Jalopnik: Yes, Cars Are Getting Fatter

My new Impreza is actually three inches shorter than my old one, and weighs about the same.

It is a bit taller, though.
 
There were some fantastic pictures of a 45th anniversary Mustang show where they had one of every model year lined up, but I can't find those pictures now. That would be apropos to this thread.
 
Apart from the added weight, I like this trend. But then I live in America, where our roads fit cars and not carriages. :p
 
Yep, this is pretty obvious. However the Merc pics were pretty cool, especially the one from the 1950s to the 2000s.

I still can't get over how massive the current Corolla is. It's about the same size as a 1st generation Camry now. :eek:
 
How I perceive cars from America, starting in the 1920's:

Started off small, then grew larger until the mid 1930's. Cars after WWII were smaller, then grew larger throughout the 1950's. Late 1950's they grew smaller until the mid 1960's, then grew larger until the late 1970's. 1980's they started out smaller then grew larger, shrank a bit when the big 3 went completely FWD in the late 1980's / early 1990's, and have been growing since then to the present. So with this pattern, I am thinking cars will growing smaller in the next five years, or remain the same, but using more efficient designs for interior space.
 
I think I saw somewhere that the Altima was built on the same platform as the Maxima (supposedly its big sis) for a while. It's a bit lulztastic to see my '02 next to an older one, that's for sure. It'll dwarf it. The new ones seem to have kept the massive size.
 
I drive the smallest and lightest MR2, which happens to be the newest one. It might be the only Toyota to go in that direction since....ever.
 
I drive the smallest and lightest MR2, which happens to be the newest one. It might be the only Toyota to go in that direction since....ever.
The 3rd MR2 practically returned to the size of the original AW11 MR2. Although the 7th gen Celica also developed around the same time as the 3rd MR2 also decreased in size, its essentially the smallest of the FWD Celicas. The rest of Toyota's cars however have grown bigger and bigger only a select few of the Japanese Toyotas have grown in smaller increments like the Mark X or barely changed in the case of the Toyota Century.
 
I drive the smallest and lightest MR2, which happens to be the newest one. It might be the only Toyota to go in that direction since....ever.

And the most Porsche looking one :p

Audi did the same thing, I often confuse current gen A4 with A6 because they are almost the same size. My A4 is way smaller than even the B7 that came right after it, the B8 is even more massive.
 
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I still can't get over how massive the current Corolla is. It's about the same size as a 1st generation Camry now. :eek:
Compare the current gen VW Polo ("supermini-class", introduced in March 2009) - it's as big as a Golf III ("compact class") which went out of production only about 10 years before, contrary to the 1st gen Camry which went out of production more than 20 years ago...
 
I have been noticing a growing number of the new ?A? class Mercedes, one of which I was following yesterday.
My thought: That it was looking it bit lardier than the previous generation. :lol:
Timely thread for the ?A? class.
 
How I perceive cars from America, starting in the 1920's:

Started off small, then grew larger until the mid 1930's. Cars after WWII were smaller, then grew larger throughout the 1950's. Late 1950's they grew smaller until the mid 1960's, then grew larger until the late 1970's. 1980's they started out smaller then grew larger, shrank a bit when the big 3 went completely FWD in the late 1980's / early 1990's, and have been growing since then to the present. So with this pattern, I am thinking cars will growing smaller in the next five years, or remain the same, but using more efficient designs for interior space.

I think you got it. Ford did annonce that the next Taurus and Mustang will be smaller. Still will be rather large though. As has been stated safety regs have killed the 2000lb sports car.

I think I saw somewhere that the Altima was built on the same platform as the Maxima (supposedly its big sis) for a while. It's a bit lulztastic to see my '02 next to an older one, that's for sure. It'll dwarf it. The new ones seem to have kept the massive size.

lutz?

mj_lut3.jpg
 
And the most Porsche looking one :p

Audi did the same thing, I often confuse current gen A4 with A6 because they are almost the same size.
I do the same thing. I'll see an A4 and think "You don't see too many A6s around here" before I realize it's an A4.
 
How I perceive cars from America, starting in the 1920's:

Started off small, then grew larger until the mid 1930's. Cars after WWII were smaller, then grew larger throughout the 1950's. Late 1950's they grew smaller until the mid 1960's, then grew larger until the late 1970's. 1980's they started out smaller then grew larger, shrank a bit when the big 3 went completely FWD in the late 1980's / early 1990's, and have been growing since then to the present. So with this pattern, I am thinking cars will growing smaller in the next five years, or remain the same, but using more efficient designs for interior space.

That's almost right. In the 50s cars grew and the big ones stayed that way until the late 70s when they started to shrink a bit, just a bit. The big cars stayed that way until they all but disappeared in the mid/late 90s. While there were several smaller cars introduced in the 60s, but most of the American small cars(almost all would be full size cars today) still dwarfed all but the biggest European cars. The compact cars were introduced in the early 70s and stuck around. The big change in car size in the US came during the 80s when the vast majority of Chrysler's cars were the freaking K-cars and GM followed with the Citation and it's clones. But in the 90s the big SUV craze was on and they negated the small cars that were getting smaller by a bit.
 
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