Why moderns are pish

[Bren]

Bought a new bed for my son, his old divan (in two halves) needed to go to the tip.

 

Each half would not go in my vectra C, I had to smash them with a hammer first.

 

However, I had no problems picking them up in my xantia estate when I got them.

 

Even now, larger items are handled by mother in laws granada - for all their large external dimensions moderns seem to be shrinking on the inside.

 

Manufacturers - please stop making cars with fascias half the length of the passenger compartment and boot space reduced with various bits of crappy plastic trim.

 

Rant over.

[Cavcraft]

You don't think this has anything to do with the Xantia being an estate, do you?

[mercrocker]

Not just cars - I find myself smirking at young  mums with stupidly enormous yet spindly pushchair/baby barrow contraptions trying to force them into the back of their BINIs.   We have a full sized coachbuilt hardbodied pram (don't ask...) that goes on the back seat of the Minor.  

[gordonbennet]

Man after me own heart.

 

I drove car transporters for 20 years until about 5 years ago, in that time bloody cars grew to ridiculous sizes with no more room inside than the original model in the range..eg first FWD cavalier now morphed into the huge Insignia.

 

Both Insignia and Mondeo rival Mercedes E Class for overall size, but the latest Superb is a bloody battleship you struggled to fit on some decks...however in that particular case translates to almost as much rear legroom as a Landcrab, so much for progress.

 

What i hate about moderns though, especially compared to sensibly sized like my old MB W124, is that they are so ridiculously wide, modern cars if you left the mirrors out whilst going between the lorry posts you'd likely rip the bastards off, how the hell do people who live in narrow streets and buy into this modern financed shit manage, more's the point why, you've only got to see them trying to dock their barges in the supermarket or watch the antics of company Audi man (in a car far too big for him) doing his best to abandon the sodding thing as close as he can get to the motorway service area, invariably drive in the gap cos no bugger knows how to reverse park any more, often a row of the things in a herringbone pattern taking 1.5 spaces each all abandoned as incompetently as each other.

 

Didn't mean to pilfer your rant there Bren...

[Lukas]

The reason, why cars feel so cramped inside is because there has to be more safety and more comfort.

 

There is a small interieur-trim on the inside of a Granada Estate, so the boot is huge. In a modern Estate, there is not only a huge amount of sound-deadening-material between the body and the boot-trim, but also a lot of electronic control units for the park-distance-control, the window-airbags, the sound-system, the automatic level control and so on. All these technique and all this ECUs have to go somewhere. Don´t forget all the side-impact-bars, the impact-protection-braces and all the other safety-features that are responsible for the steep decline of deadly accidents since the 1970s. With every year more cars on the roads.

 

Not all is bad. Only visibility out of a new car, the design of new cars, the space inside new cars and all that.

 

L

[brickwall]

Moved house in a Montego Estate. No problem with the slab sides and flat boot.

[Bren]

You don't think this has anything to do with the Xantia being an estate, do you?

To be honest no - I could fit more in my 2001 mondeo hatch than the cit - however it had no wheel arches intruding into the load space.

[Spiny Norman]

Sorry but I don't entirely buy the 'safety gear and electronics takes up all the space' argument. A Volvo 240 or a Saab 900 have plenty of space inside and are by current standards quite small cars, particularly in width, yet both have doors a good 8" thick between outer skin and armrest, plenty of space for impact bars, airbags, window motors, speakers etc.
I'm more inclined to think that the current (and often moaned about on here) trend for modern cars to be so fat and bloated looking is our old friend, fashion. The customer expects a safe car and 'safe' cars must look like they're built like tanks, so that's what the manufacturers build.

[HillmanImp]

You can recreate the feeling of being in a modern car with its 'big on the outside, small on the inside' style by sitting in any pre-GM Saab 900.

[Split_Pin]

What's the problem? You got the chance to legitimately smash something up with a hammer.

 

My washing machine went on fire today. I need to fit it into my Corsa. You can see what I'm looking forward to doing.

[wuvvum]

You can recreate the feeling of being in a modern car with its 'big on the outside, small on the inside' style by sitting in any pre-GM Saab 900.

 

To be fair, I once got a single divan, complete with mattress, in the back of a 900 "Classic" with the rear seats folded down - went in easy.  I do know what you mean though - they feel rather narrow and cramped when you're sat in them.

