The increase in size of new cars is raising serious questions about road safety, urban usability, and environmental impact.

But just how much have cars grown in the last half a century or so? 

The best-selling car in 1971 was the Austin/Morris 1100. At roughly 3.7 metres long, 1.6 metres wide, and weighing around 830kg, it was a family car that could easily fit into any public parking space.

But fast forward to today's most popular new model - the Ford Puma - and it's a much larger story. Despite being classed as a 'compact' crossover, it is 4.2 metres long, 1.8 metres wide, and tips the scales at 1,300kg. The Puma Gen-E is even heavier at almost 1,600kg.

In 55 years, it means the nation's favourite new motor is 14 per cent longer, 12 per cent in wider and 57 per cent heavier. 

But our roads haven't changed to take this growth into account.

This is Money and the Daily Mail investigates if new car size is getting out of hand, or if it's time for changes to our car parks, properties and streets to accommodate a new generation of bigger motors. 

The ever-increasing dimensions of cars means motorists are finding it tougher than ever to fit into parking bays - and local councils have even taken to banning some new models from car parks because they're too long.

The substantial increase in vehicle size and bulk has also been linked to a major toll on crumbling tarmac, with the nation's pothole crisis escalating.

Road safety campaigners too have taken aim at the bulging scale of new motors, saying it is making them more lethal in collisions while also intimidating other road users and encroaching on their space in our streets. 

To showcase just how much some of the most popular nameplates have increased in size and weight in the last 60 years or so, Daily Mail and This is Money has compared the dimensions of five vehicles in an interactive graphic so you can see for yourself.

Why are cars getting bigger?

A recent study found that the average width of new car is increasing by 1cm every two years.

The report published last year analysing every new model on sale in Britain found that the average width of a car in showrooms was 180.3cm in the first half of 2023.

Five years earlier, the average was just 177.8cm in 2018.

Historical data held by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) shows that this trend of new cars increasing in breadth by 1cm every two years had been ongoing for the two decades up to 2020.

The report pinpointed certain cars as having grown substantially, with the new generation Land Rover Defender 20cm wider than the old 4x4 and BMW's X5 growing 6cm in six years.

And there are a multitude of reasons why cars have gradually bloated in scale.

An investigation by Auto Express has drilled this down to the three P's: 'Protection', 'Pride' and 'Profitability':

• Protection

The most influential factor increasing the size of new models is unquestionably around safety and improving occupant protection.

The requirement for crumple zones, increased structural integrity, more airbags and additional safety technology has impacted dimensions.

Manufacturers must incorporate these to comply with increasingly stringent regulations, with all passenger car proportions - not just SUVs - expanding to accommodate them. 

Though this is certainly for the greater good, as crash data shows. 

Over the last decade alone, Department for Transport data shows that the number of car occupant casualties has dropped from 183,858 in 2004 to just 70,089 in 2024.

In fact, car occupants accounted for just over half (54 per cent) of road collision casualties last year, down from two thirds 20 years ago.

For years, 4x4s were seen as agricultural workhorses rather than status symbols. 

That began to change in 1970 with the original Range Rover, which combined luxury and off-road ability, showed that such vehicles could be desirable. 

And while luxury brands like Lexus, BMW, Mercedes, Audi, and Porsche soon followed, SUVs remained mostly at the premium end of the market.

But that dramatically changed around the turn of the century when America's SUV obsession started to make waves in Britain too. And by 2006, the arrival of the Nissan Qashqai made SUVs a viable family alternative to a traditional hatchback.

Fast forward almost two decades and one in three new cars entering our roads today are SUVs or jacked up 'crossovers' offering better visibility to drivers as well as increasing the sense of protection for their families.

It has seen SUVs overtake superminis as the most popular body type; in 2024, 33 per cent of all registrations were SUVs, up from just 12 per cent a decade earlier, according to Britain's auto trade body.

And car makers are responding to this demand with SUVs now making up more than half of all car options on sale in Britain.

There are 193 different SUV and 'crossover' (conventional hatchbacks with increased ride height) variations across the 35 most popular brands sold in the UK in 2025.

This is an uplift of 543 per cent compared to 2000 when just 35 SUV variants were available, a comprehensive review of the new car market has revealed.

Online marketplace CarGurus also found that every mainstream maker now offers at least one SUV in their vehicle line-ups, with most (three in five) having at least five different jacked-up options. In 2000, less than half of manufacturers sold a single SUV.

The three most in-demand premium German marques - Audi, BMW and Mercedes - now have 46 SUV options to pick from, as they offer far more SUV options than rival manufacturers.

