I had an experience where I could not open the rear doors wide enough to fit a large parcel on the rear seats of a five door Cortina and we had to borrow a three door car (Viva IIRC) in a hurry.
Not that that's a very common scenario.
Interesting that it was easier to fit this large parcel through the narrower gap between the 3-door Viva's B pillar and the tipped-forward seat, than through the opened door of the 5-door Cortina. Or did you fit it onto the front seats and then lift it over the backrests onto the rear seat?
In the same way that I'd never go for 2/3-door instead of 4/5-door, for ease of access to rear seats, I'd also never go for a saloon car (fixed rear seat backrest, half-height boot) rather than a hatchback. Why do people still buy saloon versions of cars that are mainly made in hatchback form? Are there any normal (ie not sports cars) nowadays that still have a fixed rear window and horizontal boot lid in saloon form rather than incorporating it in a larger tailgate (even if it has the notched shape of a saloon)?
I remember when my sister and her family came back from the US where they'd been living for a few years. They'd hired a car and we went along to Heathrow to take any extra hand luggage (everything else had gone by sea freight). My dad had a saloon car at the time, with a fixed rear window. I remember we had a major panic when we thought that we wouldn't be able to get their pushchair in either car because of the space taken up with child seats. I think we ended up with the pushchair wedged parallel with the rear window, padded with coats so it didn't bang on the glass. So much easier if the car had been a hatchback.
My Peugeot has finally succumbed to that fate: it is now the runaround car, used for the "dirty" jobs like taking lots of bags of garden waste and other rubbish to the tip (all the excess that won't fit in conventional wheelie bins) or buying building materials. I don't think I've folded the back seats up in about 2 years, apart from the days when I took it to have its MOT and the garage needed to see/check the rear seat belts. It's a shame that the head restraints have to be removed to fold down the rear seats and that the only place to keep them is in the front passenger footwell because there's no space in the rear seat footwells once the seat bases are folded down. I keep promising my Pug that I *will* Hoover him out and put his seats up so he looks like a "proper" car, but it's not worth it for the hassle of having to fold the seats down again for next time I go to the tip. With a 1/2 acre garden, we generate a *lot* of grass mowings each time I cut the lawns - too much to be able to handle with normal compost bins - so I have to cram 8 huge collapsible cylindrical plastic-hessian bags of mowings or shredded branches in the back - and I always do it the same day I cut the grass, so the mowings are still reasonably fresh and haven't started to leak evil-smelling juice out of the bags. Thankfully our recycling centres remained open throughout lockdown (unlike some local authorities' tips), otherwise we'd have an enormous mound of mowings to dispose of at a rate of one wheelie bin (one-and-a-bit hessian sacks) per fortnight. I've lined the carpet in the boot with a large piece of carpet underlay and plastic sacks to pad it slightly and to protect the carpet on the boot floor / back of backrests from dirt and scuffing.
I've actually been impressed with my 2 Renault 5s, 2 VW Golfs and Peugeot
306 and 308. The 306 and 308 each lasted a long time (306 until 160,000 miles when I sold it; 308 185,000 miles and still going strong). The only major problems I've had with the cars have been:- Golf Mark 3 1800: intermittent engine dying as I accelerated from rest when pulling out from a junction: car in and out of garage for about 3 months as they tried to provoke the fault so it generates diagnostics - finally diagnosed as a faulty track on accelerator-pedal potentiometer
- Peugeot 308: anti-pollution system problems on several occasions, producing on-screen warnings, sometimes with limp-home reduction in power or engine dying. It cost me a *lot* to have a new diesel particulate filter and new cat: the cat was only needed because the garage stripped its thread when trying to separate DPF from cat and said that meant new cat as well. I rationalise that with the through that the cat would have needed replacing anyway not *too* long after that time, so it was just a bit sooner than planned.