[twosmoke300]

One of my customers ( an undertaker ) informs me that the vectra c estate is about the only modern car you can get 2 coffins in

[mercrocker]

My bestest has been - Thirties gents wardrobe in Citroen GSA hatchback, 1950s cocktail bar in back of K11 Micra 3 door and a treasure-chest sized 60s radiogram in the boot of the 190E.   Oh, and once on a weekend away in the Minor with folding caravan in tow and the backseat folded  down and full of camping gear I managed to acquire (and fit into the Minor) a Farina steering box and front wing.    None of these situations  ever looked like they were going to work out and the fact that they did is down to  the simplicity of  design of each of these  vastly different cars.   I am not  going into any kind of safety / comfort / convenience debate but I do not want features in my cars that inhibit the use to which I  put those vehicles...

[Junkman]

The reason, why cars feel so cramped inside is because there has to be more safety and more comfort.

 

In a modern Estate, there is not only a huge amount of sound-deadening-material between the body and the boot-trim, but also a lot of electronic control units for the park-distance-control, the window-airbags, the sound-system, the automatic level control and so on. All these technique and all this ECUs have to go somewhere. Don´t forget all the side-impact-bars, the impact-protection-braces and all the other safety-features that are responsible for the steep decline of deadly accidents since the 1970s.

 

This doesn't become true by repeating it over and over.

 

All the stuff you mention would fit in a shoebox.

What makes this bloated newfangled shit that cramped inside is a total lack of proper engineering, and the retreat of practicality in lieu of showmanship. All the fat on those obese chariots is cladding of a lot of hollow space to make them look more imposing and give the hire purchase slave the feel of being more important and a fake feeling of comfort, that in reality is on par with the necessity of the shiny shit from China people nowadays festoon their lives with.

 

The effect those pretend safety devices have on the decline of lethal accidents is negligible. However, the increasing social burden of ever more lasting bodily harm caused by those devices is measurable, but never really published. Just as an example, it was a common injury in car accidents of yore, that someone suffered a broken bone. This healed within a few months, no further damage done. The new safety devices did away with that, but now people receive all kinds of traumas instead, that hamper them for the rest of their lives. The research into trauma-related side effects had therefore to be drastically increased, read: paid for.

 

Another effect on the human mind is recklessness and the willingness to take greater risk increasing directly proportional with the safety devices a person has available, imagined or real. This is a well known psychological effect, tried and tested by the military for millennia. Give a man a revolver and a tin helmet, and he is much more likely to walk into the enemy's artillery curtain fire than without this equipment. Give a man 17 airbags, ABS, ESP, ASR, and he will feel perfectly safe using bluetooth, wifi, GSP, TV, DVD, i-pad and whatever other apps while driving a motorcar.

 

The decline of lethal accidents since the 1970s was anything but steep, it was ever so gradual and had very little to do with the safety devices put into cars. It had mainly to do with drunk driving becoming socially unacceptable and the vast safety improvements made to the infrastructure. If today's drivers with today's attitudes and today's cars would have to drive on 1970 roads, there wouldn't be many left alive by lunchtime.

[mat_the_cat]

My record was when we were moving house with the BX - I managed to carry a sofa, fridge freezer, microwave, computer plus CRT monitor, coffee table and bedside table, double mattress, pillows, duvet, 2 bags of clothes and two people. Maybe it was cheating, but I strapped the mattress on top (no roof rack at the time), which may have been a mistake. At anything over 50mph the wind would get underneath and it would start to noisily hump the roof.

[mercrocker]

A self-humping mattress?   You might have discovered the ultimate sex-aid there....

[eddyramrod]

The reason, why cars feel so cramped inside is because there has to be more safety and more comfort.

 

 

Well they've failed then, miserably.  Anyone who's driven a post-1990 car and a pre-1990 car at roughly the same market point, in the same year, can tell you that.  Seats and suspension are getting ever and ever harder, and lovely soft cosseting velours have gone; the only even-slightly enticing interior fabric now is leather, which smells lovely but isn't all that nice to sit on. 

And yes, cars are pointlessly bloated these days.  My Volvo 940 estate used to be considered a big car, but there are three modern estate cars in my little street that one would consider smaller... none of them by much!  One's an Insignia, which is enormous but looks to have about half the interior space.  Where I usually park the Volvo, it'll either be next to that or a BINI (Countryman?  Clubman?  I don't know or care...) and even the BINI dwarfs mine.  My boss has an Audi A4 estate.  The A4 is the Mondeo competitor, ie the Cortina market segment.  One and a half steps below the Volvo.  But it takes almost the same space in the car park, for half the space inside (and doesn't even have flat-folding seats like mine does!).

