Have you ever noticed new cars on the roads and thought to yourself, these vehicles seem a bit bigger than usual? We’re not talking about seeing massive pick-up trucks or 4x4s; look at some of the “normal” daily drivers out there these days. Go on any big car manufacturer’s website, and you’ll see the same thing over and over: an endless stream of crossover SUVs and saloon cars that look like they were made for giants.
It shows a key trend in modern car design – everything keeps getting bigger, taller, and wider.
In years gone by, a bigger car was seen as more practical, but is that the case when every car is made with size in mind? The fact is that new cars are simply too big, and it’s becoming a serious automotive problem.
An Incredible Lack Of Driving Practicality
Let’s deal with the massive SUV-sized elephant in the room; bigger cars are much harder to drive in everyday driving scenarios. Look, they’re fantastic when you’re going on a multi-hour-long road trip on vast open highways. That’s when bigger cars come up trumps because they tend to offer more comfort for drivers and passengers alike.
You also don’t have to worry about simple things like parking your vehicle or navigating down twisty roads and narrow streets.
Cool – but you do have to worry about these things almost every single day of your life. Daily driving is filled with city roads, parking lots, and loads of little maneuvers. Modern cars feel like they’re designed without this stuff in mind. These bulky SUVs or “crossovers” are insanely wide and hard to fit down narrow roads with on-street parking. Not to mention, maneuvering a vehicle like this into tight parking spots is nigh-on impossible.
There’s a really good video by Carwow (a company in the UK) that demonstrates these problems in normal scenarios. In it, the presenter drives the new BMW M4 around London and struggles to park it in regular parking spaces, can’t get down certain roads, and just generally fails to do a lot of things that an older BMW does with ease. Keep in mind the new M4 is supposed to be a sporty saloon, yet it’s stupidly wide and bulky!
The bottom line is that new cars aren’t designed with practical driving in mind. For whatever reason, size seems to matter the most.
Maintaining & Cleaning Your Car Is Way Harder
Aside from the driving impracticalities, everything else is harder with bigger modern cars. Simple maintenance tasks like cleaning your car are way more challenging for a few reasons:
* There’s more car for you to clean
* You need more cleaning supplies, so it costs more money
* Some cars are too big or wide to fit in car washes
With smaller cars, you can either drive into a car wash and clean it in minutes – or do it yourself on your driveway with ease. You lose all of this convenience with large modern cars, and the only viable solution is to use a mobile car detailing service. It’s the sole way to make what should be a simple maintenance task more convenient when you have a bulky modern car.
It’s not just the size of modern cars; it’s the style. They’re all made with massive front grills and annoying body parts that are difficult to reach and get to. You pretty much need a proper pressure washer and cleaning tools to tackle these stubborn areas.
Moreover, think about other maintenance tasks – like servicing or repairing your car. Services cost more money because the mechanics have a bigger car to handle. If you need to repair or replace parts, then they tend to be more expensive because you can’t call upon parts from previous cars. Going back to the BMW comparison, if you damaged the rear quarter of a new M4 in a crash, there’s no way you can find a cheap replacement from a used M4 – the panels wouldn’t fit!
Stuff like this makes you wonder what car manufacturers think about when designing modern vehicles. It’s like they’re determined to make things harder for drivers.
Big Cars Create A Safety Conundrum
For years, we’ve lived with the assumption that bigger cars are safer. Indeed, studies genuinely prove this. One from 2021 found that you’re 7.64 times more likely to die from a head-on collision if you’re not driving an SUV.
Is this the reason for the larger car epidemic?
Partially, but there’s a fundamental flaw in this logic. Larger cars are safer for the driver of the larger car. They actually cause bigger safety concerns for all other drivers and pedestrians. If you crash into a normal hatchback in your new funky Renault 5, you’re unlikely to cause serious damage to the other driver – nor should you be seriously hurt.
However, crash into a normal hatchback daily driver in a big crossover SUV and it’s a different story. You’ll be fine, but the other driver (and their passengers) are at a greater risk of being severely hurt.
Having too many big cars on the roads creates a safety conundrum; these vehicles won’t improve safety for everyone!
It Ruins The Diversity Of Car Design
We can talk all day about larger cars being impractical and unsafe, but the fact of the matter is they’re also a bit boring. Almost every new car looks like same; it’s either a classic SUV shape or a saloon/SUV crossover.
We’re at risk of losing what makes cars so great; design diversity.
It’s why classic car design is so special. You see so many different design approaches and ideas in older vehicles, and they look so much better. The worst example of modern car design is the new Ford Capri. How on earth can they call this a Capri when it takes one of the best classic car designs of all time and turns it into a crossover SUV?
It’s embarrassingly bad – but there is hope from the latest generation of cars from brands like Renault, Honda, Vauxhall and Fiat. These companies are starting to get more creative and bring out either smaller cars or cars with a modern twist on classic designs – and they look great.
Overall, there’s a clear problem with modern car design: most of the vehicles are simply too big and bulky. We need to stop this before it gets out of control and return to a time when loads of different car types were made and designed.
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