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.

Is the Aptera to wide for European roads?

I have been writing about the Aptera before and I really think they are up to something. And despite the lack of interest from the Aptera management to deliver to the Rest of the World (outside of California) and their issues dealing with the fact that with only 3 wheels the car is a motocycle and can't receive US government funding or "Abwrackprämien" in Germany, I am still a fan of the concept.
But, having just gone through the Aptera brochure I must admit that there are some design decisions that will make it difficult to market the car (which is still an interest of mine), especially in Europe. Looking at the length/width/height indicated with 173/91/53 inch or in meters 4.39/2.31/1.35 the Aptera is presenting itself as being very wide!
2.31 m is approx. 50 cm more than the today's average family car. Very few cars today are more than 2 m wide. And, as I pointed out in an earlier comment, the parking spots often are still designed for the cars in the 80ies and 90ies (or before), when an average car was 1.5-1.7 m wide.
So going with a 2.31 m wide car for shopping will not work out at all, no parking spot in the city is wide enough and the regulation says that you need to fit all the wheels into the parking spot, otherwise you receive a nice fine.
So, guys at Aptera, please think again, as even for the US where everything tends to be bigger, a car wider than a Hummer (2.2 m) will be difficult to sell, and I can only assume that many owners will have quite a bit of trouble with such a biiig vehicle and risk damage to their front wheels.

The parking spot problem with modern cars

We probably have all experienced it. We arrive in a shopping mall and try to park our modern times mid sized car. Uups. Very narrow in here! Most people drive their cars few years and then swap it against the newer more modern version. During the last 30 or 40 years successors of successful cars typically grew bigger. A BMW 520i from the 80ies was more than half a meter shorter then today's version, and probably 0.2 m more narrow. Most often used cars in the 60ies had a width of approximately 1.4 - 1.5 m. Today it's rare to find cars more narrow than 1.8 m. At the same times doors got fatter and seats give more lateral support, but at the same time are more difficult to get in and out. While this all may be nice and good from a car's perspective it's bad for parking. Most buildings for indoor parking have been constructed and built in the 60ies, or mayb 70ies and 80ies. They were optimized for the smaller cars we had then. No suprise that today you barely can open the door after you finally got your car between the next two. Is there a solution? Not really. Not if we are ready to do either compromises on safety or convenience. But it's good to park an older car once in while and get out of it without any hazzle.