four bicycles just in that middle section.
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