Why are cars getting wider

[Zephirum]

There are certainly some extreme examples waddling the streets of many "civilised" countries.

[The Natural Philosopher]

The Abottopotamous springs to mind...

[Zephirum]

Not sure who that is sorry.

[Tim Watts]

It's partly the doors are getting thicker with the impact protection.

But they could save space in other areas. A Santa Fe I hired last summer had an auto gearbox (electronic) and an electronic parking brake.

They could have put both somewhere else and lost the entire centre console space.

[The Natural Philosopher]

[DerbyBorn]

Two door cars are the worse as the door are so much longer.

[Jim White]

Bastard! Mind-Bleach stock now exhausted to no avail. Bleurgh.

[Stuart Noble]

Amply illustrated by my neighbour's new Mustang. He's only had it for a month and the door's bashed in.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

There's actually not much difference in size between a manual and auto box. Not sure about a parking brake.

[Tim Watts]

Yes - our MINI is worse than the Touran for that reason. Please the MINI is low down so you need more door opening to get out. The Touran, you are already at near standing height so can just slide out sideways.

[Tim Watts]

It's a pity that with modern car bodystyles, that it's hard to make ones with sliding doors.

But I wonder if it's actually impossible? Would have to be a 2 door car or just the rear doors I expect.

[Tim Watts]

^ Better if that is:

dash dash space newline

:)

A Santa Fe is 1.88m wide (not including mirrors)

Standard car parking space (minimum) is 5 x 2.4 x 2(high) metres.

So if everyone parks Santa Fe's perfectly, you have 0.502m door skin to door skin. Take off 0.2m for door thickness and that's a foot if your door is touching the next car.

It's certainly not really adequate.

Back in the 60s-70s, a Morris Minor 1000 was 1.524mm width. In a car park full of them, you'd have just under 0.9m clearance. Doors were thinner too. So probably 0.7m or over 2ft of gap to get out of!

[Scott]

Maybe car salesmen are getting wider :-)

[dennis]

You can get electric ones that take 1"ish.

I like the astra as its quite wide inside. I just don't fit in 306s as my shoulders are too wide.

There are a lot of continental cars I can't drive as its impossible for me to adjust the seat so I can reach the pedals and steering without having my head on the roof lining even though I am average height and weight.

[damduck-egg]

I came across this list recently while looking out of curiosity.

We have a MINI as well and it is awkward sometimes to open the door enough, fortunately mother let me have her Aygo when she decided she go too old to drive as she didn't see any point in the "chauffeur " coming to her in one car and changing to another. It's the four door version and access is far better and for older people a more suitable seat height . So we use the Aygo for local shopping trips where parking spaces may be at a premium and keep the MINI for the longer fast runs. That let me drop the annual mileage on the MINI as well so got an Insurance saving overall . That in itself was not a game changer but by using a cheap granny mobile to do shopping we are not wearing the expensive V rated tyres on the MINI and lessens the risk of wheel damage on potholes etc.

G.Harman

[damduck-egg]

No, they have always been wide boys.

G.Harman

[Dan S. MacAbre]

[whisky-dave]

Surely the EU would have some sort of standard to follow so everyone has the same so that cars can be shipped to anywhere in the EU and no road will be too narrow no car to wide to go into any garage etc...

[tabbypurr]

Thundersley Invacar shows how it's done. A car at the top of my least wanted list. I'd rather drive a Hoffmann.

NT

[Dan S. MacAbre]

You'd have thought so, but look how long it took them to sort out bananas :-)

Maybe one day in the distant future they'll get to sorting out garages.