Wide Cars

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People absolutely do drive duallys for fun, ask any mechanic.

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Can confirm, am diesel mechanic.

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I don't think anyone doubts how much time, money, and effort are put into road infrastructure. In fact, I think about it a lot when driving.

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Lol I don't understand why people want wide cars. There are so many instances where having a narrow car saved me from some dinguses crossing the center line

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I often see a car in a crowded parking lot that is too wide or too long to fit in a parking spot, and I have to wonder if the person driving that vehicle is a complete idiot or a complete asshole.

How stupid are you that you chose a daily driver that doesn't work? That you take up so much space that everyone else needs to actively avoid you and curse you because you are so bad at making choices?

Do you regret your choice? Do you constantly think "Fuck everyone else around me, I do what I want.", or do you legitimately not notice how everyone else hates you?

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And this is exactly why we don’t see small trucks like Rangers or Dakotas anymore. I don’t know if it’s because it’s impossible to make an engine that efficient or if manufacturers are just lazy, but the consequence is that they can avoid stricter efficiency requirements by simply making bigger (larger wheelbase) and heavier (body on frame vs. monocoque) vehicles.

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They were designed so that the wheels would be the same width as the tracks on an Abrams tank.

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...medium?

lad

I'm guessing larger than medium are the ones that transport containers, trees, houses, and the like

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There is a guy at my office building that routinely parks his fucking VW Golf in 4 spaces under the covered parking. Dude it’s not even that nice of a car. Assholes exist regardless of what they drive.

Lived at an apartment complex that had external garages and they had two parking spaces, two single garages, and two parking spaces in these perpendicular to the road pull offs. BMW loved to park diagonal across the two space sections. Too bad for him that apartment had a manager that must have found so much joy in towing cars. They were relentless with their parking enforcement. Pretty sure that guy got towed 3-4 times before he got the hint. Parking was always a pain at that complex…

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You're stuck in the "defensive driving" mindset -- You gotta go offensive to keep safe. The Chevy Stretch offers significantly greater total mass than even large trucks, and a lower center of gravity. Now you'll be the one crossing the center line, striking fear into the hearts of the sensible!

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That's a bad example because it's a Golf.

Seriously though, pretty much every time I see one, it's either doing something dangerous and/or obnoxious, or is about to do it in the next 5 minutes. I can also count on one hand the amount of times I've seen one respecting the speed limit, and they're a pretty common car here.

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Yes, that’s the classification.

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Thats how we view American cars, especially pickups that nobody needs and SUVs that have never seen a path that needed 4WD here in Europe.

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That requires introspection. Instead they say things like “the idiot that built this parking lot made the spaces too small.”

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They did this already:

1997 Pontiac Grand Prix Wide Track 90s Commercial (1996)

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ah, right

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Not really a passenger vehicle.

You say that, but I see four doors on it.

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Pickups, SUVs, and Vans in America are getting unreasonably large because of poorly-written environmental regulation.

In the mid-2000s, automakers were classifying everything as a "truck" to skirt CAFE (fuel economy) standards. The tilling point was the PT Cruiser being regulated as a truck. So, starting in 2012, CAFE standards started to be based on vehicle footprint.

Ever notice how all the little trucks like the S-10, Dakota, and the old-style Ranger all had 2011-ish as their last year model?

Suddenly, small trucks became effectively illegal, and as fuel economy standards get tougher every few years, the automakers have learned it's easier to just make the footprint bigger than it is to make the fuel economy better. They've since re-released the Ranger, but now it's bigger than the F-150 used to be.

And now it's hit the vans. CAFE outran the small cargo van footprints, so the Nissan NV200, Ford Transit Connect, and RAM Promaster City have all been discontinued in the last 2-3 years because they can't make cargo-hauling vehicles that size any longer.

New York City's Taxi Fleet changed to NV200s a few years back to improve accessibility, and now they can't buy replacement vehicles without either dropping the accessibility and going small or moving to fuck-you-sized vehicles.

The one neat thing though is the Ford Maverick. It's a small 4-seat truck with a half-size bed that comes standard as a hybrid (trafitional ICE is an "upgrade" so it meets CAFE) for like 25 grand. The only real problem is buying one since they only made like 4 of them.

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Well in lots of the usa we only have wide ass roads.