There’s a lot about London to love, from its high density of pubs to its extremely bacon-forward breakfasts. It’s also a cosmopolitan city with a great transportation network, which means car ownership isn’t a necessity for most. And even those who do own cars can reasonably buy a small car and not have to worry about it.
It became a joke among my family while I was in London that I’d run past a brand new Ferrari SF90 or an Audi eTron GT to get a picture of a Mercedes A-Class or one of the cool Fiat 500 variants we didn’t get in the United States.
I can’t help it. Not only is there the novelty of something different, there’s also an appreciation for how an urban center feels when most of the cars aren’t 5,000-pound Chevy Yukons. I love a big truck or SUV when I’m back in Texas, but even a Black Cab here (more on driving that later) felt like a lot on some of the narrow streets of London.
When it comes to pints or the aforementioned bacon, bigger is definitely better. I’m not sure that applies to vehicles in cities.
London Has Some Dope Small Cars
Right around the corner from our hotel was this second-generation Mercedes A-Class, which is about seven feet long and can seat four people and their groceries. I think these look great. We never got this one in the United States (unless you’re Doug).
There are Smarts in the United States, but we don’t have as many, we don’t have diesel ones, and we don’t have as many customized ones. I feel like every Smart I saw was customized.
The Volkswagen ID.3 is technically a compact EV, I guess, but it weighs 4,000 pounds and is seemingly pretty large when you compare it to this Mazda wagon (which weighs less).
Even a Mini Cooper looks big in England!
I love old Alfas. Small is good. Small is fast. Small is beautiful. Look how much room there is for it in this parking spot. The flat tires aren’t a great sign.
There were only 500 Fiat Rivas made, but it’s a gorgeous spec.
The Fiat Seicento pictured here, I think, is a Fiat Seicento Sporting. It was the replacement for the Fiat 500 (Cinquecento) and, while it didn’t have any power, it only weighed about 1,600 pounds!
When you make all the cars small you can even make the police cars small. The i3 looks great as a police car. Should David paint his car like this?
The Problem
Not to go all new-urbanist on you, but there are numerous reasons why small cars are great in urban environments:
- Smaller cars generally weigh less, which means they do less damage to roads over time, saving taxpayers repair money and saving other drivers from repairs.
- A smaller car takes up less space, meaning you need fewer and smaller parking spaces.
- Smaller cars are, generally, better for the environment, creating less emissions (ICE) and requiring smaller batteries (EVs).
- Smaller cars are safer for pedestrians.
The inverse of this, of course, is generally true. SUVs have gotten better at protecting drivers while simultaneously making life riskier for pedestrians. They take up more space in cities and they’re bad for roads. Arguably, heavy electric vehicles also pose many of the same risks (a Tesla Model Y also weighs about 4,400 pounds and it would suck to get nailed by one of those).
Again, if people want cars they should be able to have cars. They should just be charged relative to the impact and cost to the local environment. In the case of London, that’s congestion pricing and other parking restrictions.
Like, if you want this please have this:
While not a big car, it’s at least a super looooooong car.
If I lived in London I’d probably try to get something vintage or weird and it would be nice to know that, given many cars are small, I could feel fairly safe even taking my kiddo around in something like a Twingo.
I’m simultaneously desirous of something smaller and aware of the physics of it all. It’s not like I won’t end up buying a Citroën 2CV one day, but not to put my family in one in a city full of blind corners and massive trucks. The average vehicle is getting so big–on average a new car in America weighs about 4,200 pounds–that my E39 suddenly feels like a small car.
There’s a sort of mutually assured destruction when everyone else has a bigger vehicle and thus I’m worried that the average weight of a vehicle I’m going at risk of colliding with is approximately equivalent to a storage container full of Twingos. Do you know how many Suburban Ubers I see on a daily basis? The average Uber in London appears to be a Prius with a scuffed bumper.
I think as we rebuild and redesign our cities here in the U.S. it’s helpful to think about the reasons why it’s generally nicer to walk around places like London (or Paris) than it is to walk around most big American cities.
Plus, a place that’s more conducive to small cars is also more conducive to vintage cars.
As a classic Mini owner/daily driver I agree, small cars are cool.
And the new MINI is barely worthy of the name. BMW MIDI would be more accurate.
the modern BMW MINI Travellers (station wagons) are totally bigger and bulkier in every dimension when compared to my original 1967 Mini Traveller. There is little comparison save the Traveller name plate. MIDI, indeed.
The cute lil small cars will work here just fine. Only jealous tariffs and different-not-better standards keep them out.
A car seat is a car seat and the distance between the seat, steering wheel, pedals and other essential dials and buttons are dictated by the length of the bones in the human body.
The length of the bones in the human body varies from region to region, but the variation from male to female, within the regions, is greater than the regional differences (ignoring certain regions with a general caloric deficit)
A modern subcompact car, will do 250k+ miles with basic maintenance and will run at 75 mph all day without problems.
My mother owns an operates a Kia Picanto. It’s a fantastic little car. However, there is no way it will survive for 250,000 miles no matter how well it is maintained nor will it do 75 mph ‘without problems’. It will do 75 mph eventually and it will be utterly frightening to manage whilst you are there.
May I ask, what sort of Kia Picanto she is driving. The current version will do 97 mph. Go and visit a country with 100%+ tax on cars and I will assure you they will do 250k + with timely oil, belt and pump replacements.
Last generation. 2020? 4 cylinder 1.3 litre I think with the auto box. Great little car. But wailing away at 110 km/h plus on the freeway is not what it’s for and it’s not great at it. And it certainly doesn’t like Australian regional highways and back roads with their bumps and creases…even with our version having a locally tuned suspension setup. Wouldn’t hesitate to consider one if we lived in the city.
