Visibility Charts - Something we never see anymore

bumpy · January 2007

viewing angles for cars.

british_rover · January 2007

Wow that is something we never see anymore.

fintail · January 2007

Does that exist for other than 92-96 Preludes?

nippononly · January 2007

andre1969 · January 2007

that's pretty cool. Good way to estimate how bad the blind spots are on a car. Of course, it's going to vary depending on the driver's height, how far they had the seat back, etc, but I guess it would still be a good guideline.

john_324 · January 2007

...this info provided? In manufacturer brochures?

If so, pretty cool that once upon a time car brochures provided useful information instead of lame prose about the "responsiveness" of base engines and ridiculous photos of happy people leaving swank nightclubs to drive their immaculate econony sedans...

bumpy · January 2007

I don't know; haven't plowed through enough of the Honda Fact Book to say. I would hope someone would sit down and figure this out when designing cars, but given the abominable rear visibility in most new designs I suspect they don't.

210delray · January 2007

Given today's fashion with the gun-slit windows and ever-thickening pillars, I think manufacturers would be embarrassed to put out something like this drawing now.

NHTSA had many years back considered regulating "field of view," but supposedly couldn't find any evidence that blind spots caused collisions. :confuse: Of course, it didn't help that the automakers were in their usual for the time "it can't be done" mode.

fintail · January 2007

I guess I would expect the Honda of back in the day to look at that detail. Pretty cool. I remember the 90-93 Accord had fantastic visibility.

wale_bate1 · January 2007

Yeah, looking from the inside out it was a pretty decent view...
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andre1969 · January 2007

I remember the 90-93 Accord had fantastic visibility.

Even today, I think Honda might still pay some attention to visiblity. At least, I've noticed that the Accord, despite getting bigger and taller, and having a higher beltline, still seems pretty airy inside.

Last month I participated in a local test drive event that pitted the Accord, Fusion, and Camry against each other, and I thought the Accord definitely had the best visibility. The Fusion definitely felt more enclosed. And the Camry, heck, you'd have to go back 30 years to find a car with visibility that bad! No, I take that back...even cars 30 years ago had better visiblity out the front than this Camry!

Kirstie_H · January 2007

so that more folks can find it. Bask in the glow of my pun.

john_324 · January 2007

...for "what were they thinking" rear visibility:

The 1971-73 Mustang fastback!

:shades:

fintail · January 2007

I suspect many 50s and 60s domestic cars also have decent visibility, do to all the glass and thin pillars. My fintail has excellent visibility, with its wraparound front and rear windshields, and thin C pillar.

The 07 Lexus ES I drove a few weeks back had fairly poor visbility...the windows were just too short, and the pillars very thick.

andre1969 · January 2007

I suspect many 50s and 60s domestic cars also have decent visibility, do to all the glass and thin pillars. My fintail has excellent visibility, with its wraparound front and rear windshields, and thin C pillar.

I'd say about the worst blind spot on my '57 DeSoto occurs whenever I get a center passenger. Totally blocks out the dash-mounted rearview mirror! The left tailfin shows up in the rearview mirror though, and that's not a car part I'm used to seeing in the mirror. So at a quick glance, it'll make me think that a car is cruising off my left rear quarter.

I think the worst car I ever had for visibility has got to be my Intrepid, although my '88 LeBaron coupe would have been a close runner up.

xrunner2 · January 2007

viewing angles for cars.

That diagram is a great idea. Maybe Consumer Reports could set up a standardized way of measuring and start including in their reports. This is a safety issue, and CR more so than any other magazine, stresses safety. Would think with some kind of laser pickup device and data fed to a computer program would make this easy to do once developed. Heck, CR could even give 3 diagrams for each vehicle for different height/torso persons: 5-3, 5-9, 6-1 as example. Then, at end of each year, some how they could rank order vehicles for best-to-worst visibility.

xrunner2 · January 2007

I guess I would expect the Honda of back in the day to look at that detail. Pretty cool. I remember the 90-93 Accord had fantastic visibility.

And it had a great, maybe classic design. Still looks nice today and its style has withstood the test of time. We had an 86 Accord LXI 4-door that I recall had great visibility - tall windows, low beltline, and sloping hood. Got 247K mi out of that car.

texases · January 2007

That's my problem with the new CR-V (well, besides the eye-watering front end) - the 'fashionable' curved side window opening (sorry Honda, one curved window does not an FX-35 make). We end up with poorer visibility and reduced rear seat access. Hope they don't botch the new Pilot in a similar way, but the last spy shot I saw looked like it...

fintail · January 2007

I remember the Accords and Civics of those days also had that kind of drop down dash design, that gave the car an even more airy feel inside. I agree, that 1990 Accord design is timeless.

fintail · January 2007

I never understood that dash mounted mirror. Seems to be against any logical idea of visibility.

I think they were common on Citroens, and probably other French cars too.

w9cw · January 2007

I rented a 2007 Camry SE for a week trip last summer, and the visibility was very poor, especially out the side windows. I know the high beltline design is the rage now - look at the Saturn Aura - and that it's perhaps dictated by side impact crash testing requirements, but I really dislike it. Give me a car with a large greenhouse any day, like my old 1970 Volvo 144S has, or even my 1985 SAAB 900.

andre1969 · January 2007

I remember the Accords and Civics of those days also had that kind of drop down dash design, that gave the car an even more airy feel inside. I agree, that 1990 Accord design is timeless.

I think that was because they had double-wishbone suspensions or something to that effect, which did away with strut towers, allowing for a lower hoodline. And Honda just took that one step further and worked in a lower cowl design as well.

andre1969 · January 2007

I never understood that dash mounted mirror. Seems to be against any logical idea of visibility.

Believe it or not, it actually works out pretty well for visibility. For one thing, with the mirror mounted lower, you can see further behind you, as it seems to be more of a straight shot back. A lot of cars back then also didn't have very large rear windows, so a mirror mounted too high wasn't all the effective, anyway.

As for the view out the front, the only thing the dash mounted mirror blocks for me is the view of the passenger side fender. Otherwise, it really frees up the view of the road. But then I'm tall; it might bother a shorter driver more.

british_rover · January 2007

Didn't they also sometimes have mirrors mounted down on the dash so you could see the stop light on cars with low roof lines?

jrdwyer · January 2007

I agree about the Accord. In fact, I'm trying to find a high mileage one owner for my son's first car.

I guess style wins out over function, but give me more headroom and lots of glass any day of the week. I like the boxy old Volvos, upright Jeeps, and even our square Olds Silo minivan. With the tinted glass, the interior stays acceptable even in the summer.

What's even more crazy is SUVs like the the FJ Cruiser or Hummer having small window openings. Urban assault vehicles?

andys120 · January 2007

think they were common on Citroens, and probably other French cars too.

Big Healeys had those too, course they seldom had back seat passengers.

210delray · February 2007

I had one of those boxy Volvos -- an '80 240 2-door, and visibility was superb.

Also good were two 1961 cars in my family: my mother's Chevy Bel-Air 2 door sedan (sold before I was old enough to drive) and my aunt's Olds 88 2-door hardtop (or "bubble top") as it was called. I did get to drive that one: very thin C-pillars, and a back window so huge that if you sat in the back seat and looked straight up, you'd see the sky!

Visibility Charts - Something we never see anymore

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