The Chevy Suburban is about the same weight now as in 1973 (5837lbs then, 5785-5993lbs now, according to Wikipedia).
It was huge then, it’s huge now.
The BMWs pictured are not the same class of car either — one is a coupe/sedan, one’s an SUV, so of course they will be radically different.
Don’t get m wrong, I think modern cars are too big and, in the case of BMW, way uglier than they used to be.
Exactly. This pic is comparing apples with oranges to get a rise out of us. There are irrefutable arguments for saving the planet, we don’t need this low IQ rage bait.
People would find some way to complain no matter what cars were chosen for the comparison, but the fact is cars have been getting bigger on average.
@mondoman712 @Jilanico This is ironically due to the emissions rules. Bigger vehicles are classed as commercial and allowed to burn more gas and pollute more.
My dad has a 1999 Chevy S-10 with a small cab, a 4-cylinder engine, and a long bed. Nothing like that is made today. Handy when you need to move stuff though.
Right — and I think that is a real issue that deserves real attention, and closing these bullshit carveouts for high GVWR vehicles should absolutely happen.
That said, I take some issue with ragebaity posts when less ragebaity posts (such as the article you linked) are more informative, offer fair comparisons, and ultimately are more critical of the problem.
Just my 2¢.
That’s not an average representation of the increase in the size of pickup trucks, though.
Just look at the Ford F150:
Even if you compare like with like, pickups are around 30% heavier than they were in the 90s, and around 10-15% taller.
https://www.axios.com/2023/01/23/pickup-trucks-f150-size-weight-safety
Compare a '90s F-150 to a 2024 Ranger. Then compare a '90s Ranger to a 2024 Maverick. Arguably, what Ford really did was that it added a third, bigger-than-full-size, truck and shifted the names one notch up.
The Maverick is new and while it does buck the trend of “bigger is always better”, all it signifies to me is that Ford are diversifying their range of pickups now that they don’t make any small cars or sedans in the US any more, which is kind of emblematic of the whole problem.
They didn’t have crew cabs back then, which is kinda the point.
Edit: correction - they did, but it wasn’t until the mid-2000s that they became common.
Here’s a link if you want to include in your comment.
It’s a site that compares car sizes. This link is for the 3 series
https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/bmw-3-1997-sedan-vs-bmw-3-2018-sedan/
And here’s a dodge challenger which surprisingly is fatter but slightly shorter and higher
https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/dodge-challenger-1969-coupe-vs-dodge-challenger-2015-coupe/