Parking with classic cars is really much easier!

It's now official! Auto Motor and Sport compared a range of cars including the Volkswagen Touran, Mercedes E-Series Convertible, Toyota Prius, BMW 5-Series Station Wagon and a number of others in how easy it is to park them. They measured how much you can see from the driver position, how big the car is, how easy it gets into a 5.5 m parking spot and a number of other criterias and they also looked at the electronic gizmo to help with parking. Well, the winner is, the BMW 3-series E30 limousine from the 80ies. It actually has beaten the modern cars by a factor, thanks to the smaller body, the great 360 degree view and the fact that you can actually see the end of the car when you sit in it. Despite the fact that none of the modern accessories was on board, i.e. park distance control, parking assistance, cameras, etc., the people at AMS found it much easier to park this car compared to the modern rivals. I am really happy that they brought in this 80ies benchmark when comparing the modern cars, as this now so transparently shows how cars got worse along these criteria over time. Of course there are reasons, why modern cars are as they are, one being safety. But even with today's standards cars could have larger windows and better visibility today, if the designers didn't think differently.