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The parking lot on campus has compact spaces now too.  The funny part is you can still see the remnants of the older, much wider lines.

Justine...

they are telling you to downsize from your luxurious battlestar that you drive 



and yes, I know what you drive 

macnuke wrote:

Justine...

they are telling you to downsize from your luxurious battlestar that you drive 



and yes, I know what you drive 

No smurf. What is this world coming to?? They obviously want me to downsize to a Smart Car because that's the only friggin car that'll fit in those spaces.

I considered parking in the middle, but it'd be my luck i'd come out and found my car towed. It also looked like this particular parking lot was completely converted to compact. I didn't drive far enough away from the building to find out. At my work, there's a good mix of compact vs regular spaces, and since i work an offshift, i have no trouble getting a good spot.

matt wrote:

That's funny. Yesterday I was driving through a parking lot and I saw an SUV parked in a "Compact" car parking space and thought about how many times I've seen that and how big cars usually fit just fine.

I drive a Toyota Corolla. My car is tiny, and when I park in such spaces I often think I've parked too close to the right line when I open my car door and see how far away the line is from the left side of my car, and then I look on the other side of the car and see just as much space between my car and that line.

A Corolla is tiny compared to a Hummer. No, a Smart Car is tiny. A Toyota Yaris is small. A Corolla is medium size. A Camry is big. Most SUVs are HUGE.

matt wrote:

That's funny. Yesterday I was driving through a parking lot and I saw an SUV parked in a "Compact" car parking space and thought about how many times I've seen that and how big cars usually fit just fine.

I drive a Toyota Corolla. My car is tiny, and when I park in such spaces I often think I've parked too close to the right line when I open my car door and see how far away the line is from the left side of my car, and then I look on the other side of the car and see just as much space between my car and that line.

My last car was a corolla (until it was demolished by a careless evangelist ). 

In my lot, most any car could fit in the compact spaces...it's just that the majority of people don't even make an effort to park their cars correctly.

A few years back I lived in a complex that actually towed cars that parked over the line.  As you can guess, most people didn't find it so difficult under those circumstances.

You just didn't notice them as they lay steaming under your wheels, that's all.

kamizuno wrote:

I once had to climb into my Saturn thru the trunk because 2 big cars were parked on each side of my car, with about 4 inches of clearance on both sides, luckily my car has that passthru rear seat

Heh, once while I was in Germany the only spot open anywhere near where I needed to be was a compact spot with the dude on one side crossing the line. Even driving a tiny little euro-car I still had to crawl out through the hatchback

The nearest Target to me has a parking lot composed entirely of subcompact spots. Oh, they're not labeled as such but they're tiny. I usually drive a small Chrysler and I have to park far from the store so I don't have door impact problems. The last time I was there, I parked next to a Corolla and had trouble getting out. I was all pissed off that the Corolla parked so close to the line, then I looked at the other side and both sets of Corolla wheels were on the lines. Absurd.

dvpierce wrote:

Cars that used to be compact get bigger every year - I forget if it was a Corolla or a Civic that officially became "midsize" a few years ago.

The Camry was once an econo-box, but has turned into a mid to full-sized vehicle. My grandmother once owned a 1983 Camry, which is still running BTW, and it was smaller than the current Honda Civic, a sub-compact.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:1st_Toyota_Camry.jpg

My '98 Camry, on the other hand, is plenty large enough.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:1997 … _Camry.jpg

(Not my car, but this one is almost identical except for the wheels)

A lot has changed through the years.

However, Toyota did officially declare that the Camry would no longer be a "compact" car, and positioned it as a mid-size car in the early 90's - so it's not like it just migrated there on its own. The new ones are stretching the limit of "mid-size", though.