I drive a k5. When I was a kid, a lifted K5 was my dream vehicle. I have one now. I love it. It’s big. But gd, it looks like a 90’s Tacoma parked next to a brand new 2500.
Current Honda HR-V has a bigger footprint than 2003 Lexus Rx! Buick Envista too.
I will somewhat grant that work trucks are nearly as long as they were 30 years ago. The difference now is that everything is so bulked out and tall that you can’t see shit around them if you’re driving a normal sized car. Why do the beds have to be at shoulder height for a full grown adult?
Putting a Hummer H2 next to an Escalade really sums up how desensitized we are to pointlessly oversized vehicles. When the Hummer H2 came out in the early 2000’s it dwarfed everything, it looked so ridiculous on the road and barely fit in between the lanes. The Escalade/Suburban/Yukon is nearly 2 feet longer and is just as wide as the Hummer and we see them all over the road and don’t really think twice about it.
Those suburbans are huge. They are bigger than my full cab f-150.
Suburbans of the past 20 years are anywhere from 219-226" long. “Full cab” (crew cab) F-150s of the past 20 years are 226-232" long with the short bed.
Suburbans of the past 20 years are anywhere from 219-226" long. “Full cab” (crew cab) F-150s of the past 20 years are 226-232" long with the short bed.
And what so many of the people here in this sub Giving excuses for the trucks and SUVs forget, is that so much of this is about the beltline not the length width or height. The cubic volume increase of these vehicles is absolutely astounding and makes it impose and everyone else on the road because you can’t see out of these fucking things and you can’t see around them
and don’t really think twice about it.
Speak for yourself.
don’t really think twice about it.
Given that the beltline of those cars (and most modern “full”-size pickups) is nearly in line with the roof of my Crosstrek (not a small and in no sense a short vehicle), I think about it pretty frequently, actually. Every big SUV and pickup on the road is a hazard, even if I assume the operator’s not an incompetent moron (which I absolutely do not assume), simply because they can’t see what’s going on around them.
The h2 was roughly normal sized for SUVs and was even built on a normal SUV platform at the time it just looked square. I remember my dad saying he would never want one because it’s just a normal Tahoe now nothing special anymore lol. It wasn’t as crazy big as you suggest. The H1 Hummer though… That thing is soooo wide I saw one a year ago and couldn’t believe it fit on the road.
I only saw one of these in Europe and I was like “Holy shit what is that thing”. It looked like a damn tank on the road. And I just know it was a nightmare around the city with it. I couldn’t believe that’s how they came from the factory
Frankly I’d be embarrassed taking up so much space on the road. Driving a giant SUV or pickup is akin to manspreading spread-eagle on a crowded subway train.
I don’t understand why people wanna drive such huge vehicles. Seems like way more of a pain in the ass to get around in something so big.
Honda Accords are so god damn long dude, just got a model Y and it’s quite a bit shorter
At some point, engineering can’t defeat physics. I had to buy the wife a larger vehicle because I didn’t feel comfortable with my family in a smallish SUV. I made sure that the vehicle had an excellent crash rating, air bags and it was just … bigger.
When folks around you are in duallys and is twice the length of a Sherman tank, it matters.
Size only contributes to safety in vehicle-on-vehicle crashes. In a vehicle-on-enviornment crash the larger the vehicle the more challenging it is to stop.
Which is why the safest cars imo are in the mid-size class, not the trucks.
SUVs and pickup trucks have lower single vehicle fatality rates than cars.
SUVs and pickup trucks have lower single vehicle fatality rates than cars.
This is what happens when people go to dealerships and say “why is this backseat so cramped?”
People keep buying and buying at record paces these larger and larger vehicles.
Auto makers only produce what we buy
Been using carsized.com for ages, great site.
I think it’s getting ridiculous. Call it authoritarian, but I think it’s past time governments start putting hard limits on civilian vehicle sizes, except for rare situations that would also need rare additional licensing.
I recently went from an 07 Cobalt to a new Integra A-Spec because this relative size of vehicle just makes sense for me, and it’s just frustrating how hidden I am in a lot of traffic scenarios. I’m a pretty big guy, like 300 pounds, and I still fit in this car perfectly, I don’t get the obsession with land tanks aside from pure safety reasons.
I have issues parking my ID4 in some places. That thing is 4.6 long (but a bit wider). 2m width and height is the limit in quite a few parking garages (Austria). Above 5m length f**ks you hard trying to park / drive down the round road to a lower/higher level
Yet parking spot sizes remain the same…
Something that kills me is when people say “trucks haven’t actually gotten much larger, their length and width are the same”
Sure. But their volume has swelled drastically. They’re much taller and have very different total surface areas.
YES!! There are miles of sheet metal from the bottom of a truck’s body to the top of its bed or window sill. So much more than 20 years ago, it’s hideous. Yet people seem toove it.
Holy shit thank you for making this point because I feel like I am going insane. This sub has so many people that are now trucking SUV apologists. There are three or four specific users in specifically one who is absolutely proliferate in every single one of these threads cherry picking data to try to claim that trucks have not gotten larger. It’s like their full-time job or some thing. And it’s not even on the sub only. They will post in Ford subs truck subs everywhere declaring the trucks haven’t gotten bigger with cherry picked data. I think we all know who they are.
That’s true. My head was about in the ceiling of my 97 f350. I have a foot of headroom in a new one. I’m not short either. I realize the old trucks are a little cramped for tall individuals, but today’s trucks are designed so someone that’s 6’-10" won’t need to make any modifications or compromises lol