The transition to electric cars is also partly responsible for the growth in EV options as makers find themselves embroiled in a 'range race' to produce models that can be driven furthest between charges.

• Profitability

As well as appealing to our vanity, SUVs also boost manufacturers' profits. 

Lower running costs don't tell the whole story: most two-wheel-drive SUVs are no bigger than hatchbacks and use the same engines, but their perceived status allows higher pricing.

For example, the Ford Puma, a spiritual successor to the Fiesta, offers similar space yet it was priced 10 to 15 per cent above the Fiesta before the latter's discontinuation.  

Should parking spaces be increased in size too? 

One of the biggest issues with the increasing dimensions of cars is that they are rapidly becoming unsuitable for parking spaces and domestic garages.

Parking guidelines haven’t changed for over 50 years, with the requirement for public bays to be 8 feet (2.4 metres) wide by 16 feet (4.8 metres) long introduced in the seventies.

The British Parking Association says that these dimensions are 'neither minimum nor written in tablets of stone' and councils and car park operators are free to designate their own bay measurements.

However, it remains the most common size used to ensure a maximum volume of parking spaces.

Councils and car park operators have responded to the increasing dimensions of cars.

Some have added size restrictions for vehicles using their locations, with some banned from using some local car parks altogether if deemed too large.

A study conducted by Skoda in 2020 calculated that Britons are spending a combined £1.5million a year to fix damage to vehicles caused in car parks.

It said these are primarily paint touch up and small dent repairs resulting from one car's door hitting another's due to the proximity between bulging cars.

So, should councils, supermarkets and car park operators update their facilities to accommodate today's larger motors?

According to a new study, this would result in over one million parking spaces disappearing.

Used car seller Motorpoint in a poll of 2,000 drivers found that three-fifths (59 per cent) believe parking spaces are too narrow for modern cars - while a quarter think car parks should be redesigned to make parking easier. 

However, if the average space is to be upped from 4.8 metres to 5 metres long, and from 2.4 metres to 2.6 metres wide, it calculated that 11 per cent of the UK’s parking bays would need to be lost to make room for larger spaces.

With more than 11.3 million car parking spaces in the UK, this could mean that over 1.3 million lost.

To put this into perspective, Bluewater shopping centre in Kent would see it's 13,000 available spaces decline by 1,430 to just 11,570. Meadowhall in Sheffield would have to remove 1,320 bays from its 12,000 parking-space facilities, while Westfield London would have to make do with 440 fewer bays in its current 4,000 allocation. 

Larger motors is also becoming a problem for homeowners.

The average single domestic garage is 2.53 metres wide by 51.8 metres long. Again, this is no longer suitable for car produced in 2025m a recent study found.

Some 37 per cent of motorists with a garage at their home told insurer Churchill they never use it for the purpose it was originally intended - storing a vehicle.

And for more than two fifths (42 per cent) a reason for this is because their motor is so wide that they're left with just centimetres of space to open the doors.

As such, four in five drivers with garages are no longer using them for safe keeping their vehicles. 

Instead, they're utilising them for storing household items or converting them into additional living space, gyms or work-from-home offices.

Are today's larger cars inherently more lethal? 

While larger cars provide improved protection to occupant, many road safety groups are concerned that they are an increased risk to vulnerable road users, especially pedestrians and cyclists.

Transport & Environment, a Brussels based green think tank, said the growth in scale of new motors - especially the increasing popularity of SUVs - has become a 'clear and growing threat to public safety'.

According to its study earlier this year - which analysed over 680,000 accidents from across the last 35 years - pedestrians or cyclists are 44 per cent more likely to be fatally injured if hit by an SUV compared with a 'regular' car. 

Even more shocking is that it claimed the risk level jumps to 82 per cent for children.

But while weight is a factor, the report highlighted that it is the taller bonnets of jacked-up SUVs that are creating the greater risk. 

'The key problem here isn't necessarily a vehicle's weight - although, of course, in a car-to-car impact that is certainly an aggravating factor - it's the high bonnet line that's typically symptomatic of SUV design,' explains Paul Barker, Auto Express' editor.

'The average car bonnet in the EU, UK and Norway has risen from 76.9cm in 2010 to 83.8cm in 2024, and a high bonnet line with a blunt front end is more likely to impact vital organs and to push whomever is hit forward into the road and under the vehicle, rather than up and over the bonnet.'

However, car makers hit back at the claims stating that today's vehicles are far safer than they've ever been - for occupants as well as other road users.

A Jaguar Land Rover spokesperson responding to T&E's report told the Daily Mail and This is Money: 'JLR is committed to the highest safety standards and our vehicles are made with the strictest adherence to safety requirements.

