I disagree with the assertion that marriage and kids always leads to needing a bigger car. I think it all depends on how large a family we’re talking about, and whether the family insists on bringing all kinds of junk with them on every trip.
Before long trips, my parents would tell us kids to select one toy each. We didn’t need to bring all of our toys on every trip, and we didn’t need to pack so much stuff, most of which never gets used or one can live without on the average trip.
My youngest sibling in our family of six was born in 1973, but it wasn’t until about 1982 that my father bought his first full sized van. Until then, we got by just fine with station wagons, making use of the roof rack on long trips. However, buying a large van for a family of six was a luxury, not a necessity. Likewise, if you look around the poor side of town today, you will find plenty of families of four getting by just fine with a two-door coupe or a four door sedan.
This idea that a family of four needs a minivan or a Ford Explorer to haul all of the toys their kids can’t live without, along with two large suitcases for each adult, tells me we would rather buy a large vehicle than exercise a little discretion.
If that’s how you want to live, and you can afford to live that way, I’m fine with it. I’ll be the first to admit I’ve thought about buying a trailer for my motorcycle so I can take more unnecessary stuff with me on long trips. However, I flat out refuse to acknowledge that the desire for more cargo space is borne of necessity. It’s not a necessity; it’s a luxury. There is no reason a family of four can’t take a nice long family vacation in a roomy four door sedan. They might need to purchase a roof rack for some of their cargo, but calling an SUV or minivan a necessity is a stretch. Most of us don’t need that large of a vehicle. We just prefer one.
When my son was born we had a '76 Toyota Corolla 2-dr coupe. Whitey, if you’d ever tried getting a baby into and out of a car seat in the rear of a '76 Corolla 2dr you’d agree.
And when my daughter was born, we got a 7-passneger van. Best thing I ever did. babys need lots of stuff; diapers, diaper bags, extra clothing, food, bottles, a stroller, etc. etc. And the minivan had a place to change the diapers in bad weather, which we get a lot of here in NH.
If those poor families weren’t poor they’d have larger vehicles. I guarantee it.
@texases, no, I don’t think going from a two seater or from a two door coupe to a four door sedan is unreasonable at all.
@MB, I don’t blame anyone for not wanting to mess with a car seat in the back of a two door car. Thankfully, almost every small econobox now comes with four doors.
Also, I agree with your other point. If the poor could afford it, I am sure they would own larger vehicles, whether it was necessary or not.
RK - Talk about ‘unintended consequences’! Folks (especially in government) like to come up with complex solutions to problems, then SUPRISE! It doesn’t work! New CAFE law encourages bigger trucks! Sheesh…
No, what they’ve done is make the mpg standard a function of the area covered by the vehicle (L x W). Bigger area = lower required mpgs. So a compact pickup (small L x W) has a higher mpg requirement than a full size pickup.
My answer to the OP’s original question: “Are New Cars Too Heavy and Powerful?” is YES. If the buying public wants performance in 0-60 mph then more power is what they get. However if the buying public wants more performance in terms of MPG, then lighter cars with smaller less powerful motors will give them lower mpg.
At the moment car mfg’rs are still competing on hp and low times for 0-60 mph acceleration. This yields good performance numbers and gets the car writers and editors excited. While mpg is pretty mundane stuff, it just affects your economics without stirring your senses.
So, cars that get good mpg are called “dogs” and “pigs” by the car media but still have pretty good acceleration numbers in the 8-10 second range for 0-60 mph. Not sports car numbers but enough for merging onto a busy freeway.
As long as the car buyers favor bigger and faster over better mpg numbers then car mfg’rs will give them bigger and faster cars.
A little late to the party here, but I wanted to mention that I agree with you completely. I always chuckle when someone has their first kid and then runs out and buys a minivan because their Accord is “too small now.” Get a normal sized stroller instead of the “SUV” strollers, and don’t take the entire nursery with you every time you go to the store, and you don’t need a van.
Our society seems to have an issue understanding the difference between “need” and “want,” and because wanting something is apparently frowned upon, we try to justify everything by what we “need.” In non-automotive circles, this can be amusing - just listen to a gun hobbyist twist in the wind as he tries to explain why he “needs” an assault rifle.
@shadowfax–"I always chuckle when someone has their first kid and then runs out and buys a minivan because their Accord is "too small now."
One Christmas, my son, his wife and their daughter, age 2, made the 350 mile trip to our house. Before they were to leave, their car wouldn’t start, so the church my son worked with loaned him the church’s 15 passenger van. He had that van completely filled up with everything imaginable for 2 adults and 1 child.
My office at the univeristy where I taught had a window that overlooked a dormitory parking lot. When the freshmen move in, I have seen them arrive in U-Haul trucks or vehicles pulling U-Haul trailers. They unload big screen televisions, compact freezers, big stereo speakers and everything else imaginable. When my parents took me off to college in 1959, my dad opened the trunk of the old Buick and told me that I could take what would fit in the trunk. I loaded in my books, records, typewriter, clock radio and horn–just the necessities. The luxuries–towels, wash cloths, razor, change of underwear, etc stayed behind. Like man, this was the age of beatniks.
Yeah, the Uhaul thing was popular at my college. One guy showed up in a Uhaul truck pulling a big trailer. The combined interior volume of both was greater than the interior volume of the dorm rooms, so I’m not sure where he put everything. The other students must have thought I was a monk. My dorm room was downright austere by their standards. My couch wasn’t even leather!
The college where I work is kind of an old-fashioned college in the respect that we offer very few summer classes, but a robust schedule in the spring and fall semesters. Many of our students rent storage pods to store their stuff during the summer, and some of them who travel lightly will share a pod. Some pods are shared among as many as three students.
But I digress. I think part of the reason we see so many more trucks and SUVs is that there are so few cars that can tow a trailer these days. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, you could get a car with serious towing capacity. Now, if you have even a light little bass boat or a small teardrop camper trailer, you need at least a V6 midsize truck or crossover SUV to tow it. You can’t even get a four cylinder truck or SUV with a towing package. You can find cars with towing capacity, like a used police cruiser, but these vehicles often don’t have the other features people are looking for.
There is a generation of body on frame “microtrucks” with 3cyl engines and whatnot,various manus make them,not sure if they are streetable or not.You see them at resorts and instituions,they are a fair amount larger then say a “Cushman” they seem to be very handy.Speaking of small cars,anybody remember a Toyota “Starlet” or a Datsun 1200,that 1200 was a nifty little car-Kevin
