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Comment by userbinator | Hacker News Reader

If you see an old car next to a modern car, the size difference is extreme!

My daily driver is 220 inches long and 80 inches wide, weighs around 4000 lbs and over 50 years old. Most cars of that era were roughly the same size. It is definitely larger than most other cars I see today, although it also has much better visibility.

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Most likely European vs American perspective? E.g. put an old and new Mini next to each other and it's almost unbelievable how tiny the original Mini actually is. While when you see a vintage US 'street cruiser' in a European city it's longer and wider than most modern cars.

Have a look at the original Fiat 500, it's comically small. You need to remember that the average adult Italian man in 1955 was about 8 cm shorter than today's average, and it's probably similar in other european countries.

Everytime I see a new Mini, I wonder if they could be sued for false advertising.

"Smart", known for extremely small cars with just two seats, now seems to sell huge ugly SUVs. It's truly ridiculous.

Indeed - their original design language doesn't really scale. A bit like Ferrari and Porsche - their 4-door monstrosities scream mid-life crisis louder than a red convertible.

MINI Countryman

When interviewed about the new (BMW) Mini circa 2001, the designer of the original BMC Mini's hydrolastic suspension, John Moulton, said that calling it 'Mini' was ridiculous: "For heaven's sake, it's the size of an Austin Maxi!"

If BMW Group made a Maxi, maybe it'd be tiny car. They do have history in that sector too.

It would also likely result in your death if you hit anything solid. Cars are bulkier and visibility has been compromised by better crash protection. I'm reminded of that test they did years ago between a 1959 Impala and a 2009 Malibu. It did not go well at all for the Impala.

That was also a "specially engineered to show how far we've come" comparison. That generation of the impala was unconventional (in a bad way) for the time and considered particularly unsafe in a crash even by 1950s standards and they did a partial overlap with something much newer. They always do partial overlaps in these marketing videos (this is not a "test", they knew exactly what would happen when they spec'd it out) because that's where the biggest disparity is.

GM's X-frame cars were definitely weaker than average for the time, but going back to the original topic, I don't think a 2CV would stand a chance against one.

By the 70s, which is what I have, they were already much better, largely due to big shock-mounted bumpers and very long front ends that make for a gradual crumple zone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk6DCWhjdjE

... although certain models were still much worse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgOxWPGsJNY

Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPF4fBGNK0U

There's also a good Fifth Gear video with the same concept: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBDyeWofcLY

I've always wanted to restore an old car. If I ever do these videos will haunt me!

That's an even more compelling video. Very small newer car vs a Volvo from the 90s, I would not have predicted that the Volvo would have done as poorly as it did. I totally expect cars from the 50s to basically disintegrate, but (showing my age) I had better opinions of 90s cars.

Notably those two cars weigh around the same amount and the 1959 one is slightly heavier, so this isn't the "modern cars weigh more" thing.

Yeah, that's why I said bulkier, I was trying to address the observation that visibility has gotten worse. I agree that it has, and a big reason is that A-pillars today are way wider than they used to be, because they are a critical part of the crash structure. They also typically have airbags, though in my experience those are compact and much narrower than the pillar itself.

I wonder if that difference is actually the safety standards rather than the efficiency ones though.

If you look at a modern vehicle, it's wide at the base and narrow at the top. The older ones were basically square, which is aerodynamically rubbish. But since the glass is at your eye level rather than below your waist, it meant you had a lot more glass.

I like to compare the 1960's Plymouth Suburban to the current Chevy Suburban both because of the name coincidence and because they cover roughly the same market segment (family hauler).

The Plymouth suburban is 9 inches shorter in length and well over 1000lbs lighter. I couldn't find specifications on height for the Plymouth, but the Chevy is obviously much taller.

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