It’s not so readily apparent in this shot, but as I was following these two oldsters in traffic, I most of all noticed how narrow they were compared to the other cars in traffic. This was really obvious when the TR6 pulled alongside the Mercedes SL (or SLK) up ahead of it. The Mercedes roadster looked about twice as wide.
TR7? Sure about that?
Looks very TR6 to me
Yep, think you’re right. Most probably a TR6.
Maybe he’s testing us to see who knows their Triumph taillights. 😉
Thanks. That’s it!
Sometimes I amaze myself. I throw something up in a hurry and I’m simply on some form of autopilot. Then when I opened my laptop just now and saw the headline, I almost gasped! WTF? How could I have done that?
It’s not like I don’t know the difference….
Mind boggling.
The easiest way to make a car cheaper and lighter is to make it narrower. I’ve always noticed that the Chevy Cobalt has a particularly narrow look to it, especially from the rear.
That “longer, lower, wider” thing really got going in the 50s. This pic illustrates how far behind Studebaker, reportedly constrained by the width of the paint booths and ovens in the body plant, was by then. Compare the 53-55 Studebaker with the 55 Plymouth next to it. The Studebaker platform was just the right width for a compact however, so taking the Sawzall to it to create the Lark was a master stroke.
At least the Stude was wider than the Dauphine! ?
Great photo. Thanks.
What no one could possiby realize at the time is that the ’59 Chevy was built on the same frame as the ’58 Pontiac next to it. The ’58 smaller GM cars were awful designs on new frames that allowed foot wells. They lasted one year. The new space age ’59 Chevy and Pontiacs had completely new bodies on the ’58 frames/suspensions.
I hadn’t thought about the constraints of the paint booths etc., but Studebaker had no money in general to come up with new designs in the later 50’s when they had to in order to be competitive. And lopping off a couple of feet of overhang and going with their shorter wheelbase was indeed a smart if low budget and short lived solution to this problem.
What no one could possiby realize at the time is that the ’59 Chevy was built on the same frame as the ’58 Pontiac next to it.
I have read that my dad’s 64 Galaxie was on the same frame as a 57 Fairlane. The Galaxie had footwells in the back, but a flat floor in front. We were pretty much sitting on the floor in that car to allow the fashionably low roof. Even with the low seats, my 5’8″ dad had very little headroom.
Here is a pic of someone else’s 64 Galaxie showing how low the seats are.
TR6 my friend 🙂
Why are these guys not in the middle of their lanes?
Why are these guys not in the middle of their lanes?
Because their other car is a 80″+ wide SUV and they are driving as close to the left line as they do in the SUV?
Unless I’m mistaken, no SUVs save for the H1 and H2 are wider than 80″. Full-size pickups and the SUVs based on them have been 78-80″ wide since the early ’60s, and that’s the maximum allowable width without cab lights.
It’s the only way the Triumph driver can see past the car in front & check the color of the light? 😉
I tend to hug one side of the lane or the other when driving. It keeps me out of the ruts. I tend to hug the solid white line on Interstates in case a truck tire blows out or some idiot wants to drive irresponsibly. At night I tend to hug one side of the lane in order to stay as far away from the bushes where deer might jump out. Also this does not make any sense but I figure being to one side or the other gives me more time to get out of the way of red light or stop sign runners.
While a Beetle certainly accentuates it as it’s pretty narrow anyway, it’s remarkable how much wider cars are now than they were 50 years ago.
Those who have read my COAL know my story and great affinity for VW Beetles. When I was a kid, my uncle had a red TR6. I went with he and my grandmother to pick it up and I rode back with them with the top down. The first convertible I ever rode in. It made quite an impression on me. It’s pretty cool to see a Beetle and a TR6 next to one another in traffic. Two cars from my formative years.
In the days of sub-50 horsepower economy cars and sub-100 horsepower sports cars, narrow meant less frontal area and higher top speed and lower fuel consumption. Today we have plenty of power and economy, and only care about side-impact protection of wide-fat passengers, and covering wide-fat tires.
Today’s cars are wider to make room for all the cupholders.