I rented a Picanto to cross Italy some time ago. It did went well over 75 on the highway like it was nothing, and absolutely destroyed the twisties, even loaded with 3 suitcases. Ask me how I know.
And here, in Central America, I’ve seen many Ubering day to day no problem. I’m optimistic that they can reach a long age if taken care of.
A fantastic little car, indeed.
You are correct about the vehicles getting too large over the time and too impractical to drive on the infrastructure that hasn’t been “modernised” to accommodate the larger vehicles.
In Germany, the biggest headache is the parking garages that were built in the latter half of twentieth century prior to the explosive growth of the SUV (in sales and in size). Many of the parking space is about two metres wide, not counting the “evil” columns that test our resolute to squeeze in and park “properly” (between two stripes).
We have seen so many modern vehicles not parking within the two stripes, and most of the drivers don’t care if their vehicles encroach on other parking space. Despite the signage at the entrance, indicating how many available space, none of them has enough space for us to park and open the door to disembark from our vehicles.
A several years ago, the Bundespolizei (German federal police) started busting so many vehicles driving through the construction zones on the Autobahnen. Why? The left lane was restricted to the vehicles two metres or narrower in width, but that didn’t dissuade the “fatter” vehicles from travelling on that one. After an intense public outcry, the rule was changed to increase the width to 2.2 metres.
If you lived in London, you wouldn’t have something vintage and weird sadly, for several reasons:
ULEZ charge. Unless it’s pre 1980 or post 2005ish you have to pay £15 a day, even if you’re a resident.
Maintenance. London is expensive, mechanic time is expensive, getting broken cars to a garage is expensive.
Traffic. London has appallingly heavy traffic, and psychotic drivers, an old car with a truculent gearbox adds to the stress.
Battle scars. It’s not as bad as Paris, but keeping a nice vintage car nice is hard work. Finding parking is hard at the best of times, finding parking that doesn’t have a 50/50 chance someone will remove a wing mirror is especially hard.
Source: I lived in central London for 15 years, and in that time ran a cheap 911, and later a not so cheap V8 Vantage (manual, tricky clutch, poor visibility). Eventually I gave up and bought a disposable car for London, and kept the Aston an hour outside.
“The Problem”
(Dons MAGA trucker hat)
It is?
“Not to go all new-urbanist on you, but there are numerous reasons why small cars are great in urban environments:”
Oh, this’ll be good!
Bring it ya dirty, smelly hippie!
“Smaller cars generally weigh less, which means they do less damage to roads over time, saving taxpayers repair money and saving other drivers from repairs.”
Are you kidding? Our shitty ass roads are a selling point!
Other peoples repairs? Ha Ha Ha!! Not my problem!
“A smaller car takes up less space, meaning you need fewer and smaller parking spaces.”
Not my problem when I can just take up two, maybe three parking spaces, as much as I need to feel safe for my ride.
Now lack of parking is more is a “you” problem.
“Smaller cars are, generally, better for the environment, creating less emissions (ICE) and requiring smaller batteries (EVs).”
Not my problem, I didn’t ask for any damn batteries anyway.
Emissions? Don’t be ridiculous, that’s what a tailpipe is for. If those jerks behind me choke on the perfume of my American iron that’s their problem. They clearly hate (my) freedom and are insanely jealous of my being their better.
Besides if climate change is real – and I ain’t saying it is! – it’s somehow all their fault anyway. And Obama’s. Something about socialism. I heard it on the radio so it MUST be true. Why do you hate America?
“Smaller cars are safer for pedestrians.”
Not my problem, I’m in a goddamed tank! If they get hurt it’s their own damned fault for not getting out of my way fast enough!
“The inverse of this, of course, is generally true. SUVs have gotten better at protecting drivers”
Doing God’s work keeping me and mine much safer than U and yours which is all that actually matters.
-Murica! Fuck yeah!
(Takes off MAGA trucker hat and burns it.)
What we need in the US is dramatically higher gas prices. If the cost of driving really reflected the environmental toll it takes, maybe there would be a market for smaller cars and people would vote for politicians that support bike lanes and public transit.
“What we need in the US is dramatically higher gas prices”
I’d like to create a Venn diagram of things that are:
This statment diagrammed would just be a circle.
London also has world class bike infrastructure, which keeps bikes away from car traffic (a win-win).
Too bad bike lanes are so expensive we can’t afford them here in the USA. Private citizens have to pay *out of pocket* to powerwash bloody spandex out of the grilles of their F-150s.
There are tons of bike lanes in Idaho, not sure where you are where there are no bike lanes.
Not that you especially need bike lanes where there are perfectly good travel lanes and sidewalks everywhere.
I’m in New York. We have a lot more bike lanes than 20 years ago, but not nearly as good a network as London, so cars and bikes still spend too much time in each others’ way.
Travel lanes? Sidewalks?
Yeah, I ride my bike in both travel lanes and sidewalks. Usually just fine
Besides being illegal, it’s more or less impossible to ride a bike any real distance on a sidewalk in New York because there are pedestrians. As for “travel lanes” – bikes sharing constrained space with cars is the main cause of cyclist fatalities in NYC.
I’ve been to Idaho and can see how it would be different, though riding my bike with my kid on the back there would terrify me with all the bro-dozers and high speed limits (NYC has a city limit of 25, which is mostly aspirational anyway given traffic).
If you use Waze, you’d be amazed by all the speed cameras across NYC. But I think they only record when you are 11 above the speed limit. Which I guess is still okay.
