Practically Classics Forum

So, let me get my head round this planning issue..

Cars are larger these days, so making spaces bigger will manage the increasing number of collisions happening when people are unable to judge the width of their *insert make & model of generic new car here*, and they end up taking out two doors, a rear quarter and if they're in a Fiat 500 or a BMW Mini, then they're likely to stop only when their supersized new vehicle hits something solid, like a trolley shelter.
Hmm, yeah, that'll help. Rather it would, but not only are cars larger, there are many more of these things on the roads than ever before and surely that means that the problem will be exacerbated since fewer "official" spaces means more of these leviathans will be abandoned in the residential roads within, say, 100 yards of the bus station where the owner of the car goes to catch the bus to their work, having started and driven their mahoosive MPV all of 200 yards from their house.
The residential areas will also have to accommodate these bigger cars on the roadside as the other thing that new cars don't fit is the garage attached to a vast majority of homes in schemes built since the sixties. Garages have been shrinking since about then because by the year 2000, we were surely all set to be using our personal jetpacks and cars would fly, so could be tethered to the chimney and out of the way of the road. Best place for the darned things! Small wonder that Kei class vehicles have been gathering popularity here in the UK thanks to the import specialists' foresight and that so many such businesses exist now.

Who'd have seen this state of affairs if you'd aksed them back in the last century? Mini and Fiat 500 - originally 10ft and 9ft 3in in length respectively - are now about twenty feet long and eight feet wide. Vauxhall Viva is, ironically, the only old name that now finds itself attached to a genuinely compact car!
I expect to wake up from this nightmare soon and find that it's still 1979.

ive been trying to find a film sequence where the driver of a car was racing around a multi storey garage (i think) & was taking the doors off his car to impress some other apprentice armed robber.. or was i dreaming again

Was the car a cream coloured Mercedes W114/W115-shaped saloon, circa early seventies?

I can't find the clip either so either you've transferred your fantasy directly into my mind or we're both effing barking.

rich. wrote:ive been trying to find a film sequence where the driver of a car was racing around a multi storey garage (i think) & was taking the doors off his car to impress some other apprentice armed robber.. or was i dreaming again

"The Driver" starring Ryan O,Neal as the driver and Bruce Dern (IIRC) as the cop out to get him.

^^^ Legend!

https://youtu.be/8AykRRmQ41k

And, for anyone who wants to see the whole film from the beginning, that's available too:

https://youtu.be/JHvAjXd9pEE

Well within even my attention span at an hour and two minutes..

JPB wrote:Hmm, yeah, that'll help. Rather it would, but not only are cars larger, there are many more of these things on the roads than ever before and surely that means that the problem will be exacerbated since fewer "official" spaces means more of these leviathans will be abandoned in the residential roads within, say, 100 yards of the bus station where the owner of the car goes to catch the bus to their work, having started and driven their mahoosive MPV all of 200 yards from their house.

You are onto something there John, but leaving car size alone for a minute, parking problems and car ownership goes back to the 1950's. It was in this decade that those of us for whom the likes of car ownership were outside the stratosphere. My father didn't even have a bank account. Then slowly at first, working people became a little wealthier, a second hand car means no more rain sodden bus stops, no more smelly, slow, filthy train carriages. And so car ownership grew, whilst public transport demised.
The lack of use of the trains led to the wholesale closure of rail links to a great many communities, Beeching's cuts are well documented. Now, without a train to catch, car ownership grew apace. There was probably a few halcyon years when traffic hold ups were few, but as car ownership grew more and more, so too did the problems that go with that.
One lone voice back in the sixties, the author, play write and train nut, Sir John Betjeman, argued that if we lift the tracks and leave the track beds in situ for 50 years, it would be easy to restore the line. Betjeman wasn't just being romantic, he was a visionary who foresaw what massive car ownership would bring.
There's a very good example of Betjamen's prophecy, the tracks that became redundant around the area of East London, were I'm originally from, were recommissioned and morphed into: The Docklands Light Railway. People will use public transport if it's clean, fast and reliable. Just think how many of our cities could have a replica of The Docklands Railway if only the track beds hadn't been built on.
A resurgence of public transport wouldn't be at the cost of car ownership, more likely, it would help reduce those stupid short distance trips that you sarcastically, but correctly pointed out. Anyone who has used The London Underground will attest to that.

JPB wrote:^^^ Legend!

https://youtu.be/8AykRRmQ41k

And, for anyone who wants to see the whole film from the beginning, that's available too:

https://youtu.be/JHvAjXd9pEE

Well within even my attention span at an hour and two minutes..

thats the one! i knew i could rely on you...

Harvey's knowledge of films was the key here because it's easy to find a clip when you know the name of the film and nobody else did. Why was that particular film not better known I wonder? It's not great in the same way as Vanishing Point (IMHO) but watching that was a good way to avoid Come Dancing.

John, how's your attention span for 14 and a half minutes?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf4TIWECZ30