A few width measurements from Wikipedia:
1968 VW Beetle: 60.5 inches.
1968 Triumph TR6: 61 inches.
1959 Buick Electra: 80.7 inches.
1968 Chevy Impala: 79.6 inches.
2018 Chevy Impala: 73 inches.
2017 Fiat 500: 64 inches.
2018 Toyota Camry: 72.4 inches.
2018 Ford F-150: 79.9 inches.
2018 Lincoln Navigator: 79.9 inches.
If I’m not mistaken, many US states have maximum width rules around 80 inches, which our cars and ‘light’ trucks have been scraping up against for half a century.
1964 Type I = 60.6” wide
2000 New Beetle = 67.9” wide
2013 Beetle = 71.2” wide
This one may surprise you : 1950 Buick Super – 80 inches.
The difference in size between Challenger’s is eye popping. I imagine Mustangs and Camaros are similar.
The new Challengers are shockingly massive in the flesh next to the originals.
I can speak to the Mustang personally. I pulled into a convenience store once and parked next to a guy with a ‘67 Mustang which was supposed to be the inspiration for my 2007. My car was noticeably bigger than his.
This is the only comparison pic I could find quickly (Mine is not a Shelby, nor was the other guy’s), and if I recall the ‘67 Shelby looked bigger than the regualr car… as though we were getting a preview of the ‘69 Mustang which was a little bigger than the ‘67, albeit the same platform.
It is amazing how all these decades later the current Challenger echoes the aesthetics of the original, and how the original was so very much better. The original looks lithe and graceful and dynamic. The current one, while better than a the similarly conceived Camaro, is a block.
Funny thing is the current Challenger has almost the same wheelbase as the 1970 B body Charger!
I still love the modern Challenger among all other modern cars, but next to its forbearer it looks ridiculously clunky and massive. Which is saying something, the 1970 was huge for its segment, but it looks light and aethletic by today’s standards.
Heh
Drove my beetle to work today and rolled up the passenger window without leaning over
??
Heck, you can practically change the fan belt from the driver’s seat!
Cars got wider because Americans got wider. As MikePDX pointed out, the modern FIAT 500 is a very narrow car by modern standards. At 5’10, 220, I’m not a huge guy, but when I test-drove a 500, I felt like my left shoulder was jammed against the B-pillar.
I think it’s more the doors being far more substantial than in older cars for safety reasons. A car with the same interior room as a Beetle couldn’t be as narrow because the doors would have to be far thicker than they are for safety
Not the whole story, but yes.
My 1962 Lincoln (owned not back then but 40 years later, and the 1961 design) was far lower than any current sedan car and almost 79 inches wide. It had the thickest doors I’ve ever seen.
I would agree to the safety standards is a big factor to how wide can are becoming
Yes, they are narrow, but I don’t think Americans have gotten wider (fatter, maybe, but hip room is not so much an issue, ask the airlines!). Americans are just adverse to being “cramped”, especially when there are options available that are wider and bigger. That seems to be the thing that Americans notice most. If you remember the earlier imports of the 60s and 70s, they were also more narrow than equivalent domestic compacts (not by much, but enough to notice). Bucket seats helped in the era of “bench seat standard” in most cars, but you did notice that you sat much closer to any passenger in these cars. That was the one lesson that Toyota took longer to learn than most. The Camry really took off after they stopped using the JDM width platform in the US and made it wider starting in 1991. We used to pile 6 people into a sedan to get where we needed to be, but now, we need 9 passenger SUVs to even think about hauling more than 4 people at once. Heck, just look at “normal” square footage of housing from the 1960s compared to new homes from today. Anything under 2000 sq ft is considered tiny now, but was large in 1968.
Compact and mid-size cars have gotten wider, but full-size cars have not returned to their pre-downsize width of 78-80″. Only full-size trucks/SUVs, CUVs, and minivans have enough exterior body width to fit three Americans comfortably side by side.
There are no 9-passenger SUVs currently on the market, except for the very seldom-ordered base Tahoe/Suburban/Yukon with a front bench seat.
Just tonight I saw a couple out cruising in their TR3 with the top down. They looked like a couple who was sharing a bathtub with their clothes on.
63.4 in the old 911. Like those narrow hips. Many of these were butchered up with widebody flares of dubious quality.
When I was in high school and part of college my car was a 1988 Buick Electra Park Avenue. At the time (late 1990s), it seemed like a fairly big car. Just yesterday I saw one like it parked on the street, and it was striking just how small it looked in comparison to the new Camry parked behind it. The Camry was bigger than the Buick in every dimension.
