| VW Golf | Launch year | Length (m) | Width (m) | Height (m) | Weight (kg)* | Power (BHP)* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mk 1 | 1974 | 3.705 | 1.610 | 1.395 | 790 | 44 |
| Mk 2 | 1982 | 3.985 | 1.665 | 1.415 | 910 | 44 |
| Mk 3 | 1992 | 4.074 | 1.694 | 1.422 | 960 | 59 |
| Mk 4 | 1997 | 4.148 | 1.735 | 1.440 | 1,050 | 74 |
| Mk 5 | 2003 | 4.205 | 1.759 | 1.479 | 1,155 | 74 |
| Mk 6 | 2009 | 4.199 | 1.779 | 1.479 | 1,217 | 79 |
| Mk 7 | 2013 | 4.255 | 1.799 | 1.452 | 1,205 | 84 |
| Mk 8 | 2019 | 4.284 | 1.789 | 1.456 | 1,315 | 89 |
* Weight and power output for base model
Compared to the 1970s Golf, the new one is over half a tonne (525kg) heavier and more than twice as powerful in its basic version. The Mk 8 is also over half a metre (58cm) longer than the Mk 1.
The power-to-weight ratio of the base model Mk1 was 55bhp/tonne; the Mk8's is 67bhp/tonne. A more powerful engine dragging around all that extra weight gives it more kinetic energy to do more damage in collisions, therefore it needs more body armour to protect its driver and occasional passenger(s).
The car industry is in trouble. My children's generation is not interested in car ownership. Once you've Instagrammed your new car - then what? Bore your friends with successive snaps of your car at different petrol stations? Far more impressive to travel the world! More likely is that the young are spending that part of their income that their parents' generation would have spent on cars paying for property that their old folks could far more easily afford (and a car on top of that).
I have no intention of every buying a car again. (Another small motorbike? Maybe.) I am an urban man; I live across two capital cities; a car is nothing but an encumbrance.
This time last year:
Train journey to Chynów
[a year on, one track's been modernised, the other's being done]
This time six years ago:
It's healthier to live in the city than in the suburbs
[Car-driving makes you fatter]
This time seven years:
Ikaria - the island where people forget to die
This time eight years ago
Miserable depths of winter
This time nine years ago:
From - a short story (Part 1)
This time ten years ago:
A month until Lent starts
This time 11 years ago:
World's biggest airliner over Poland
This time 12 years ago:
More pre-Lenten thoughts
Maybe we can shift the question from "why cars have become bigger" to "why the expectations of the average driver/consumer have become higher" ?
ReplyDeleteMore space, more padding, more power, a more imposing image, more passive safety (at the expense of less active safety).
Anyway, cars have seldom been a truly economical concept (i.e., a mean to transport yourself and your luggage from point A to point B with the least use of resources - Maluch was such a thing, and nobody liked it). In comparison to light and public transportation, they offer the advantage of being a mobile shell, personal and comfortable. Their marketing rotates around the concept of self-realization and freedom - of course, without showing the externalities for the society.
As long as I'm also an 'urban man' like you, living between Polish and foreign big cities with multiple choices of light and public transportation, I still find it hard not to own a car at all. Every week there is the odd occasion where any alternative is simply not practical or viable, mainly because of how mobility was conceived decades ago.
I'm still waiting for 21st century technological and social developments to actually change this paradigm of mobility, until now firmly rooted in the 20th century. Shared, on-demand, self-driving, clean-powered, publicly owned, pay-per-use vehicles that would resolve a lot of current problems about safety, pollution and use of public spaces, while keeping the automotive industry strong, and saving the indirect social costs of private cars.
Maybe it's just a progressive dream, in these times when the horizon of politics and society is mainly to fulfill the individual needs of the majority.
@ Anonymous:
ReplyDelete"the horizon of politics and society is mainly to fulfill the individual needs of the majority"
We have come to a tipping point - now we know what effects fossil-fuel-powered road transport has on the environment, the individual's freedom to tear up and down the highway ends where mankind's freedom to continue to exist begins.
A different paradigm has emerged, and the car manufacturers are reacting too late.
The current paradigm (every household in the developed world to have one or two cars, to be replaced by new ones every three to four years) is failing rapidly.