Double 0 Soul

Only car i've owned which could be considered 'the latter day equivalent' would be my old 1954 Series 1 Landy, alas, I can't find a photo (i can sense @Dr_Heech disappointment from here) but even that was 8" narrower than the current Mini Seen here poking into shot in front of my old V-Dub I used to sub-let a council garage under a block of flats for £5/mth so i would garage the bug over the winter and use the Landy for chucking MTBs / BMXs and friends in the back, the bikes would be covered in mud but i could just hose it down.. come the spring, i would swap the Landy for the Bug and hit the festivals... then i became a responsible adult and bought a house I sold the Series 1 for £1200, it'd be worth £30k nowadays.. much like the Volvo, i bought them used, they only traveled a few 100 miles/yr and i sold them used so their carbon footprint was negligible.

You can narrow it down.. they didn't exist before (i think) 2003/4 and the arcs would have gone by 2008 plus Japanese consumption tax was at 5% between 1997 and 2014.. i've got a 2003 and a 2006 SC catalogue somewhere, i'll dig them out and see if they're in the catalogue.

Thread bumpin with a view over the neighbourhood..

Nope, you only think you did ie- folks around the forum.. so

^^ Even though 'NOT' is in caps.. it has everything to do with consumer choice.. Nobody has a gun at your head forcing you to buy a massive truck, if they did you would have one too.. you make a choice as a consumer and you chose to buy a motorbike, Cold Sums chose a 90s wagon, Broark chose a massive truck. If you had no choice, all the WAYWT pics would be Forever 21 this n that.. It's the bottom line which matters to these companies .. if, as a society you only had the choice between 3 massive trucks.. Large, XL and XXL and 80% of people consistently bought Large, 15% bought XL and 5% bought XXL, the production of the XXL trucks would damage the company bottom line and this is all they care about, the problem is people don't want Large, either through fear or macho projection.. i agree, their choices are not free from manipulation but they are still choices. For example.. VW Golf has been sold over here for nearly 50yrs because this is what we want to buy, the VW Phaeton was sold between 2004 and 2006, consumers chose not to buy them so VW stopped making them. Folks around here tend to make better, more informed choices in what they buy.. but you can't wait to be 'given' that information, if you're not making informed choices you have nobody to blame but yourself. I'll watch the video later.. see if it changes my mind.. if it does, i look fwd to your fit pics..

No, i think the blame should lie with the British consumer.. I think American cars and British cars are one of the same.. $$$s are made by car manufacturers selling into the foreign market, it's massive comparred to our market share, car makers are not going set up a production line for a downsized model for British roads, it's just bad for business.. British consumers are given a choice from the available range 'do i buy a massive Audi Q7 or do i buy a smaller Audi A1?' (for instance) even though the Q7 is too wide for our roads.. zero fucks are given because, for one they can afford it so why shouldn't they and for two, the width of their vehicle doesn't affect them, only other road users.. which is what i alluded to at the start of all this, until the international market changes.. we're fucked!.. thankfully most choose the A1 but those choosing the Q7 fuck it up for the rest of us.

Exactly Chaz.. if we all drove a similar car the world would be a better place for everyone. I was laughing last week at the outrage from European car makers at the comments from the Uber CEO re Chinese EV's.. it was just sheer protectionism, but he was right, we don't need any of the bollocks which goes hand in hand with modern motoring, heated leather seats, launch control, intelegent parking pilot, it's all bollocks.. if we're going to save the planet, we don't need £100k EVs we need identical affordable metal boxes. Making motoring the preserve of the wealthy is just classist bollocks.. we should all have the right to get around cheaply without the fear of being crushed to death by a massive £100k truck.

Jeez.. don’t you think you’ve caused enough trouble for one week

Same here @tooth but it’s usually Porsche wankers rather than size conscious.. the types who think a car which can do 0-60 in 3.2 seconds in inherently better than a car which takes a measly 3.4 I’d advise the Goldilocks approach in future... not too big or too small, not too fast or too slow not too expensive nor too cheap... juuust right.

Our house is up a little path away from the road.. the nearest street parking space to our house is 200m away but I’ll often have to park on a neighbouring street so if I had an EV I’d need 30 or 40 extensions to charge it... imagine the trip hazards!

Same for us.. speed bumps and massive pot holes, even though i hardly drive the car, it always fails the MOT with leaking shocks. We live on a row of terrace houses which pre-date the car so nobody has off street parking or a garage but if every family just had one small car, it could probably cope, alas, folks have 2 .. when we moved there, i hadn't parallel parked for years so it was a struggle.. nowadays it's my forte.

