We recently clapped eyes on a press release for the new BMW 7 Series and by God! What an absolute behemoth of a car. Yes, the 7 Series has always been a bit of a barge but it’s nothing compared to the size of the new i7, half of which seems to be made up entirely of the front grille (come on BMW, those front ends are getting to be a bit of a running joke now).
Ridiculous…
Don’t just take our word for it though. Let’s have a look at some figures, shall we? The first iteration of BMW’s full size luxury flagship, the E23 from the late-seventies, measures in at 4.86m long. The i7 comes in at a whopping 5.39m. And it doesn’t even have an engine! Oh, and a standard parking bay is 4.8m. You do the math.
This then got us thinking about how much cars in general have grown over the last fifty years, because it’s not just BMWs that have expanded exponentially. Take the Porsche 911 as another prime example. The original car from the ’60s was 4.29m long and around 1.7m wide. The latest 992 is 4.54m long and 1.9m wide at its largest. And don’t get us started on SUVs…
The small but perfectly formed sports car (like the beautiful 1960 Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider above) would appear to be a thing of the past now, with every manufacturer seemingly making cars that would have put the Titanic to shame, evoking memories of the golden era of American automobile production when everyone seemed to be trying to out do one-another in the size stakes, before it all came to an abrupt end in lieu of the global energy crisis in the ’70s, after which the drive (no pun intended) was very much for smaller, more economical runabouts.
Things have been slowly swelling since then though, but why the distending of dimensions? Well, cars have gotten safer for a start and increased safety means increased proportions in the form of crumple zones, multiple air bags and reinforced sections in order to keep the occupants in one piece in the event of an accident. You just have to look at the sheer depth of a modern car’s dashboard to see what we mean.
The Mk I Capri – a small car
Then there’s the tech. Modern cars have a lot of electronic wizardry, creature comforts and factory standard features, all of those which take up a lot of space. From giant screens to electric heated memory seats and climate controlled zones, not to mention the plethora of batteries required to run an EV, there’s a lot of wiring, gizmos and electronic gubbins to hide.
The new Capri – not so much…
It’s not just the cars themselves either. Look at how big wheels are nowadays. Gone are the days of 15” and 16” rims – both a perfectly adequate wheel size. New models today come equipped with wheels in the 20”-24” range. Whoppers in other words, meaning more weight, more rubber and more cost.
Let’s not forget that people are expanding too. With around 39% of the global population being clinically obese modern cars need to be bigger in order to accommodate our fat asses. It’s no wonder the global fitness industry is worth over $100 billion…
A new “MINI”. Apparently.
The larger the car though, the greater the drain on the environment. Bigger cars require more raw materials which means a heavier curb weight which in turn necessitates more power to run them, and indeed to build them in the first place. We’ve said it before but if you want to be kinder to the environment then you’re much better off sticking to a dinky classic instead. Not only will your CO2 emissions be way lower but you’ll also have a lot more fun as a result.
A tight and twisty B-road is no fun if the car you’re driving is too big, too wide and too cumbersome. Heaviness is the nemesis of agility. Car makers know this which is why they add all sorts of compensators in the form of trick anti-roll bars, differentials and four-wheel drive systems, which in turn add more weight! It’s all very Catch-22.
We used to think our Volvo 940 Turbo estate was a tad portly. It’s certainly a capacious car that historically was considered large, but park it next to any bloated modern saloon and those dimensions appear rather diminished by comparison. Wasn’t it Bukowski who proclaimed: “The less I needed, the better I felt”? We empathize Charles, we really do.
