What do people here think of the huge, bulbous front-ends now common on most modern cars? I presume that pedestrian safety legislation must have tightened severely in recent years, the space between the bonnet and engine must be huge now. This is obviously a good thing if you are unlucky enough to be run over, but it has made some cars monstrously ugly. A case in point being the Peugeot 308, take a look at one side-on and you'll see what I mean.
It's funny, y'know. Cars these days are much better to have a crash in or to be hit by than their predecessors but I feel that all this passive safety comes at the expense of active safety. They are all, pretty much without exception, harder to see out of and all those sacrificial structures at the front must surely compromise handling. It also seems that there is little scope for a designer to pen a clean, coherent shape either as he is bound by regulations that necessitate a bulbous and ungainly body.
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Saabs and Audis are cases in point. I was marvelling that a colleagues Saab 9-5 seemed to have a 2 foot snout yesterady. I haven't looked under the bonnet of any recent ones to see how much of it is fresh air. BMWs on the other hand tend to have a very short front overhang.
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' A bulbous and ungainly body'
That reminds me...it's SWMBO's birthday next week, thanks for jogging my memory !
The last few new cars I have had have come with a particular problem that I haven't come across in the past. ...The A post. it seems now that they all have to be thick and curved. My Peugeot 206 was a bad example, On a roundabout I had to crane forward to avoid the central kerb as the post blocked the view all the way round. Come up to a 90deg T junction and the nearside A post blocked the entire view to the left. SWMBO didn't notice any problem as she is only 5ft and sat in a different position.
Ted
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>This is obviously a good thing if you are unlucky enough to be run over...
I think being run over is as bad as it ever was, Hans - possibly more so now cars are so heavy. The idea (I was going to say 'point', but that would have been silly) of these long snouts is that you're now more likely to be run under, and live to tell the tale.
Sorry - it's been a taxing day.
};---)
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HS
Think yourself lucky you didn't have to drive a Mark 4 Ford Zephyr.......snout ? It was the Jimmy Durante of the motor world.
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That Zephyr didn't have a bonnet, more a helicopter landing pad.
My dad had one. The front of the car arrived home several seconds before he did!
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