America’s logic regarding cyclist and pedestrian infrastructure – No one walks/bikes so we don’t need to invest in sidewalks/bike lanes. Why would I walk/bike instead of drive? It’s too dangerous and inconvenient due to the lack of infrastructure!
Just as Henry Ford wanted.
It depends on the area, and the willingness of local government to build actual bike infrastructure. Too many US agencies do the bare minimum of a couple of stripes or sharrows and leaving bike lanes ending mid block. My city has some newly built protected lanes that are great and some absolutely garbage routes.
Can we get past the vehicle weight = pedestrian death myth. To a pedestrian of 50 kg it doesn’t matter much whether the car weighs 1000kg or 2000 it will only slow fractionally. What matters is shape and sight lines. A heavy EV sedan with a lower front should be safer than a equally heavy ICE that throws the pedestrian under. Better visibility will prevent the crash altogether.
(This assumes equal stopping distance)
Yup
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212012224000017
Dang I didn’t realize Matt included multiple common myths that he should know better about
Is there another one?
Yeah, the “bigger cars wear out the road more” myth that I commented on further down.
I lived in West London for a time and loved seeing the amazing cars that would be just street parked because obviously, tall skinny terrace houses don’t have garages. Interspersed between the sensible little city cars there would be true gems.
A morning stroll to the Tube station might go, “Vauxhall Astra, (boring) Peugeot 206 (meh, there are hundreds), Lotus Elise (oh yeah, as you do) Clown Shoe BMW (what, they made a hard top Z3?!), Westfalia camper with flat tyres (that’s been there a while), Ford Mondeo (I barely noticed), Ferrari 458 Italia (say what?!)…
When I travel to the UK or Ireland, I rent a Nissan Micra, Fiat 500, or equivalent. Tootling around roads in rural Ireland or Wales favors a tiny car anyway! 🙂
It’s funny this article came up as I was on the Interstate on Friday in my Volvo S60, and felt so small next to all the Suburbans/Yukons/pickup trucks passing me. The S60 is not a small vehicle.
The irony being that, here in Ireland those tiny roads are very frequently occupied by tractors (driven by kids who are far too young to be doing so legally), large articulated lorries and farmers with poorly illuminated Toyota Land Cruisers. I find the size of the car is irrelevant on our roads – rural or urban – because other road users generally treat you like you’re invisible anyway.
True enough. I have distant relatives there, so I have driven a fair amount around Ireland. I love watching those Land Cruisers dive into the hedgerow-shrouded curves at 20kph over; my wife called it “the luck of the Irish.” LOL
Nothing has been more refreshing than the 3 times I’ve been to England since 2017. The cars in London (and other smaller cities I’ve been to there) are a treat to see. Gives me a nice feeling of relief on the motorways there of not getting barreled down on huge vehicles like I am every day in the ‘States.
Granted I’m one of the biggest anti-SUV anti-truck anti-bro dozer people out there — but it was refreshing to see several families in England of 4 or 5 fit just fine in a compact or sub-compact car. It’s that attitude of “this saloon (sedan) fits my family just fine, handles our supermarket runs without issue, and is a joy to drive” that I appreciate.
Living in the suburbs of a big city here it’s disgusting to see all the SUVs and BroDozers. There’s no need for owning these vehicles here — the excuses of “I want to go off-roading!” (they never, ever do), “I need to haul stuff all the time!!!” (in reality, it’s twice per year the back is used, and the seats folded down on an actual car would serve the same purpose for their “need to haul”), and just general peer pressure (“everybody buys SUVs now”) that disgusts me. It’s just encouraging car manus to phase out practical vehicles and keep putting out money makers.
Nearly all of the folks here I see that own bro dozers or jacked up trucks & SUVs have that 11-mile each way commute to the office with their gigantic vehicle. “But I *need* this!” Do you? Really?
Of course; like what you like. If you want a gigantic vehicle, I/no one will stop you. Personally I just hate that this country gives in to lining the pockets of car manufacturers thanks to those gigantic margins made — all under the false pretense that riding high up and having all that space is a “must” in this “bigger is better” ridiculous country’s mindset. And for olds, actual large families, those with physical limitations and such — large/tall vehicles are better for them to get into and out of — these are the folks that should be buying those. And those that use personal trucks for their career…but for real, not just made up “I need a truck for (retail) work” dummies.
Suburban Karen with a 12-mile daily round trip and one kid (I need to haul their hockey gear!!!” Uhhh, as someone who’s hauled gear like that — it fit just fine in a smaller car like a Mini Cooper — I’ve done it) doesn’t need a lifted SUV…in addition to not knowing how to handle it nor how to drive it. It’s prestige and showing off income. Dumb. Same with the 22-year-old makes around here with bro dozers with farm tractor tires, smoke stacks, and LED lights underneath the frame with Calvin peeing on an American car manufacturer’s logo on the back window…for his job at Walmart.
Saw none of this in the UK or in Ireland…was very refreshing. The US has lost its car common sense thinking.
Enjoy paying $125 per week to fill up your needlessly gigantic vehicle — and your $1,110 monthly car payment for 8 years!
I think you’re exaggerating a little. I’m sure you could get one family of four or five to fit in a C-segment car, but not several of them. Even if you put some of the younger and smaller ones in the boot (sic).
Yeah, an exaggeration. What’s true is what I saw at a Tesco Express near Slough — a family of 4 (kids were young but not in car seats) hop out of a Renault Clio. No, not as small as a Twingo or a SmartCar, but it was refreshing to see a family do just fine without a Needlessly Gigantic And Ridiculously Oversized truck or SUV they don’t need.