But the Pug is doing very well even at 185,000 miles: it's got a *lot* more low-rev torque than my wife's much newer Honda CRV with the same size (1.6) diesel engine but more turbo assisted so there's more power (but not necessarily more torque). I can drive my Pug like a diesel, whereas the Honda needs to be driven like a petrol, changing down one or even two gears lower than I would in the Pug when accelerating out of a roundabout or downhill-to-uphill transition. I think it is that the Honda doesn't like approaching a hazard in high gear (with low revs) and then applying power, at an engine speed which would normally pull fine. I wonder if the turbo is running out of "puff" (stored high-pressure air from turbo) ready for when it is needed to burn the extra fuel that the accelerator demands. Driving the two cars (Pug/Honda) requires *very* different driving styles ;-)
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The rear doors didn't open wide enough to slide the parcel in directly and you couldn't move the front seats far enough forward to push it in then rotate. The Viva being three door had front seats which folded down, so gave more swivel room. The longer door helped too.
It was an anxious time as I was going to catch a plane.
Someone in our neighborhood had one. One night a few of us put it up on the sidewalk.
My brother had a Peugeot in the '60s that he really liked but I don't think a Peugeot, Citroen, or Renault has been seen in the US in decades unless it was a personal import. Maybe we're not good enough for snobby frogs...
Safest place for it.
I have a Zafira, so plenty of room with the seats folded down, but for dirty stuff, I usually use a trailer - it's handy to fill up a bit at a time over days too, as I'm doing work.
I had a (French) car like that, I used gaffa tape on it. The (German) car was fine.
I did that once to park in a very narrow space. I probably pissed off the two car owners I was inbetween.
I would have placed it on top of someone else's car. Piss off two people with one prank.
The front person having to get out to let out the back person looks so ridiculous. For example you take your kids to school and have to get out to let them out!
I never use seat belts, I just avoid crashing.
Ah, so you dont drive at all?
Knew a girl once. Sister was almost paraplegic. was stationatry at traffic lights when got rammed by an idiot from the side. Before side impact bars. Ruined her pelvis.
Another girl was driving along at legal speeds on a road at a very safe distance behind a truck. Vaguely remembers something flying at her as she went under a bridge and then nothing till she woke up in hospital 2 days later.
Police who interviewed her said 'we found this in the passenger footwell' - it was half a large truck's brake shoe... Thrown up by truck? thr?wn from footbridge
She had somehow managed to stall the car on the verge while unconscious.
Same road almost in same place I see headlights swerving coming towards me. And go off the road. Pull up and 4 lads in dads Rover have spun it and turned it over. Ls in front with belts are dazed but ok - lads in back are not - broken arms and bad concussion
Apart from not driving at all, tell me how you personally would have avoided these accidents? Especially if you were not driving... ..or does no one want you as a passenger?
It took only two motor races and seeing someone killed in front of me when he was flung out of a vintage racing car with no belts fitted, to convince me to never ever get in a car where it was near other motorists, without wearing a belt.
You may control the car, but you cant control other people
And if you pull up on the other side of the road? Or your wife is in the passenger seat? Or there's two kids, do they shuffle across?
Didn't move me out of my seat one bit. The conservation of momentum states the light deer will have f*ck all effect on the speed of the heavy car.
Very unlikely to happen. And a seatbelt wouldn't have helped there.
And a seatbelt would have helped there how?
Because those accidents don't often happen. Now go and list every safe journey that has happened.
You can avoid other people, it takes two bad drivers to cause an accident.
It's so funny when a safety device causes danger.
Why would anyone not want to be a driver? Driving is fun!
The thing that annoys me most about doors is when they bounce. You swing one open, are just putting a box into the car, when it shuts on your and you drop something. Apparently you can replace something called a "check strap", I thought it was just a shit thing that happened to everyone.
A 7 seater with removable seats makes an excellent van. It also confuses the hell out of the test centre when they can't test the rear belts that aren't there. I've had to point out to two of them that legally if the seats are not present at the time of the test, you don't need to test the belt. So, if your rear belt is faulty, remove the seat for the test, it will pass.
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