Bigger is Better

We’ve all heard at one time or another that bigger is better. It’s like it’s been taught to us from the time we were babies. The kid that gets the biggest Christmas present brags about its size. People who buy the biggest houses like to brag about the number of bedrooms, or bathrooms it has. We even brag about who’s got the biggest… well, never mind.

For decades, Detroit was on the bandwagon, helping people brag about having the biggest car. Many of those land yachts wouldn’t even fit in the average parking lot of today, let alone being able to walk around it in the garage. But then, something happened to the automotive industry, making those highway cruisers unpopular… gas prices started to rise.

Yes, it’s true, the rise in gas prices is really a conspiracy to get us out of big cars and into little ones. It really has nothing to do with fuel shortages at all, it’s just a marketing scheme.

Nobody’s sure where that scheme started, although Japan is strongly suspect. After all, they’re the ones who wanted to sell small cars here in the U.S., not Detroit. In fact, when the rumors of gas shortages first drove gas prices up, there wasn’t a single American made small car on the market. What Detroit called small was bigger than a Japanese limousine.

That must have been one of the most effective urban myth based marketing campaigns in history. Why, it even beats out the one about people stealing kidneys from unwary travelers. Yes sir, Detroit even bought into it, shrinking their car sizes. The “full-size” cars of today would have barely squeaked by as mid-size back in the 60s.

Of course, this has created one of the greatest marketing dilemmas to strike Detroit, since Henry made his first Model T. How can you reconcile small cars with “bigger is better;” it just doesn’t work. Granted, bigger is a relative term, so it doesn’t take much to be bigger than a Smart Car. But still, making a mid-sized car out to be big is a bit of a stretch. You just can’t impress your friends and neighbors with a car that can be taken in at a glance; it requires something big enough to make them have to turn their heads.

A number of solutions to this problem have been researched; everything from bolt-on accessories to permanently attached trailers; but none of them seem to work. At least, none have worked till now. There’s a new prototype on the horizon, which just might bring the idea of big cars back.

The “puffercar” as it’s called by the engineering team working on the project, was inspired by the infamous puffer fish. As you already know, the puffer fish inflates itself with water when sensing danger, making itself look much bigger than it really is. By connecting this idea to air-bag technology, engineers have created a car which puffs-up, just like the puffer fish. When you need to impress your friends and neighbors, just push a button, which is conveniently located on the steering wheel, and your typical mid-sized car suddenly looks as big as those land yachts of yesteryear. Then, when you need to park it, another touch of a button brings it back to its original size.

This technological breakthrough could revolutionize the automotive industry, bringing back the old saying of “bigger is better.” No longer would Detroit’s designers have to rack their brains trying to figure out how to make small look big. They could make big into small or small into big, at the touch of a button.