It’s definitely better than the US, almost no F150 size vehicles, but you still commonly see one parent plus one kid in a full-size Range Rover in the U.K..
I live in a small city with roads as narrow and twisty as London’s, but better parking. A RR is still a liability though.
It was funny when a sales guy at work told me he had to go rent a minivan to fit a large instrument which didn’t fit in his Grand Cherokee, and I told him “Don’t bother, I’ll carry it in my station wagon, like I’ve done it a dozen times before.” People somehow don’t understand that outside dimensions =/= inside space.
The only reason subcompacts have ever sold well in the US is for fuel economy, and almost never really for their compact size. One of the best cars currently for sale in the US under $25k is the Toyota Corolla Hybrid which is a much bigger car than these subcompacts and gets better MPG than even a Ford Festiva did. Most Americans live in suburbs and rural areas, not inner cities. I would venture a guess that 87% of all Americans could have their transportation needs remarkably well-served with a Corolla Hybrid. They just don’t want to.
Well yeah, in the land of big parking spots, why would I want a small car? Having a smaller car is the penalty you pay for better fuel economy.
Buying a car for its smallness only makes sense if you live somewhere where parking sucks. Which is totally a thing in larger American cities.
The myth that subcompact cars get good highway fuel economy needs to die. They don’t due to not being big enough for good aerodynamics. Compact cars get better highway fuel economy since they are just big enough to have decent aerodynamics while small enough to not need a giant engine or stay in boost the whole trip.
Today’s compact cars are the 2000’s midsized cars. That’s plenty of car for a solo commuter. Ideally the person with the longest commute drives the more efficient car while the person who WFH or locally can drive whatever edge case vehicle they deem necessary. So a compact car and a truck would cover most of the needs of a two car household.
Two of the best highway mpg cars ever sold in the US are the CRX and the Insight, both subcompacts.
“just big enough to have decent aerodynamics” lol I guess you missed the frontal area part of that equation.
So no, it is not a myth that subcompact cars get good highway mpg.
Also, your idea that a compact car and a pickup well serves the needs of a two car household doesn’t hold up if the household has more than 2-3 people. Which I’m gonna say most two car households do.
In Europe a lot of subcompacts have tiny engines optimised for 0-30, and get terrible mileage at motorway speeds. You can usually get the same car with a bigger engine that’s not so good at 30, but fine at 70.
You’re right, I was thinking of attached airflow and not frontal area. The CRX HF and Insight are exceptions to the rule. A better comparison was a Civic to a Fit. The Civic does better on the highway. Up to 42 mpg vs 40 mpg. Although the Fit we had struggled to meet its highway rating unless it was driven for fuel economy.
The modern 4 door pickup and a 4/5 door compact would fit a family of 4 just fine. Throw Fido into the back seat of the pickup also. The compact is fine for short trips or dropping the kids off at school. I can’t recall the last time I’ve seen a standard cab pickup purchased new by an individual. They’re all fleet trucks.
Well yes, a new crew cab short bed pickup would carry a family of four AND do any truck stuff most people need, but not better than a minivan would. And I think it’s curious that you seem to want to push people towards crew cab short bed pickups.
I’d rock a minivan. But the broader market has decided that pickup good minivan bad. The F150 alone crushes every minivan for sales. It’s not nutty to suggest a vehicle that will do most of what people want and can be fixed most places in the US or Canada.
Are you implying that you can’t get a minivan repaired at as many shops as an F-150?
Try finding a Toyota/Honda dealer in most of the nation. Now try finding a Ford dealer. Back when we had our Fit, we drove past three Ford dealers to the closest Honda dealer 60 minutes away. This tracks because Ford has close to 3000 dealers while Honda has just over 1000. Toyota has about 1400. By that metric, yes, there are more places to get warranty work done on a F150 compared to a minivan. Now used vehicles, that’s a completely different story.
You know that not all minivans are Hondas and Toyotas, right? And that cars can be repaired at places other than the dealer? And that most dealers are perfectly happy to work on cars of a different brand?
Sure, this applies to warranty work, but the large majority of car owners do not have a factory warranty on their car.
Oh right, Chrysler still exists.
Point being, I can see a good argument for a new pickup over a new minivan for many people. Even fuel economy isn’t that far off for ICE. Crazy times and an acknowledgement how far pickups have gone while minivans have not been as innovative. Toyota making every Sienna hybrid was way overdue. Even that is more a mild hybrid since it has a tiny battery. Chrysler making a PHEV that can’t do anything but shuttle people undercuts the usability argument. And Honda has been content tweaking the sheet metal and adding more electronics. Meanwhile even a base engine truck can do a lot.
So it’s not clear cut.
There are some diminishing returns when going smaller for better highway fuel economy, even most midsize sedans even are in the upper 30s, and some of the compacts are 1-2 mpg off. Nissan is a good example since they are still in all 3 car segments with the Versa/Sentra/Altima – they get 40/40/39 mpg highway, respectively, all naturally aspirated with CVTs so no hybrids or turbos or the like. Another late subcompact, the Kia Rio was rated 41 mpg highway, a Forte is rated for 39-41 mpg highway, all also NA/CVT like the Nissans.
I’ll die on the hill that sub-compacts can and will sell in the US. They sold 15k Mitsubishi Mirages last year. A car they didn’t even bother trying to make good. And GM is printing money with the Trax. People live in cities here. For every person towing their boat thru West Texas. There is about 10 more people who just want to do a ten mile trip to Whole Foods. Hell, up here in rural Maine, half of drive Honda Fits.
