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.
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¢.
@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.
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
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.
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.
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/
It’s bigger. Does that mean it burns more fuel or has more emissions than a 40 year old car? I’m all for saving the planet, but I’m not sure big automatically means worse. I could be wrong.
It weighs more and definitely could use a lot less space on the road and costume less fuel if it didn’t grow to this size but stayed small and with less weight
Bigger does almost always mean more emissions/worse economy for a given technology. In this case someone else pointed out that the economy is about the same for both, which is due to the fact that technology has improved; if you put the engineering effort of the big car into the form factor of the little car, it’d be much more efficient.
They are still gonna be less effecient than smaller, lighter models with modern technology.
Another factor is bigger vehicles are deadlier.
They are still gonna be less effecient than smaller, lighter models with modern technology.
Agreed and I’m sure bmw makes smaller models, so this pic is rage bait.
Another factor is bigger vehicles are deadlier.
Deadlier for whom? My guess is the passengers of a bigger vehicle are safer. A pedestrian being hit by a small car or big car is likely ruined either way. An SUV hitting a small car, maybe the small car’s passengers are in trouble, though perhaps advancements in safety have increased survival, idk.
A pedestrian being hit by a small car or big car is likely ruined either way.
Vehicle size actually has a huge effect on the severity of vehicle-pedestrian collisions.
I find that full-size SUVs and pickup trucks pose a particular danger for pedestrians. A pedestrian hit by a full-size SUV is twice as likely to die than a pedestrian hit by a car under similar circumstances, while being hit by a pickup truck rather than a car increases the death probability by 68%. I find that high-front-end vehicle designs are particularly culpable for the higher pedestrian death rate attributable to large vehicles. A 10 cm increase in the front-end height of a vehicle increases the risk of pedestrian death by 22%.
What you carry and what carries you don’t really compare though.
Size isn’t everything. While I get what they’re trying to say, the ‘light utility vehicles’ of today are getting 20-30 mpg while the sedan of 40 years ago got like… 5. Fuck cars and all, but this isn’t really a good angle.