Can cars get any wider?
Discussion
skyrover said:
LarryUSA said:
A friend of mine posted this the other day - he owns the Lotus!
The Chevrolet Suburban on the right is 80.5 inches wide, the Lexus LX is 77.6 inches wide.The Lotus is only 67.7 inches wide.
Suburban height 74.4" = 1889mm
Lexus height 75.2" = 1910mm
Lotus height 1117mm
Edited by TooMany2cvs on Tuesday 16th January 08:10
TooMany2cvs said:
CraigyMc said:
Quoted for posterity.
I'm loving 2CV schooling a professional automotive engineer on this stuff.
Is he? Oh. He's got even less excuse for posting such unmitigated bI'm loving 2CV schooling a professional automotive engineer on this stuff.
ks, then.Unless there's some serious parrotage due...
The gearbox from an MX5, or even a quaife, are still tiny compared to a modern 7 or 8 speed automatic
He's perfectly explained (imo) why he thinks the 'packaging' is actually very good, considering the amount of equipment/safety etc - not sure what your challenge to that is...maybe you need to explain a bit more
Did you mean to question his point regarding why FWD becoming mainstream? it seems you agree
ikarl said:
jimPH said:
Since we bought the M-lite,
what the fk is an "M-lite"?http://www.mlite.co.za/
Does using M-Lite mean you can’t fit in parking spaces?
bad company said:
swisstoni said:
There is no reason for cars to get any wider IMHO. Roads aren't getting any wider. Humans are the same size.
I think you’ll find that humans have also got considerably wider over the years.I'd also argue this drives societies love of the SUV. People are that lardy and unfit, they prefer the ease of sliding their girth onto higher sears, ala SUV style.
ikarl said:
TooMany2cvs said:
CraigyMc said:
Quoted for posterity.
I'm loving 2CV schooling a professional automotive engineer on this stuff.
Is he? Oh. He's got even less excuse for posting such unmitigated bI'm loving 2CV schooling a professional automotive engineer on this stuff.
ks, then.Unless there's some serious parrotage due...
The gearbox from an MX5, or even a quaife, are still tiny compared to a modern 7 or 8 speed automatic
d, because it's basically two manual boxes strapped together with metal Mickey keeping the peace. But they're packaged transversely quite happily in Polos...ikarl said:
He's perfectly explained (imo) why he thinks the 'packaging' is actually very good, considering the amount of equipment/safety etc - not sure what your challenge to that is...maybe you need to explain a bit more
"Packaging is excellent, but for performance not space"? That's an odd definition of packaging.ikarl said:
Did you mean to question his point regarding why FWD becoming mainstream? it seems you agree
"FWD was adopted for space, not for performance" - back when FWD started to become mainstream, it was the modern, higher-tech choice for safety and roadholding, with RWD being the cheap, old-tech, low-tech default. Packaging was a side benefit. I'm talking about the 30s through to the early 90s. It's only recently that the Germans have successfully rebranded RWD as being the performance choice, by making bulky, expensive, complicated multi-link rear ends, while the FWD default has tended to move towards cheap torsion beam non-independent rear ends.But now that small Mercs and BMWs are FWD, too...
kambites said:
TooMany2cvs said:
There's a heck of a lot of roads where that applies to two cars, too...
True, but they tend to be much less busy ones. Around here at least there's a good few two-lane B-roads which aren't wide enough for two lorries to pass comfortably (including a large chunk of my commute). Plenty of people seem to struggle to keep their Range Rovers on the correct side of the road, I dread to think what they would be like in something half a meter wider. 
Edited by kambites on Monday 15th January 09:20
With out looking at a spec sheet, I'd say a modern RR is very much a Transit sized vehicle, difference being the vans tend to be thrown around with wanton disregard, but at the same time a certain amount of skill, most delivery drivers have no problem maintaining 40-50mph through a gap that there van only clears by 10cm or so. So you tend to have some confidence that they'll stay out your way. RRs, X5s, M classes, these are another story, even well almost stationary your average RR driver seems to struggle to come within 30cm of the kerb, instead opting to ride along the centreline, causing vans and trucks coming the other way to need to slow right down to not clatter off them.
To add to the bother, if you knock a wing mirror off a Transit/Sprinter/Iveco etc. It very much comes down to 's
t happens', the majority of the time the van driver doesn't even stop. You knock a mirror off a RR... nobody wants to deal with that screaming banshee and her 8 whiplash claims. TooMany2cvs said:
ikarl said:
He's perfectly explained (imo) why he thinks the 'packaging' is actually very good, considering the amount of equipment/safety etc - not sure what your challenge to that is...maybe you need to explain a bit more
"Packaging is excellent, but for performance not space"? That's an odd definition of packaging.Max_Torque said:
You'd have to be a bit synaptic-ally challenged to call it badly packaged! In fact, like all modern cars, it's BRILLIANTLY packaged, it's just packaged to push handling and performance up and over absolute cabin space, compared to say a fwd car, where cabin space is prioritised over performance (which is why FWD cars were invented remember....)
I'd always driven hot hatches day to day until I moved into saloons and to be honest, I don't find them overly wide in most situations. My partner drives a 2009 CLS and it's wide but actually not a problem on the road. It's parking that's a pain in the ar$e though as most parking spaces in supermarkets aren't that wide or necessarily long enough.
p1stonhead said:
Wish i didnt only have an old single garage! When time comes to put something in it, i may be limited to a Caterham or something!
I have a similar kind of garage and store my 2006 Megane RS in it, that fits in with both mirrors folded and to get out I have to park an inch or two from one wall. 
Alex_225 said:
I'd always driven hot hatches day to day until I moved into saloons and to be honest, I don't find them overly wide in most situations. My partner drives a 2009 CLS and it's wide but actually not a problem on the road. It's parking that's a pain in the ar$e though as most parking spaces in supermarkets aren't that wide or necessarily long enough.
This is the real problem in the UK IMO... tiny parking spaces.Roads will always be large enough, but parking space standards are utterly backwards compared to the rest of the world.
jimPH said:
I remember following a friend down some back lanes in his hot hatch, me in a wide body Porsche and he was having a lot more fun than I was, I just couldn't keep up, the car felt so wide it was unnerving.
A couple of years ago we had the Frenchies striking and Operation Stack in the Maidstone area. So I took to the country lanes in my Clubman. The roads were narrow and the edges lines with potholes. Every time there was an oncoming car one of us would have to stop/reverse or give way. After a week of making the journey in the Clubman I took The Shed - A 2004 Daihatsu Charade with a width of 1475mm. In comparison the Clubman is 1998mm wide.It was a revelation. I could easily pass oncoming cars without stopping. And dipping the 70 section 13" alloys into a pothole wasn't a hardship. At the start of the country lanes I would have FFRRs or Cayennes behind me and at the other end - nothing - because nothingm else other than a motorbike could keep up.
This is a fun little website for comparing dimensions and you can do entire manufacturer ranges all at once....
https://www.automobiledimension.com/car-comparison...
https://www.automobiledimension.com/car-comparison...
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