King of the car park

And once you’re in, you revel. All the way, as wide as they will go. Hinges angled as obliquely as possible. The luxury of a space with space to throw open your door with abandon. Bliss. Almost makes you forget about the fact your youngest offspring is mewling and puking and the changing bag is in the hallway at home. 

Which brings me to the Clio 182. My Clio 182 in fact, although there is no real need to be specific as it applies to all of them. You see there is actually no need to procreate, because one of the pleasures of owning such a small car is that I get that p&c sense of space pretty much wherever I park. It’s a genuine delight driving into a town or village and knowing that I can slot the little slice of Va Va Voom into almost any available spot. 

The average width of a parking space is 2.4m and given that a current VW Golf is 1799mm wide not including mirrors, that leaves 30cm (I realise I should have stuck to one scale of measurement rather than making this like the opening to a primary school maths question, but as Liam would say, roll with it) either side. If a Clio 182 is 1639mm in width, how much extra space does that leave? Glib answers in the comments below. 

Alright, so it hardly equates to parking in a 3.2m wide parent and child spot every time but it definitely makes life easier. And there is another aspect to parking that is a simple and perhaps underrated delight in the Clio: the multi-storey car park. As cars get wider so these many-layered automotive storage facilities take on an ever grimmer mien. That off-pint of life behind the wheel, the kerbed alloy, becomes a more solid spectre as the wheel:sidewall ratio gets bigger with every generation.

The first danger is usually encountered as you approach the automated entry barrier, the ticket machine mounted a full arm-stretch away on some sort of angry concrete plinth. Pass that test and you then have to keep everything crossed for a space on the ground floor, otherwise you’ll be forced to drive up or down a helter-skelter of doom with the car feeling cosier between the kerbs than toothpaste in a tube.

Most modern cars in multi-stories make you feel like an adult in a child’s soft play; you’re somewhere that has the appearance of being fun if only you fitted. The Clio fits. I will happily go up another level just to enjoy the sensation of holding an unwavering amount of lock like I’m tackling Pouhon (that’s turn 12 for Karun) at Spa. No worries about feeling akin to an articulated lorry on an alpine hairpin. You can nip up ramps and swing round concrete columns like you’re in the Italian Job. Hell, why not go all the way to the top just for the full Fiat factory roof in Turin feeling?

I have noticed that some more recently constructed car parks are taking into account the increase in size of the average vehicle, but it’s been a slow adaptation in infrastructure (which doesn’t bode well for a rapid shift to EVs). Anyway, take a bow Heathrow Terminal 2 Short Stay. However, this just plays into the Clio’s hands even more. Just as a country road is more fun in a narrow car because you have tarmac to play with while staying legal, rather than a wide car restricting you like a bullet down a barrel, so as you spiral down towards the exit of T2 SS, you have room to choose a line. It’s hardly Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift, but it’s still rather enjoyable.

Perhaps all this is the reason I took the time to read the obituary of Owen Luder in the paper this week. A two time president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, he represented the Brutalist genre that we associate with so many grey, angular civic constructions built in the Sixties and Seventies. Unique, geometric designs that were nonetheless so little loved that listing requests were nearly always denied. 

Luder was the man whose eponymous company was behind such reviled buildings as the Trinity Square multi-storey car park in Gateshead. Otherwise known as the Get Carter car park after its starring role in the film, it was seven storeys of parking, sitting on piloti columns. A way to seventh heaven or seven circles of hell, depending on the size of your car. In 2010 it was razed to the ground to make way for a new Tesco, no doubt doubt with ample parent and child parking. Seems a shame to me, but perhaps I’m just a biased small car owner.