Small/big car difference?

Big cars are, on the whole, larger than small cars.

Yeah, obviously. But what makes them better?

It may be something to do with stability on the road. Less tiring on longer trips. What what is it that makes this difference. Could a small car be optimised for the same feel?

I once saw a German motoring magazine, it went into great detail measuring everything of course, as the Germans would do. Such as movements in the car while driving over various surfaces.

Smaller car is cheaper (in general); so it feels cheaper.

Possibly the US still builds cheap large cars that feel cheap.

Size.

Define "better".

Some big cars are good. Some small cars are good. Some big cars are shit. Some small cars are shit. A good small car is better than a shit big car. A good big car is better than a shit small car.

Some people need the space of a big car. Others prefer the external dimensions or running costs of a small car.

A couple of generalisations... a longer wheelbase usually means better ride quality. Shorter wheelbase better (more 'pointy') handling... also, a bigger car will usually have better levels of sound insulation, too.

There's very little cost difference between building a small car vs a big car - which creates some anomolies in pricing - BMW have just facelifted the 5 series, so it's now cheaper to buy a 520d with leather and navigation than it is to buy a 120d with the same spec.!

I have a Fiesta. I would have liked to have a smaller car last week when I had to reverse out of a very crowded office car park. I would have liked to have a bigger car the week before when moving some furniture.

I suspect that the thickness of things like doors is determined by crashworthiness requirements, and doesn't vary much between big and small cars, so big cars might tend to have a better interior/exterior space ratio.

OTOH, some big cars are surprisingly small inside - a Volvo estate I drove in the 1990s comes to mind. The designers of large cars seem to like squandering the extra space on fittings of dubious usefullness, such as elbow rests and consoles.

Smaller cars tend to have nearly as much space for in the front as big cars, but big cars have more space for back-seat passengers.

Big cars tend to have more expensive tyres, which has an effect on running costs.

For motorway driving, I prefer a transit van because of the high position and big mirrors.

Forget about the space, I only need space at the front. In 1978 I had a Fiesta 1.1 Ghia, 12" alloys and 4 gears in those days. After a long trip i got headache and felt exhausted. After that I gravitated towards bigger cars. But nowadays small cars are vastly better, so how big does the car have to be to feel right? Where is the sweetspot between small and big?

Impossible to say.

For almost all the population, the only car they'd ever need would be a Golf or Focus.

Ambition, aspirations and preferences dictate otherwise.

So you probably don't "need" a big car. But you might prefer one.

It depends on your requirements and preferences, surely. Just go to a sodding car supermarket, make a pain of yourself, and test-drive a range of different cars in different sizes... Find something YOU like.

You are probably right. I often thought that wheelbase has something to do with it, and the Focus is very wide for its size.

But I can't extend that conclusion to busses or lorries, otherwise they would fall in the luxuxry car range. The problem with busses/lorries is that they have to cope with a huge range of percentage load, so the unloaded suspension has to be very stiff.

This leads me to think at small cars could be much improved with active suspension?

Which would put the cost well into "large car territory", thereby massively limiting the market.

On the flip side, why do people buy cars smaller than a Fiesta? All those silly little Toyota IQs and Citreon C1s where the rear wheels are further back than the bootlid. Or those Dihatsus(sp?) which seem to be pointlessly narrow - the tiny one is about twice the width of the UK number plate nailed to the back of it.

They just all seem unnecessarily small but without the style (and probably boot capacity) of, say, an MX5.

MX5, but Focus / Golf is close enough.

May be higher cost option but it's on a mid/low end car.

Citroen are cheap but 1994 Citroën Xantia Activa had active suspension. It would have been made down to the price.

If variable damping as "semi active" is included then it's been used on some quite middle of the road models.

In the Mondeo I can ride over the road humps which surround this estate and hardly notice them. I had a Fiesta courtesy car when it was being serviced and the bumps drove me mad and by back suffered, even at the 20mph limit.

Woo. Electronic adjustable dampers. Just like my '96 Shogun has. Ooops, sorry - "had" - they die. That's a very long way from "active suspension".

The Xant Activa was not a cheap car - north of £22k in 1996. WELL into 3- series/C-class money.

Big vehicles like SUV's and even off road 4x4 also pogo badly on them.

It's either that or at 5:30 in the evening they are being driven by people with full piss bags that may slop over.

No need. All that is required is suspension geometry, bushing compliance, spring and damper rates designed by someone who has a clue and manufactured within the appropriate tolerances.

But regardless of vehicle size there are a lot of cars, produced by a vast range of manufacturers, that are truly dire, because very few manufacturers truly understand the problem and are thus in a position to produce a solution.

Even then, within a particular model range, someone in the marketing department decides wheel rims 1", 2" or 3" bigger diameter will improve the handling and this decision is approved regardless of its impact on other aspects such as ride quality.