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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

>we used to refer to as “Compact” up till the early 90s.

source?

What were considered "compact" or "sub-compact" cars in the 1970s, if not the 1980s, were often close to the size of "full-sized" sedans today.

The 1970's Ford Maverick, for example, is described on Wikipedia as a "subcompact", at just under 180" (15', or 4.5 m) length.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Maverick_(1970%E2%80%9319...>

Full-sized U.S. cars were large up until the oil embargos of the 1970s, and even then it took most of a decade for Detroit to start marketing smaller cars. The Ford LTD (a large full-sized car) was 224" (17'4") long, and simply massive.

There was a pretty radical re-basing of automobile sizes beginning in the late 1970s and continuing through the 1980s / early 1990s.

> source?

A bunch of us were alive in the 90's and driving cars.

Sorry that's not a source, and is seemingly contradicted by sources like [1], which say

>The highest-selling full-size car nameplate is the Chevrolet Impala, sold as a full-size car from 1958 to 1986, 1994 to 1996, and then from 2000 until 2020.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full-size_car

I love that we've come to an era where supposedly educated people are in the habit of telling others that the use of their senses and mind to understand the world are invalid because someone didn't put the conclusions on a website.

I realize you don’t think so but this really is a good thing. Memory is faulty, and the parent poster was simply incorrect.

How is that a good thing? The internet is a dumpster fire of half truths, infotainment, and objective falsehoods. I'll take human memory with all its warts over most of what's on the web any day.

The irony here is that the comment itself that's up for discussion (ie. whether a car is "full size") is also on the internet, and therefore I can flip your argument of "internet is a dumpster fire of half truths, infotainment, and objective falsehoods. I'll take human memory with all its warts over most of what's on the web any day" right back at you. What makes one random commenter's assertion that it's a full sized car more correct than another comment that claims the opposite?

"full-size" is an objective, standardized designation for automobiles [1] so it really doesn't MATTER what someone's "senses and mind" are in that specific statement.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_size_class

And a bunch of us apparently have unreliable memories.

Use your own powers of discernment to look up the measurements of various vehicles over the years.

You're the person making the claim. Why don't you "Use your own powers of discernment to look up the measurements of various vehicles over the years"?

Have you ever been in a car?

I was in a car this morning, why?

Source?

As luck would have it, I do have pictures of myself in a car. However, for privacy reasons I would rather not upload pictures of my face on the internet. I'd be happy to provide the picture to a trusted third party auditor of your choosing (eg. Deloitte, E&Y, KPMG, PWC) for verification, provided that you pay the fees :^)

Now, I don't imagine that there would be any privacy related issues related to providing evidence regarding whether a Chevrolet Impala was considered a compact car or not, so I look forward to receiving correspondence from your auditor and whatever evidence you have that Chevrolet Impala was considered a compact car.

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