Your Buick was from the downsized squarish GM sedan era. It was 197 in. long, 72.1 in. wide. A 2017 Camry is 72.4 in. wide and 192.7 long. The Camry is probably a lot taller.
But “Buick Electra Park Avenue” has to be in the Hall of Fame Car Names.
And the downsized C/H-body cars were the narrowest to be called “full-sized,” at a time when full-size meant 78″ body width.
Frankly, I’ve always been a little surprised that we’ve not seen any full-size sedans return to that wider body. I suppose it’s mostly because those that want a truly large vehicle will go for a full-size SUV or CUV, and a wide body doesn’t really help with drag.
Vehicles are getting bigger and bigger – but urban parking spaces in many instances have decreased in size – the Wall Street Journal addressed the resultant problems in an article last week:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/americans-love-affair-with-huge-vehicles-collides-with-tiny-parking-spaces-1529073673
My Infiniti G37 is under 70 inches wide as was my 4th Gen Maxima and the W124 Mercedes. Subsequent iterations are several inches wider and longer, a trend across all models throughout the industry. Not great for urban traffic and parking.
Cars produced for use in Japan can be no wider than 2m. And there’s a significantly lower tax class for cars under 1.7m wide and 4.7m long.
That’s why the Japanese cars sold in the US (as opposed to the ones specifically designed for the US market) tend to be narrow. My G2 Prius is 66 inches wide.
I know (e.g., when Infiniti G37 was sold as Skyline in Japan) and we benefited from those standards in my opinion. Do you know how the EU addresses this issue? I wasn’t able to determine from a quick search how dimension standards are set. It appears that individual countries can get exemptions. For a long time many Mercedes models also were under 70 in wide, for example.
My 2018 Subaru Forester is 70.7 inches wide and 68.2 inches tall. That’s almost eight inches narrower and fifteen inches taller than my 1962 Lincoln. Both cars are representative of their times. The Lincoln was even a compact in its class. The Subaru weighs about 1500 pounds less, gets about twice the mpg as the Lincoln, and has a cubic foot cargo capacity about the same as a 1960 Ford Falcon station wagon.
So basically we are all driving around today in updated 1960 Ford Falcon station wagons.
A TR6 is the one unrequited “car lust” I have right now. I fear I may never own one as their either too expensive nowadays or not worth the trouble.
The definition of small cars has certainly changed. My Spitfire dwarfed by a Scion Xa and Mazda 3.
I drove a Spitfire for many years and somehow never took photos of it. What was I thinking? But I did take pics of my prized Prelude 4WS Si being smalllll …
Probably a number of factors that have made cars bigger overall. Indeed people are getting ‘wider’, the road networks with more extensive highways and the greater number of safety features now installed in every car might have something to do with it.
Speaking of narrow cars, today I was at the Gilmore, joyriding in a 1936 Cadillac V-16 Series 90 Convertible Sedan, The specs on this model on classiccardatabase are 154″ wheelbase, weight of 6100lbs and price new of $7,850.00 depressionbux. No spec on width on classiccardatabse, but Wiki gives a width of 74.4″ for a 36.
I was riding shotgun and had to be careful how I sat so the driver had room to row the floor shifter.
European cars are built for European roads, they have centuries old cities, towns and villages with narrow streets.
The current American SUV and pickups would be a real chore to drive on these roads for a non professional driver.
Its not so much the length as the width that causes problems, I know, I briefly had a 75 Eldorado I restored and it was such a pain to drive on our streets that I got quickly sold it.
It might be like an American driving a full size RV as a daily driver around town
US vehicles are not suitable for the of the world, except perhaps Australia, their unnecessary size is one of the main reasons they are so ridiculed by the rest of the world. I read somewhere, I think from the book, Standard of the World, a Cadillac executive saying the rest of the world was not compatible with our size of cars
Having said that, Europeans cars have gotten noticeably wider to the extend that you often have to give way to oncoming cars when driving along town roads with curb side parked cars or else lose your door mirrors
What I havent seen mentioned yet is tire size. Fashionably big fat tires take up space. This today goes way beyond performance and safety, especially for an average sedan.
When the “new” retro Mini first came out, I got to see one next to an original. While bigger outside, especially width, the interior room wasnt, mainly due to the intrusion of fender wells, not door width.