Cars keep getting bigger and bigger: Honda Accord 2008

Since the incident back in January, I’ve kept my eyes open to new cars in the marketplace. One of my biggest disappointments is the fact that cars keep getting bigger and bigger. For example, the 2008 Honda Accord looks pretty snazzy and could be a good replacement for my wife’s car. Here’s a picture from Autoblog:

However, the dimensions of the Accord have grown so much that it’s now consider to be a large car by the EPA - instead of a mid-sized car. Apparently the 2008 model is 2 inches longer - does the Accord really need to be so wide and so long? Already it’s quite spacious interior-wise - especially the width. In the old days, a 72.7 inch wide car would have bench seating in the front to fit 3 people across!

While it hasn’t quite grown into a new category, the BMW 3 series has also grown in size. That’s one of the reasons why BMW is introducing the 1 series.

Let’s face it - parking spots aren’t exactly growing in size, roads and highways aren’t growing, so I wish car makers would hold some sort of line and stop competing on “largest”. In some ways I can’t blame them, I bet their product planners look at trends in American consumers and say “We need larger cars!” since everything else is always getting bigger.

Edit: In case you were wondering, the Acura TSX is actually what’s called a Honda Accord in Europe.