VW: "We Foresee Growing Difficulty in Parking Between Cars"

Robert Farago
by Robert Farago

The mind boggles. What environmental or genetic factors are making parking increasingly difficult? Surely it's not space size. Municipalities have been accommodating gas-guzzling behemoths (a.k.a. full-sized SUVs) since the 70's. Less competent drivers? What about all the millions of teens who can lap the Nurburgring's Nordschleife in under nine minutes, albeit in a videogame? According to VW [via ForbesAutos.com ], the answer is… "As vehicles grow larger and parking lots more crowded, getting in and out of parked vehicles becomes increasingly difficult." Ah, getting in and out! So it is a genetic thing. That's code for more fat people, right? And now that I think about it, maybe VW's talking about the Eurozone, where governments never met a revenue maximizer they couldn't justify with some treehugging spiel (buy a smaller car, you CO2-belching bastard). Anyway, yada yada Lexus' expensive, largely useless and unloved self-parking system trickling down to VW. At least Forbes asks the question: does anybody actually want this shit? Well, no, obviously. Next up, will these kind of toys break and suck the cash right out of your wallet? Well, yes, obviously.

Robert Farago
Robert Farago

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  • Johnster Johnster on May 19, 2008

    Now that they don't make them anymore, those dent-resistant plastic-bodied Saturns don't seem quite so bad, do they? (Well, I guess they do. But they didn't have dents in the sides.)

  • Nayrb5 Nayrb5 on May 19, 2008

    If the problem is simply one of opening doors in tight spaces, then we just need to mandate that all cars come with gullwing doors as standard. I foresee no problems with this idea whatsoever...

  • Pnnyj Pnnyj on May 20, 2008

    Forget the parking bit, I want a car with that funky blue tractor beam!

  • Brendino Brendino on May 20, 2008

    @nayrb5 - how about this for cool car doors... http://youtube.com/watch?v=e5GXbUuT4ms

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