Unfortunately, small cars are cheap. And in this country, we decided to make driving mandatory. So, most of us are going to need a car. Why make a cheap perfectly good small car, when you can force people into the SUV? We’ve totally disincentivized manufacturers to meet that demand because they can force the issue with higher profit margins suvs. Europe, on the other hand, can just not own a car. Or maybe risk used. As just not having a car is actually an option manufactures have to compete with. There’s even a North American example, Montreal. The sub compact Quebec special is a thing because Montreal actually has a decent transit/ multi modal system.
Since the government already meddles in the affairs of industries it bails out, why not one more mandate? It should be a requirement that a certain percentage of autos produced each year (say, 15-20%) should be built to sell at or under an MSRP of, say, $20K. Call it ”20 Under 20” or something like that. Would the automakers and dealers lose their collective shit and lobby to neuter it? Absolutely. Would it help? I think so. Will it ever happen? Probably not.
Really the government should inspire to create a functioning transport model that allows for anything for no car to big car. Gives us actual freedom of choice, and not this freedom to buy a selection of suburban tanks or risk death.
Like the Bullet Train in CA? A massive, bloated and corrupt crap-hole?
And I thought I was being unrealistic! 😉
I’ve never bought a car in the US, but I get the impression buying a European used car is a lot less chancy. We don’t do as many miles per year, due to everything being closer, and cars appear to be better maintained. Almost every country has mandatory inspections, fuel is expensive, and there’s generally mild weather, so there’s lots of incentives to keep your car in good shape.
I think the mandatory inspections are a big part of it. It forces everyone to at least think about maintenance every time the test is coming up. People who don’t want to have to deal with it just take their car to a garage, and leave them to test it and do any maintenance/repairs So you end up with at least a basic minimum level of repair.
Might explain the differences in the perceived levels of reliability of eg, VWs, between the US and Europe.
Interesting theory, but not sure that true. Half the US has mandatory safety inspections, and are used cars in those states better maintained?
A couple of years ago, I drove all around England in a 1972 Triumph Toledo 1300, weight 2000 lbs, horsepower 60. I sometimes took 3 passengers and luggage and it was fine, even on the motorways at 60mph in the slow lane.
Fortunately my passengers were all full-grown adults. Had I transported a child it would have required 500 more cubic feet interior and 500lbs more GVWR.
It was so refreshing seeing all the small cars when we went to London and Edinburgh last summer. The only pickup trucks we saw were basically Rangers, and those were few and far between. And of course most of the cars were manuals. Wish it was more like that here…
Shhhh, here is a secret….cars are so much smaller in Europe because fuel is taxed at sky high levels so regressive that few poor people can afford to own cars. There is no dignity in one’s transmission choice…..only preference. Actually by your reasoning most cars are better because they are automatics since they are by far the most conserving.
And in London you actually have options of getting around such as walking, biking, bus, or train! I wish we had that kind of freedom here.
Smaller spaces, yes; but fewer? That would only come from a change in urban planning and transportation preferences that meant that fewer people used cars to get around. Less space devoted to parking because of fewer spaces, but just as many spaces without such a change.
Lots of the UK’s parking is parallel to the street, so you can fit (eg) 10 small cars along the same road that would only fit 7-8 SUVs.
For me, having a small car means there’s more gaps that I can park in. At least 10% of the time I can park in a space that an SUV wouldn’t fit in. Parallel parking is part of our driving test for a reason.
I
standsitidle while waiting in a parking space corrected. I wasn’t thinking of street parking at all, even though I (unlike a fair number of my friends in an American town that’s mostly about off-street parking) can parallel park pretty well.One of the weirdest things about moving from SF to NYC is that even though people in SF have fewer constraints on space, it seems like more people there buy small cars like Minis or Honda Fits or Golfs. Meanwhile, supposedly it’s-hard-to-have-a-car-in NYC has far, far more normal-sized cars, like leaning heavily mid-size or full-size cars and SUVs. I see far more Kia Stingers than VW Golfs (any version), more Audi A6 than A3, more Ford Escapes than Focus, etc. Not to mention how many Surburbans or Yukons or 2500 Silverados or long bed F-series trucks that people somehow street park.
Just a thought, but I wonder if it’s a difference in general use. Do SFs tend to stay in the city, using the cars to get around the immediate area? NYs often use their cars to leave the city.
Not at all, if anything there’s a hell of a lot more to do within a short drive outside of SF than NYC. Tons of people go to Tahoe for skiing, Napa for wine, any number of the beaches, commuting (most of the housing in the Bay is in the cities, most of Silicon valley is in the suburbs) and so on. You definitely need to rely on car usage more there
Hm, that is odd, then. More available parking in NYC? IDK.
$6 gas and “gas guzzler” registration fees (for large vehicles) in SF do a lot of work in driving people to choose smaller vehicles.
If that were true, there wouldn’t be big cars anywhere in California, which isn’t the case.
There’s a reason small cars don’t do well in the US. It’s the roads.
Imagine yourself doing a 1,000-mile day in any one if the cars pictured. Its the wrong tool for the job, just like a Yukon is the wrong tool for downtown London- or New York.
Those from Oz can relate. Long stretches of emptiness at 80mph-plus are murder in a small, high-revving car.
Other than multiple 1000mi days being a far, far, far outlier in people’s driving habits, a small car can do it just fine. I crossed the US in a Honda CR-Z in just 4 days, it was not a problem.
While this used to be true, modern little cars have sufficient power to hold 80 for hours on end. I’ve road-tripped my sister’s Honda Fit on i95 in Florida, and it did fine. If you step up to the Forte/Civic/Corolla size class, which is still in my mind a little car, you’d do even better. I think the premise that big open spaces need big cars/trucks is flawed. A little car works well in both the wide open spaces and the narrow city. Also, if you mean getting 35+ mpg to mean murder, then I choose the little car.
