[yamtaddle]

I mean 50s and 60s (and, to some degree, 70s) cars. Modern cars are taller but there were some absolute boats back then, and they weren't uncommon. And they felt huge on the inside. All but the largest of big-ass SUVs don't feel as big as they did, when you're actually in them.

[EDIT] And even with the added height, the view from a truck or SUV sucks compared to those old cars. The only modern car I've been in the comes half-way close is some model or other of Tesla, and even that wasn't terribly close. Modern windows are shorter (they start higher up the door), windshields more-angled (for less actual viewing angle), and pillars have gone from a thin strip to big ol' things that are far thicker, both width and depth. One feels far less closed-in in most old cars than in most modern cars.

[saltcured]

I think you're partly talking about the side effects of safety changes. An older car could feel like a "green house" with lots of glass and small frames. The cabin was also less protected, so the volume of empty space inside was closer to the volume of the outer skin of that section of the car. Thin doors, not much between you and the engine compartment firewall, wheel wells, etc.

But I also wonder if you were a kid back then. Everything seemed larger when we were small. I can look at the garage in my parents 50 year old house and realize that cars back then fit in the same spaces as cars now, and were roughly the same footprint as far as worrying about the exact position so that you could still open the door to get in or out of the parked car.

[yamtaddle]

Oh, yeah, it's a combination of safety changes and shape-optimization for fuel efficiency. I didn't say it was bad, just that it's less-pleasant to go on a lazy Sunday drive in a modern car than it was in cars back when taking an aimless drive was a fairly common leisure activity.

I've been in some of those older cars more recently and yeah, they're just big and feel very open—and, anyway, these cars' being common pre-dates my childhood; though, even my sporty late-90s high school sedan felt more open than newer cars, because it was, due to all those safety changes—better visibility, less of a feeling of the car's interior trying to crush in toward you—and it wasn't a spacious-interior car for the time.