It is long but it's narrower than a Mini.. and nearly 12" narrower than an Audi Q7 so if 2x Q7s pass on the road, that's 2' less road i have to ride on.. it's not the length that's causing an issue.. said the actress to the... ect Also, if i look out the window, i can see cyclists, pedestrians, pushchairs, wheelchair users and such because it's also the same height as a mini, not jacked up.

I think it started in the 80s, as folks point out, America is big but from my knowledge, it’s always been big even before the 1980s I remember seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger driving a Hummer when I was a kid, I think this was the first crossover from military vehicle to road.

But they would be safe if everyone was driving the same size car, it’s the disproportionate size between vehicles which is causing the danger.. which was my exact point 20 posts ago

I'm not saying you should drive 41000 miles in a 1L Loop @jkbrwn but i'm sure there must be something in between that and the SUV. It wasn't always this way, the US must have plenty of older cars on the market, you don't have to listen to those pesky marketeers forcing you to buy what they tell you to buy.. i appreciate (lithium mining aside) an EV is more environmentally friendly but the carbon footprint of an old car has already happened. How have y'all become such fearful road users? folks are living through war zones and y'all scared to drive to work unless you're cocooned in a tank, when i was a kid, we didn't even wear seat belts as a 5yr old, i would straddle the transmission in my dads old Land Rover and change gear for him while our whippet stuck it's head out the window.. which incidentally, he drove back from South Africa.. so distances, through geographical sparseness are indeed possible in cranky old cars, or they used to be before the motoring industry convinced us otherwise.. My safety, my wife, moms or boys safety is equally as important to me / them but it seems, these^ fears are being played upon.

So why don't you? Here's my old Loop.. (997cc, 60+mpg) I used this for my 40min daily commute into the city when i lived out in sticksville.. i would drop the kid at nursery and the boot was plenty big enough for the Bugaboo pushchair, it's all you really need. ..and my 240 wagon (1986cc 20mpg if you're lucky) which i used at the weekend for camping trips, bikes, fishing tackle and such .. nowadays, i hardly drive at all.. probs, less than 1000 miles/yr

This^ is the most sensible thing i've read all day 😍

I'm just eating pizza with the offspring.. 😋

Having read all POVs.. i still can't understand why y'all can't simply choose a smaller car instead of your SUVs .. the car market is consumer driven so drive it with your consumerism.. i appreciate SUVs are safer but your need for safety is compromising the safety of other road users.. SUVs can drive on dirt roads apparantly?.. as someone who's blessed with zero sense of direction, we've negotiated treacherous mountain dirt tracks all over Europe and snow drifts across the Peak District with zero visibility in nothing more than a Fiat Panda or VW Lupo and i've lived to tell the tale.. it's just a case of forgoing a small percentage of ones own comfort and safety for the wellbeing of other road users, some folks are preparred to make these sacrifices and some folks are not.

^^Hey.. how did you know I was missing all those things?

Yep.. our entire infrastructure was built around the horse and cart which had a similar wheelbase to cars built up to the millennium.. I’m not making comparisons here folks, SUVs are fine for American roads but as previously mentioned, unless you change your buying habits, our small island with no motor industry if it’s own is destined for ever larger vehicles which are too wide for our roads.

Where will it all end? to be visible / safe amongst the 2 tonne vehicles, you buy a 3t vehicle.. when everyone drives a 3t vehicle you buy 4.. the larger the cars get, the more dangerous roads become for other road users.. and crazy as it sounds, i’d like to be safe and visible too

Y'all need to start driving tiny micro-cars or what us Europeans would refer to as 'cars' Our roads are just not suitable for these types of vehicles, but while you're driving the market forward it ain't going to change for the rest of us and i'll have to share the cycle lanes with these monstrosities.. i appreciate, they shouldn't be driving in the cycle lanes but our roads are way too narrow for two of these monster trucks to pass on either side of the road unless they do, so it comes down to.. are SUV drivers in the UK incredibly selfish?.. yes! indeed they are. Come on Americans.. it's up to you to save us all from this motoring hell! ..

Oh wow! congratulations.. that's great news I like a box on wheels too.. (i drove a 240 wagon around for years) but it's only the side view^^ which looks like a box on wheels, the front looks like something from the future.. the headlights remind me of a Dyson fan heater

Only thing i can offer this week is an Anna Soba handmade cat mug Charmingly wonky.. all her cats have bumholes