'We continually invest in safety and advanced technology features – which, amongst other things, include pedestrian detection, 3D surround camera systems, and autonomous emergency braking (AEB).

'Transport & Environment, a year earlier took aim again at 'mega SUVs' like Range Rovers that can be over two metres wide for being too big for city streets and kerbside parking spaces, and as such are 'forcing cyclists off the road'.

Are bigger cars a bigger problem for our roads?

Larger cars are too worrying critics when it comes to road damage. 

The added size and bulk of models - especially SUVs and electric cars - are believed to be having a strain on our street, particularly our pothole-riddled local roads, which make up most of the network.

Greenpeace UK's senior transport campaigner, told the Daily Mail: 'SUVs create bigger potholes and bigger safety risks, given they take up more room on the road.' 

However, the Asphalt Industry Alliance, blames decades of underinvestment for road deterioration rather than vehicle weight. 

There too have been concerns raised about the impact of heavier cars - namely EVs - on multi-storey car parks, many of which were built in the 1960s and 1970s.

Fears regarding their capacity to hold cars of such increased weight compared to 65 years ago were first uncovered back in 2018 following comments by Chris Whapples, a structural engineer and car park consultant.

However, the British Parking Association (BPA) quashed his comments as overstated.

The BPA says UK car parks are built to structural codes that account for vehicle weight and load distribution, and there is no evidence they cannot accommodate EVs or heavy cars.

The environmental impact of larger motors 

While experts have ruled out larger cars being a greater risk to road conditions and multi-storey car parks remaining structurally sound, their impact on the environment is a much bigger debate. 

A report by the International Energy Agency last year claimed large, heavy passenger vehicles were responsible for 'over 20 per cent of the growth in global energy-related CO2 emissions' in 2023.

'If SUVs were a country, they would be the world's fifth largest emitter of CO2,' it stated.

'[They] weigh 200-300kg more than an average medium-sized car, and typically take up nearly 0.3 m2 more space - emitting roughly 20 per cent more carbon dioxide. 

'The trend towards heavier and less fuel-efficient cars increases energy demand, including oil and electricity use, as well as demand for basic metals and critical minerals needed for battery production. 

'Over the course of 2022 and 2023, global oil consumption directly related to SUVs rose by a total of over 600,000 barrels per day, accounting for more than a quarter of the overall annual growth in oil demand,' it said.

As well as lambasting SUVs with combustion engines, Greenpeace has also argued that EV variants consume significant resources in relation to their size.

Because they command larger batteries packs, this further increases the demand for critical minerals, putting even more pressure on the planet, the eco group said.

Should the largest cars be taxed more? 

In Paris, the mayor has trebled parking charges for SUVs as part of a wider effort to force them out of the French capital - and similar measures are being introduced in Britain.

Cardiff Council says it intends to hit SUV drivers with a parking surcharge aimed at 'oversized and highly polluting vehicles'.

Under the plans, drivers with cars weighing more than 2,400kg will pay more for a parking permit and anyone with a car weighing more than 3,500kg will not be eligible at all.

Last October, Bristol City Council opened a consultation into a new parking strategy for residents' parking schemes 'based on 'weight, emissions and size-based pricing'.

A committee report said: 'The project will include outlining our strategy for managing on-street, off-street and resident parking scheme parking, including pricing strategy, demand management and variations on pricing categories, e.g. weight, emissions and size-based pricing.' 

Earlier in March, councillors in Oxford also proposed a parking system where drivers of 4x4s and larger heavier cars should be charged more.

But campaigners want more levies for drivers of the largest motors.

They have called for the Chancellor to introduce a new tax system in this month's Autumn Budget, which would be based on the proportionate impact cars have on our roads and the environment.

The current Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) system - typically referred to as road or car tax - is 'providing a haven' to SUVs and their owners, which is costing the Treasury almost £2billion a year in lost revenue, according to a green thinktank.

Transport & Environment believes VED - which is solely based on a vehicle's 'official' CO2 output - is 'failing to keep up with the SUV boom' and 'leaving the heaviest, most polluting cars severely undertaxed'.

This is compared to other European nations, notably France, where car taxation is calculated on both a model's emissions and weight.

As a result, buyers of the largest polluting SUVs in these countries face a tax bill that can run into the tens of thousands of Euros.

T&E says the Government's reluctance to incorporate weight-based surcharges is 'undermining the UK's public finances, public safety, and the nation's climate goals'.

The green transport campaigner accused ministers of 'failing to tackle the wider societal cost of oversized vehicles whose real-world emissions and impact on infrastructure are underpriced' as it called for Rachel Reeves to introduce what it has dubbed a 'Large Vehicle Levy' on 26 November.