Another pointless thread

4 adults and three dogs .... 300mile trip to the Lake District and a week on a farm on the top of Askham Fell.

Sorry but a Fiesta wont cut it.

Glad you find it funny that people are struggling. Very smug of you.

I seI seem to recall that parking space width is based on the 'average' car..

..set in the mid 1970s that was the Moris Minor..

,,,and it's never been updated...

I can quite believe that. So why do you put the blame on the car and not the space ? Most car parks I visit have been built long after 1970

I can quite believe that. So why do you put the blame on the car and not the space ? Most car parks I visit have been built long after 1970[/quote]It's not the car park but the drivers..

...how many times can we link with quotes from apreviuos thread?

Your logic fails me.

You admit the car park spacing has not adapted to the change in car widths since 1970.

Yet you single out Range Rover drivers. The Range Rover is not significantly wider than any SUV. BMW X5; BMW X6; BMW X7; Mercedes GLE; Audi Q8; Ford Explorer; Tesla X are all wider.

have a go at the SUV market by all means but get your facts right

I understand the jokes about RR drivers and indeed make them myself about me, as a newbie RR driver. But your original complaint, singling them out as being too wide is wrong in fact.

It's just that cars get bigger, people buy them, can't park them, spaces need to be bigger.

There's no logical real world solution, spaces can't be made bigger, that would reduce availability and with more cars than ever that wouldn't do...

My brain hurts, I think I need a beer.

I have been driving Land Rover products since the mid 80's, RR 2 door classic, series 2, series 2A, series 3, lightweight , disco 1, disco2, disco3, 110, and currently a 90 that is not a lot bigger than a 1960's series Landrover (88") other cars have got a lot bigger, compare an original golf to a new one or an original fiesta to a new one ,my other car, an Audi A4 avant that has a much larger footprint than my current Landrover but nobody comments on the size of it when parked

When I was a kid we had a Mini. Years later I owned three MINIs. Fantastic cars. Whenever I see an original Mini in a car park they look so tiny compared to any car today.

The standard car parking bay of 2.4 x 4.8m was established in the middle of the last century but is still used by planning authorities; hence to meet parking provision standards in planning applications this size is still used. However in newer car parks for supermarkets and motorway services larger spaces are provided. It isn’t just the width that is the problem but longer cars make manoeuvring in and out of adjacent bays more difficult especially given minimal width lanes between rows. An additional hazard is the fashion for running boards added to cars like Range Rovers which increase width.

My last MINI was a John Cooper Works (oh I miss that car). A very wet day I decided to park closer to the store entrance because the weather was in full gale mode and I had no umbrella.

Big mistake. The MINI is not a big car but some idiot still managed to scrape their vehicle over two panels of mine as they attempted to park next to me. Then cleared off without trace. So £800 out of my pocket.

I always park as far from the entrance as i can now without fail. I agree a huge percentage of drivers should not be allowed behind the wheel. If I was in charge of road safety I would instruct police patrols to sit at roundabouts and stop and heavily fine anyone who does not know how to drive around them.

The new mini is huge compared to the original.

Likewise the fiat500, a point made by fiat themselves several years back.

They had a limited edition with the original car size as a silhouette on the side.

Still miss it terribly

About 15 years ago, the Peugeot 405 estate was falling apart, the kids had gone, I had a company car so it was time to downsize the family car. We looked at the level below the 405 - 308, Astra, Focus etc. - and eventually settled on an Octavia estate. As I drove it home, it didn't feel like there was less shoulder width for the driver. Checking the dimensions, we had actually downsized to a bigger car.

It turned out that every one of the downsizing options we had looked at was bigger than the 405. As for the equivalents of the 405, they had grown enormous. I was told that much of the growth was due to improvements in structural safety.

Steve

My second car was a new red Renault 4 for which I paid £920 and drove it to Norway for the winter. The high ground clearance helped a bit in the snow but when I arrived they told me winter tyres were mandatory, I couldn’t afford those so chains were the alternative which were fine in snow but on ice gave no control at all. I nearly didn’t make it when a track suddenly ended in a pool of ice across which I slid, miraculously just stopping short of a cliff. It took an hour to gingerly get back across the ice with a makeshift track of bracken. When it was -20 on a trip to Sweden it went slower and slower and I realised it was overcooling so bought a newspaper to stuff in front of the radiator. That worked but for the rest of the trip the heater was turned off! I managed to fit all my worldly possessions in that car but sadly it had to go when I accumulated a family, dog and hamster.