People do long road trips in small cars all the time. My old Cavalier was one of the more comfortable road trip cars I’ve driven.
A Yukon is also the wrong tool for a 1000 mile day.
I don’t think that’s the way it has to be. My 1st gen Legacy wagon, while not a subcompact, was a small and light car by today’s standards (smaller in every dimension but height and lighter than a new Civic sedan). More importantly here, it had the same wheelbase and approximate weight as my GR86 (though significantly narrower), which I think makes for an interesting comparison that I have extensive experience with. Long trips were no problem in the Legacy—Detroit from north of Boston overnight? NP. Guy selling the car I came to see a lying POS, turn around and go home. Back that night more annoyed than tired. LA to north of Boston in under 50 hours all told? Exhausted, sure, but from the drive itself, not from any characteristic of the car. OTOH, I find the GR fairly tiring after only a few hours (even trying to discount me being older) and I think the difference is that the Legacy had fantastic seats and cars then had more spacious interiors for their size (no giant sized center console, low cowl, thin doors, more knee room under the dash), plus the FWD manuals had an especially tall 5th gear—significantly taller than the GR’s 6th—which kept engine noise and NVH down (though it was still loud inside with road and some wind noise), and it was fairly stable in crosswinds and in a straight line where the GR is obviously designed to be a little more unstable for maneuverability’s sake and requires far more corrections, most of which aren’t noticed much until one’s been driving for hours.
While a subcompact with maximized interior space will result in a taller, stubbier profile that will be more difficult to tune for stable aero, the cars aren’t otherwise optimized for long distance driving, either. They’re built to be cheap and economical, so the seats tend to suck, NVH is not great, they’re set up for maneuverability over stability (following their natural tendencies, which is cheaper and fits the demographic of the typical buyer), and their small engines optimized for primarily urban economy and performance result in short gearing that makes them buzzy on the highway. It all makes sense as to why they make them this way, but they could be built for distance driving if there was a business case (obviously, me and a couple hundred other people aren’t enough). It also doesn’t help when so many other vehicles are so big, encouraging people to also buy bigger even before getting into cultural and general human tendencies to equate size with prestige or better value/dollar.
Done it many a time in Australia, a country that also has long, straight roads with next door to F-all in between. My wife’s home town is Mildura, VIC and we live in Adelaide, SA, a 5 hour trip on straight, boring arse roads. 3 kids and all their junk on board. We have regularly done it in the following: a Holden Astra (1.8L, 5sp MT), a Holden Cruze (1.6L, 6sp MT), a Kia Rio (1.0L, 7sp auto). All felt comfortable, safe and cruised effortlessly at 130km/hr (cough, I mean, 100km/hr).
We drove the Astra from Adelaide to Bowen, QLD once, 3 very long days on some sketchy roads and it was a delight. Admittedly, at that time, we were a young couple without kids. You don’t necessarily need a huge car for road trips – it’s what you get used to.
I wouldn’t want to do two 16-hour days out to Cali in any one of the cars mentioned in the replies. I’d be dead tired.
I guess it depends on what engine’s you’re used to. 85mph is about 3500rpm for my Polo, but that’s only halfway through it’s rev range so it’ll do it all day.
Jeebus, that’s screaming RPMs. All day long?
Noooooooo.
That’s what I mean, it’s subjective. For a big pushrod V8, 3500rpm is pretty much the moon, but a small 4-cyl is entirely happy there. For a motorbike engine that’s barely a third of the way to redline.
A four-banger may be happy turning 3500 for 16 hours straight in 95-degree heat, but I wouldn’t be. NVH is a thing, y’know.
See any Ford Pumas? I like ’em for being a reasonable compromise – okay, you get your crossover, but in a smaller package.
A few!
The original Ford Puma was an adorable little ‘sports car’. This new SUV-looking thing is an abomination in my eyes.
Yeah, I miss the original one too (I think that ad for it was the first time Ford digitally resurrected Steve McQueen even), but I like the current one in an at least relative sense – if we have to have endless crossovers, I’d like a few small options like the Puma.
And a manual transmission can make me forgive a lot, given how starved we are of them here in the U.S.
There’s no reason, and I mean NO reason other than consumer tastes and corporate profit margins why these cars wouldn’t work here. When I was a kid, we did two-week driving vacations (family of 4) in a Dodge Lancer. Mid-size by 80s standards, so pretty much a compact today. And guess what? We survived. My brother and I didn’t actually kill each other from having to share the back seat, although there may have been the occasional thought in that direction. If you needed to haul something big you rented a truck or prevailed upon your pickup-having friends to help. A third row usually meant a rearward-facing jump seat in a wagon, or somebody got one of those new-fangled Chrysler minivans.
I’m going outside now, there’s a cloud that looks like it needs a good yelling-at.
As a country, we seem to like things as large as possible, but we have these moments where we’re willing, or even desirous, to go small. The original Mustang was definitely a size down from the usual mid-60s fare, and many of us here grew up with or not that long after the ’70s reset…which kinda held through the ’90s.
It really seems like the ’00s were the start of our current love of gigantic. At first it seemed driven by novelty and “because we can”, now it’s that plus defensive concerns with everyone else in ’em.
Big vehicles were our “Peace Dividend”.
The original Mustang was exactly the same size as the Falcon that it literally was, and about the same size as other mid 60s economy cars.
“Smaller cars generally weigh less, which means they do less damage to roads over time, saving taxpayers repair money and saving other drivers from repairs.”
This is a common misconception, and one that frequently spread around the internet. Yes increased weight *on the same area of pavement* increases road wear.