 

Older is better, simple as.

[plasticvandan]

A Vespa inside a Robin hatchback (door shut) or 3 BSA Bantams and one on the roof of an Acadiane are my personal faves

[MrDuke]

Even in the '80s, when safety features were starting to become serious selling points, cars only really had to take around 1.5 tons of impact, on average. Now, however, they probably need to absorb at least twice that amount - I don't know how much a fully loaded hybrid SUV weighs, batteries and all, but you'd need some serious cushioning if one T-boned you. The whole 'safety' thing is a vicious circle - it's great to prevent road deaths, but we now have a culture where people assume they can drive however they want because everyone will be surrounded by airbags and exploding hinges. The fact is that cars of all shapes have always been, and will always be, weapons with the capacity to very easily kill people, and very few people are actually forced to get into one, after all.

 

TL;DR - Get rid of all the safety features except seatbelts and front airbags. Eventually the sudden spike in road deaths would level out when people realised they had to actually think about driving.

[Mr Lobster]

So wait, you smashed it up and took it to the tip? Why on earth didn't you take the manly option of just burning it in one of those metal dustbins with holes in the sides!?

[Tayne]

Because I own both a large hammer and an angle grinder I don't need to worry about internal capacity for tip runs.

 

 

With the right preparation its actually quite easy to fit a surf board in a wheelie bin.

[Ratdat]

So wait, you smashed it up and took it to the tip? Why on earth didn't you take the manly option of just burning it in one of those metal dustbins with holes in the sides!?

 

 

I have an old oil drum for this purpose. It must have consumed about three skip loads of combustibles in the last year during my mammoth shed(s) clearout. I just wait until after midnight to chuck on the really stinky stuff.

[ProgRocker]

As I have said before I have trouble getting out of my car when I park it. I live at a block flats and I have an allocated parking space. It is a late 1980s development so the spaces were probably designed around a mark 3 Escort or Sierra. Wouldn't want anything wider than my Almera N16 while I am still living there.

[Justin Case]

Why aren't estate cars square at the back any more; it can't be anything to do with safety, surely the more space at the back to absorb an impact the better?

Mine is one of the few that will take a dog cage lengthwise and leave room for our holiday luggage, or it will take a 5ft garden bench with the  back seats folded down (car not bench;)). A Mercedes C class failed the dog cage test, even though the boot floor was long enough, it just sloped too much at the roof line   It may be OK for a CLS fashion accessory estate, but a load lugger ought to be able to actually fit the load in.

[HMC]

Blame NCAP etc. Occupant 'safety' once youve stuffed it comes before visibility, comfort or day to day usability.

[Richard]

Why aren't estate cars square at the back any more;

The C5 estate was, but I can't think of many other 21st century estates that are. I think it's more about fashion and maybe aerodynamics than safety.

[Squire_Dawson]

I'll take a bench leather over a mobile airbag crap shack any day.

 

Car's only as safe as the person driving it. Granted there's the twat pulling out straight in front of you, but defensive driving pays off. Seatbelts were the single biggest contribution to car occupant safety, I wear one so I'll hopefully be OK should the worst happen.

 

Mind you, I did like the absolute freedom of movement in the Minor 'death trap' without a belt, but the steel was so thick on that anyway it would've most likely minced anything coming into contact with it.

 

My opinion at the time was that of going down with the ship.

[Cavcraft]

I bet I couldn't get a complete bike in a Nova without removing the front wheel: I can in a Corsa B and Corsa C.

[Luckythirteen]

^You could get a nice Corsa D with its pull out bike rack. Great idea Vauxhall...

 

My mate bought a Corsa D, its nice enough really, but hard suspension and 17" wheels are a bit pointless on a 1.2L runabout. Interior space is ok, but no better than smaller small cars, despite being a bit bigger all round, in every direction. Bit porky too, tbh. Flatters to decieve, I think.

Think you could say that about a lot of stuff though - X5's that could get stuck in a wet field, the true environmental cost of a Prius and so on. Marketing has a lot to answer for. Maybe they are pish, but applying the BS filter cuts through a lot of that.

[dugong]

I fitted an entire Princess interior inside my C4 and still had room for Junkman holding two overpriced cups of coffee. It all jiggled about hilariously on the trip back down the M65. 

 

The car smelled of labrador beige BL velour for several days afterwards.