Is it safety features or occupants that are larger than the average 25 years ago. I dread flying with some fat occupant spilling out from the adjoining seat. 😱
From another forum and not my words;
Since 1965 that have made modern cars so safe, deaths under 56mph are rare, compared with the typical car of 1965 where you had a good chance of a trip to the morgue even in a 30mph frontal impact.
The extra space inside the passenger compartment isn’t a designed in comfort feature, it’s a bonus thanks to the engineering requirements of many of the safety features.
Cars now have full wrap around safety cages, that can be up to 9” deep. Automatically, any modern car is at going to be significantly wider than a comparable 1965 car.
All that lovely arm and shoulder room? That’s to give the curtain and seat airbags space to deploy, and to provide space for the door to deform in to in a side impact - yet again, it makes the car wider.
Speaking of doors, They are now often over 6” deep, with massive side impact beams to spread the impact into the safety cell. Compare and contrast with a 60’s car, the only thing between you and the car hitting you was 1/16” of steel and 2-3” of air.
All that lovely leg room up front? That’s so the engine has space to submarine under the car, not smash you to a pulp as it’s forced into the passenger compartment, plus the space for the airbags to deploy while your steering column retracts to protect you. In the good old days, the steering wheel speared you through the chest and impaled you into the seat.
And they sit much higher too, not just to give you extra view ahead, it’s so they can mount the fuel tank under the car and and in front of the axle, rather than hang it off the back of the passenger seats or inside the boot - ah the joys of spilt fuel in any accident.
Unlike the 60’s, when it was all too common, you don’t tend to see the fire Brigade draping tarps over car wrecks these days to hide the incinerated occupants from the public’s gaze -
Talking of boots; hat big boots not designed big to carry the dogs and bikes, it’s to provide a deep crush cell to protect you in a rear end accident. No more Minis with the back seat passengers bodies providing the crush zone.
And that long nose? Lets return to the days of short nosed slab fronted cars that smashed any pedestrian they struck to a broken pulp? The long sloping bonnet is to scoop them up and dissipate the impact.
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