It increases it a lot, more weight means exponentially more wear. What this means is that a single semi truck driving past puts enough wear on the road to make even big 3/4 ton pickups almost irrelevant. And so the difference between a 2000lb car and a 4000lb car is pretty negligible.
This is extra true because heavier cars(with few exceptions) DON’T put more weight per area of pavement than small cars do. Even large SUVs rarely apply more than 40psi of ground pressure, usually closer to 30psi. This is about the same as small cars. Contrast this with heavy trucks, which are always more than 100psi ground pressure.
So yes, heavier cars wear the road more than small cars, no, it’s not by a relevant amount for any road which sees occasional truck traffic.
^^THIS ^^
Doesn’t that mean the 4000lb car is doing the same damage to twice the area of road, so it’s damaging the road twice as much?
Road material can yield under lower pressures and rebound easily kind of like elastic deformation. The higher pressure of a semi could move it beyond the rebound and into something similar to permanent plastic deformation. For most purposes you can consider regular passenger traffic to be negligible vs weather and cargo traffic.
Also some jurisdictions have already started to beef up road requirements in anticipation of upcoming EV’s.
So heavier cars do increase infrastructure costs?
Could be a hedge bet in case the EV semi ever becomes a reality. Now that would be a DOT nightmare better safe than sorry.
EV Class 8 trucks (aka Semi’s or Lollies) in the US are regulated to be no more than 80,000 lbs fully loaded
1. Shit yes that is a lot of weight and it is what does the vast amount of wear to US roads
2. The “extra” weight allowed for EV class 8 trucks fully loaded is 2000 lbs*. In the EU an additional 2 tons (so 4400 lbs*) is being allowed
So ev class 8 trucks fully loaded are permittwd to be 2.5% heavier in the US and 5.5% heavier in the EU
So while I agree ev class 8 trucks will cause more wear on roads in comparison to diesel class 8 trucks that difference will be negligible especially in the US
*reference: https://electrek.co/2021/08/13/tesla-semi-electric-truck-weight-on-point-crucial/
Interesting point about maximum loads, I didn’t work on any major thoroughfares just some commercial/residential areas my guess is they aren’t expecting fully loaded semis mostly box and tanker trucks. they were switching from 3″ AC to 5″
Re: “they were switching from 3″ AC to 5″”
What is ‘AC’?
Is that referring to switching from 3″ to 5″ of Asphalt top coat”, i.e. the thickness of the road surface (on top of xxx inches of substrate, I’m assuming sand followed by xx (1″?) crushed rock)?
Not sure area of wear particularly matters in road life. There’s the same two ruts on every road.
The difference between a 2000lb car and a 4000lb car does not matter when both are negligible next to a 70,000lb truck. You seem to have missed that part.
No, I took the point about trucks and was being a liiiiiitle bit facetious, but I guess the sheer numbers of 4000lb vs 70,000 lb vehicles means something?
The more important points Matt could have made are the increase in particulate pollution – tyre dust, brake dust – and the sheer quantity of tyre waste, which nowadays is mostly derived from fossil fuels.
On an ideal, well built and undamaged freeway maybe but what about on surface streets or less than ideal roads? I imagine suburban streets that very rarely see anything heavier than an Amazon delivery van are thinner than freeways so that extra 2000 lbs should have more of an impact. Or older roads that are already starting to crumble, how much faster will potholes form as the weakened road surface is pounded by a parade of 4000lb vehicles as opposed to 2000 lb vehicles?
Residential roads are built strong enough to handle occasional truck traffic. There is a garbage truck every week after all, and people will need to bring moving trucks or heavy trailers on a residential road occasionally.
Potholes might progress faster with 400lb cars than with 2000lb cars, but not very fast compared to heavy trucks. And potholes are primarily caused by weathering and freeze cycles anyways.
Potholes are started by weather but they are surely accelerated by heavy, non semi traffic. I can’t imagine the beat up suburban roads in mild climate California are all the fault of the weekly garbage truck or rare gigantic moving van.
Are there lots of beat up suburban roads in California? In Idaho I’m used to residential roads never ever getting potholes, which makes sense considering the vastly lesser truck traffic. But then again, apparently Idaho has very above average road maintenance.
There can be. I blew out two tires and bent two rims thanks to one such road. I got the city to pay for the replacements though.
In my neighborhood, like many more, the local municipality opts to put a layer of slurry seal on the road instead of real pavement. The cracks quickly appear in the same places, and within a few years it’s looking very shabby again. Slurry seal is about as effective as a coat of paint.
They also “repair” potholes with asphalt that is just stomped into place, not even tamped down. It quickly deforms, and the surface has a lousy patch. Some roads have long stretches of nothing but amateurish pothole patches, and none of it is smooth.
Unless you’re adding new axles, the amount of weight on the road goes up faster than the contact area. For example, a new F-150 King Ranch 4WD weights about 5000 lbs (1250 per wheel) and a Corolla Hybrid weighs about 2900 lbs (725 lbs per wheel). Unless the contact patch for the F-150 is about 72% greater than that of the Corolla, the F-150 is exerting more weight per area on the road. Considering the F-150 has 275mm wide tires and the Corolla has 205mm wide (so about 35% wider), the depth of that contact patch would have to be at least 30-40% greater for it to even start evening out. And that fails to factor in that road wear is not a linear concern.
Road engineers use something called the Fourth Power Law to estimate comparative road wear. It’s the weight per axle of a vehicle, divided by the same for the lighter vehicle, taken to the fourth power. In this instance, the F-150 exerts 8.75 times more wear assuming environmental conditions are equal. This equation backs up the idea that the F-150 needs to increase the effective contact area by at least 72% and any deficit increases the road wear by a 4x exponential rate.
