Oh, right, Grandma was driving. I didn’t read it carefully.
'61 isn’t that big. For some reason GM cars got smaller that year but then they got big again.
For appearance, I suppose a 50s Oldsmobile looks better than one from the 60s.
My grandparents had a house that had been built in the 1920’s with a typical garage of that time. I was told that they had to make accommodations in the late 50’s or early 60’s to fit a longer car. Indeed I noticed that their 1962 Cadillac Sedan deVille fit without a lot of room to spare. One time many years later I dropped by to accompany my grandmother on an airplane trip and tried to park my (at the time) 1977 Lincoln Mark V in the garage. I was surprised to find it was about a foot too long to fit in the garage so I had to leave it outside.
My prior apartment had a 2-car garage, garage configured one car behind the other. Truck parked in front, Corolla could only fit if license plate right against truck’s hitch.
Ford hadn’t started making cars shorter. I know GM had in '77 because my driver’s ed car was one of those. It seemed very short.
I just checked and a '77 Lincoln was long as standard cars ever got. Actually, I double checked to see if a Mark V was longer. It was a few inches shorter. Good looking car!
The irritating bit with modern houses is width. They build a house with a “3-car” garage, but it’s narrow and the third bay is often shorter than the rest of the garage. It’s really a “2-car plus the kid’s bikes” garage.
I have one of those, and getting two normal cars, an MR2, car-related tools, and a full woodworking shop has been quite the challenge. Fortunately, the MR2 is small and I can park the table saw in front of it. But there’s a lot of stuff on wheels and hanging on the wall, and we have to be careful not to door our own cars when getting in and out in the garage. Mom has an older house, and there’s so much more side to side room in her garage than mine it’s not funny.
Yeah that’s the way mine is but I got three cars in there when I had them, but actually a two car a little wider give more space for stuff. I do have a fourth stall along the back though that I divided for a small shop and yard equipment. But that’s because I was the co designer. I was thinking of a fifth stall until I got old and lazy.