Comment by jakogut | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jakogut | Hacker News Reader

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> The Mustang and Camaro were the size of a full size sedan today , if not bigger

This is verifiably false with three minutes of searching, which I did on my cellphone as I sit by a campfire. As an owner of both a 1965 Mustang and a 2015 Explorer, the difference in size between these vehicles is comical. I've rented a 2020 Camry that was larger in every dimension. It got great gas mileage, but small it was not.

1967 Ford Mustang Length: 183.6" Width: 70.9" Height: 51.6"

2020 Toyota Camry Length: 192.1" Width: 72.4" Height: 56.9"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Mustang_(first_generati...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Camry_(XV70)

The 1965 Mustang was even smaller and lighter. The 1969-1970 Mustangs, while larger, are still smaller in every dimension than a modern Camry. Some older cars were indeed boats, but almost all modern American automobiles are boats, and a lot of this has to do with the laws that regulate and shape the products created by the American automotive industry.

Someone PLEASE build a browser extension that automatically coverts those Disney numbers to normal units :)

Those browser extensions already exist.

Perhaps I remember the mustang as larger than it was because my next car was significantly smaller, a 240z, but it is at the large end of the compact cars, which have been getting larger themselves as of late, as tends to happen. Actually, most the popular cars have gotten much larger in recent decades. In 2002, the Camry was much closer in size to the Mustang, still about 6" longer, but skinnier.

I'm not sure why you compared the Mustang to an Explorer though. I mentioned the thunderbird as being comparable to trucks, and those were well over 200 inches in the 60's. It's still an exaggeration to say that's as large as a truck with a crew cab in most cases, but the 209.4" length of a 1969 Thunderbird sedan is slightly longer than a Ford F150 with a regular bed size at 209.1". They were all, by most measures, much larger than their comparable categories today, and much larger than those categories a decade or two ago.

Almost all European and Japanese cars from that era are significantly smaller than the American cars targeting the same segment of the market.

I have noticed that modern sedans are MASSIVE. Every time I have the displeasure of renting a car they force upon me a full-size sedan (they seem to never have 'compact' vehicles available), and the cars are gigantic, feel heavy, visibility is terrible because the windows have been made smaller and smaller and the A-pillars larger and larger in a competition for higher safety ratings. When I visit Europe I'm jealous of how much smaller the sedans are- everything is just a little more narrow, a little thinner, and yes, have a manual transmission. The American market seems to put people into cars that look and drive like military tanks.

You are comparing a two door sports car to a four door sedan. Yes some cars have become larger, but they are also incredibly more safe. The doors are thicker and reinforced to protect you in an accident. The roof is taller and stronger, and the pillars are reinforced steel so you don't get crushed in a rollover.

They still make the Mazda Miata, BMW 1 series, Toyota BRZ, etc. These are all small cars, although I'm not going to research all of their dimensions. The truth is there is a very small minority of people who want cars smaller than that, and it's not profitable to produce them.

Seems like you exposed a case of confabulation.

For a better comparison, I have a 2018 Camaro. It is 190" long, 6" longer than the '67 Mustang.

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