Edit: And all of this ignores the fact that – even with larger contact areas – this weight is all still highly concentrated relative to the actual size and weight of the vehicle.
So you actually don’t need to look at tire sizes or anything to figure out ground loading. It’s really easy because we use pneumatic tires.
Any car with 30psi in the tires exerts 30psi ground pressure. Any car with 80psi in the tires exerts 80psi ground pressure. The amount of weight on the road absolutely does not go up faster than the contact area does.
So yes, an f150 with 35psi in the tires puts exactly the same load per area into the pavement as a Corolla with 35psi in the tires. And a semi truck with 120psi in the tires exerts 4x as much load as either.
Nonsense.
If your tires are at 10 PSI, vs. at 100 PSI, does your car weigh 90% less in the first situation?
No. It weighs the same but distributes its weight over 10x more area.
If you have a 3000lb car with 10psi in the tires, it will distribute that 3000lb over 300 square inches of ground. If that same 3000lb car has 100psi in the tires, it will distribute 3000lb over 30 square inches of ground.
This is the whole point of airing down when offroading: spread out weight over a greater area. Often this is exclusively to avoid damaging the ground, because that would mean sinking in. But less tire pressure also avoids damaging roads, because there is less weight per area of pavement.
So when I say a 5000lb f150 with 35psi in the tires exerts the same ground pressure as a 2500lb Corolla with 35psi in the tires, that is true. It weighs twice as much but spreads it out over double the area.
Small cars do work here, every one you pictured would be perfectly fine, FMVSS and EPA regs just restrict us to what manufacturers choose to sell here until they reach 25 years old, and larger cars carry thicker profit margins, so here we are.
And it’s not like small cars have never been sold here. There have been plenty. It’s just that consumers don’t want them, in a large part because of marketing specifically designed to push customers towards larger cars.
We go through periods where we want them, then quickly fall out of love, partly because of lack of commitment from manufacturers in terms of trying to keep them appealing and compelling as opposed to “oh, we also have this if you really want, but let me tell you about the lease deals on this crossover”
Even MINI, an allegedly small car brand, would really, really prefer people buy one of their SUVs instead of a Cooper Hardtop
This especially irks me. I had a mk3 Focus hatch that was bulletproof, solid, and acceptable to drive with the 5MT (that I had to special order), embarrassing my previous platform-mate Mazda3 in every way for over 200k miles, when it was totaled. The 2008 crunch and gas price increases pushed people into smaller cars, so a domestic manufacturer finally put in some effort to make a good small car! “Hold on, Cerberus!” said Ford execs. “We’ll convert you to CUVs or send you back to the Japanese!” For the automatic that would obviously be the major seller, Ford decided to go with a high end appearing DCT and knowingly cheap out with a dry clutch that most people didn’t like the characteristics of, but worse, had short lifespans. They didn’t go to wet clutch, they didn’t change to an automatic, they just let the Focus die on the vine, yet even with the notorious transmission and well past what should have been the time for the mk4 we never got, in their final year they still handily outsold the replacement POS Ecosport Ford tried to use to move small car people into CUVs. Of course, that failure was more a product of the Ecosport eating rhino ass than inability to convert—certainly nobody else has had much issue moving people into higher margin CUVs or trucks. Shoot, now I forgot the point I was making—I just hated that Ecosport so damn much!
I’m longing for the day that small, inexpensive, relatively fast sports cars make a return to the UK’s auto industry. With today’s technology, we could have some totally batshit sub-$30k two-seaters that could compete with hypercars costing 10x or more as much, and also be the cheapest things on the road to fuel. If only someone with the means designed and mass produced them.
Sadly they will be electric, heavy and expensive.
We still have the MX5, and they sell bucketloads of them, but I’m not sure there’s room in the market for two. Even the Fiat 125 sold badly.
For a given horsepower output, electric allows the possibility for the car to be significantly lighter than an ICE. The problem is that if the manufacturer insists on keeping a conventional design/aesthetics, it will get short range because its CdA value will be too high. Such a car needs to be a streamliner to get acceptable highway range. An efficient car won’t need more than 30 kWh or so to get 200 miles highway range, and with modern technology, the entire assembled battery including cooling/BMS/housing/ect. shouldn’t weigh more than 150 lbs, and a 300 horsepower motor and controller combined can now come in at under 100 lbs.
There seems to be a lack of imagination in the industry. W could have sub-2,000 lb EVs that had acceptable range, maybe 120-150 miles city but 200+ miles highway, if they’d build them. And with such small battery packs, they’d be cheap. The consequence would probably be the sale of $1XX,XXX+ performance cars would be cannibalized, because there’d be something much faster with an entry-level price on the market…
That would be great. You’d think there would be a handful of manufacturers that don’t really play in the performance car space that would want in. Toyota maybe, or someone in the Stellantis group.
I meant to type 250 lbs for the battery, not 150 lbs, but my point still stands.
There is a major downside. While range of such a car driven normally and not hooning would be acceptable, run time at the track with the pedal to the floor would be mere minutes. Such a vehicle might only be able to complete just one Nurburgring lap on a charge.
One of the many highlights of our honeymoon in England back in 2005 was our rental Ford Ka. Such a fun little basic car to run around southern England for a few days. Didn’t get anywhere near London with it. Thanks, but no thanks after seeing the traffic while there the previous weekend.
The neighborhood pigeon dislikes this.
That was a good choice. Between the complicated congestion charge, the hyper-aggressive driving, confusing roads, and eye watering parking charges it would have made your trip miserable.