The length is bad but the 0.5cm extra width per year strikes me as much worse. There’s a lot of room for longer vehicles than the average cars of yesteryear - vans and light trucks have always been around. But those vehicles tended to only be slightly wider, if at all, in order to fit into lanes on the road, parking spaces, through gateways and so on. Half a centimetre wider per year is insane.
I would hope countries will just stop approving cars as road legal if they are too wide to fit on the roads.
I do occasionally see the odd range rover in the Netherlands. It’s always hilariously out of place, and of course does not fit in any single parking space here. But they have to drive around with a special license plate for import vehicles, apparently it’s fine then.
Not sure about the accuracy of this, my car is still the same length as it was ten years ago.
Mine got 8cm shorter when the rear bumper fell off. So, it’s safer.
I don’t think that’s very typical
This just illustrates the importance of hiring a professional to trim back the cars periodically. You could do it yourself, but the heavy industrial equipment necessary for routine gardening like this is just too bulky and expensive for the average person to be able to use.
Not only longer but also wider and taller… it’s an obesity pandemic that has blown over from the US.
Can someone prescribe some ozempic to these cars?
Safety regulations require things like better crumple zones. The seating areas aren’t significantly larger.
Nah that’s not just it. People used to drive sedans and hatchbacks, now everyone and their mother has an SUV
Some of this is safety equipment and more recently batteries and hybrid equipment, which takes up space. Some of this is simply design and aesthetics.
My hybrid Suzuki Ignis (ugliest car on the planet) is smaller than my Suzuki Swift, which is supposed to be a small car.
The Pontiac Aztec is uglier.
The Aztec isn’t even close to the ugliest car ever made. It’s a meme at this point.
The Aztec had the PT cruiser existing at the same time to make sure it wasn’t the ugliest car.
And I happened to think they were both cool as a kid. A split window in the rear? An unnecessarily large grill like old studebakers? Why not! More hot wheels fodder. The pt cruiser interior was also very comfy.
