One effect of our de-emphasis on math in this country is that we have stopped thinking with numbers, preferring descriptive adjectives that are more forgiving and less intimidating. Instead of saying that it is 3,280 feet high, we say that it was very tall. Instead of saying that the car was 183 inches long, we say that it is a compact. Instead of being told that our cholesterol is 150 or 205, we are told that it is normal and we accept that.
We now see this happening in the media. San Francisco’s major daily has been moving away from numbers on every front. First it was the stock market results. All stocks traded on the New York or American stock exchange had always been listed daily showing their most recent prices as well as past highs and lows. This was then abbreviated to showing only the major stocks. And now there are just a few highlights. They then contracted out their entire business section to gain further distance from the tyranny of numbers. They still use numbers to describe the weather but that also has been contracted out to a national service that seems to think that the San Francisco airport is in downtown San Francisco, especially for rainfall totals.
It turns out that somehow rainfall totals for San Francisco have always been contentious not to mention inaccurate. There always seems to be a bias toward understating rainfall totals in order to prolong the illusion of a drought. In the mid 90s, as we were drowning in heavy rainfall, the media kept insisting that the drought was still with us. (It ended the career of a respected investigative reporter when a she persisted to report the drought even as record high totals were being witnessed.) This year, it took the State until the beginning of May to announce an end to the drought even though our totals for this year are as high as 150% of normal and our reservoirs are overflowing. This year San Francisco is on track to have had a record rainfall year, but you don’t hear much talk about it. Some people, apparently, have something to gain by keeping the “D” word constantly in play.
Our same daily paper also has told its very small band of news reporters to refrain from using numbers in their reports. (Sports reporters are exempt from this so far, but who knows? They might have to start reporting just who won and who lost without using the actual scores.) Perhaps they want to avoid making factual errors or maybe they want to soften the effect hard numbers might have on their readers.
But numbers have their place, especially when describing finite objects. Numbers help us make more precise evaluations so that we can make the best choices. Sometimes a bigger number is better, but I find that, more often than not, size matters and smaller could very well be better.
We have seen this repeatedly with American fashion: Remember when women’s shoulder pads that made them look like linebackers in uniform? Until recently men wore jackets that were several sizes too large. We are still designing and producing men’s shorts and bathing suits that are so long that they appear to be attempting to conceal as much as possible while making the wearer look as unappealing as he can be. They cannot be described as “shorts” and should be referred to as “mediums” or “knee-lows.” There were times when men’s ties were clearly much too wide and suit jackets had lapels that were grossly oversized. Now we have a craze among some to wear pants many sizes too large so that they settle much too low and leave the wearers looking clown-like in their baggy length.
And as mentioned in an earlier column, watches have gotten too big since Rolex underwater watches got popular in the 60s.
And, of course, there is the debate about our national budget crisis with no one providing the actual numbers to make the choices clearer. No one mentions that though Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid take up a sizable part of our $3.5 trillion annual budget, all the money comes from separate trust funds and their costs do not add to our budget deficit and won’t for at least 15-25 years. No one mentions that the biggest item is defense at more than $800 billion a year funding two unnecessary wars and staffing more than 700 bases oversees to protect the citizens of other countries from possible attack from a Soviet Union that no longer exists and a North Korea, which can barely feed its own people.
But what most concerns me at this moment is the size of American family cars and the public’s unawareness of the vast variations. What American car companies call a compact car is what I consider a large car, but I use actual numbers to describe their differences.
Family cars sold in America range in size from about 147 inches for the Mini Cooper to about 223 for the Cadillac Escalante. That’s a 76 inch or 6.3 foot difference. And like Goldilocks, I think that some are too small but many are too large and some are just right. I believe that a small car should be around 165 inches long - about the size of a VW beetle, VW Golf, Honda Fit, Mini Coachman (the new four-door), the Audi A3, etc. The next size still acceptable and roomier is around 175-180 inches long and is found in cars like the BMW 1 and 3 series, the Audi A4, the VW Jetta, Mercedes C class, Volvo 50, etc.
I think that the largest size should be no more than 190 inches. There are many examples of this size as well.
The only problem is that America car companies are not producing quality small cars. American buyers and car makers seem to not really see the problem. The large cars and SUVs many of us are driving are not only gas guzzlers and a danger to more reasonably sized vehicles, they are also much more difficult and less fun to drive than smaller cars. And they are easier to park.
Yes, Chevy and Ford do have some smaller cars, but who wants them? Who even knows what they are? The Chevy has the Aveo and the Cruze. The former is 170 inches and the latter is 180. Ford has the Fiesta at 174 inches and the Focus at 178. How do they compare with the smaller European cars named above?
I strongly believe that the American car producers should begin the process, as they did in the early 60’s, of building high quality, attractive, and exciting, cars that also have great fuel economy and are small but roomy. After the great VW Beetle invasion of the early 60’s, American car companies began making small and appealing cars. There was the Pontiac Tempest/Lemans, the Chevy Corvair, the Oldsmobile Cutlass, the Buick Skylark, the Rambler Metropolitan, the Ford Falcon, Plymouth Valient, and the Dodge Lancer, to name a few.
But each one of these models either grew significantly in size or disappeared. The Tempest/Lemans grew in every way to become the mighty G.T.O by 1964. The Corvair was killed single-handedly by a young upstart named Nader. The Skylark, Valient, Lancer, and Falcon grew a little and then disappeared. The Metropolitan, which started in the 50s and was as cute as cute can be, just disappeared.
The American car industry decided to go the other way. Instead of making excellent small cars, they decided that they would make high-powered, large cars. Then they realized they could take cheap pick-up trucks, doll them up with more seats and a covered truck bed, call them S.U.V.s and people would be willing to spend big bucks for them choosing comfort, imagined safety and size over small and economic cars.
The Japanese and Europeans jumped in to fill our small-car gap.
I would like to see a small, elegant, attractive and economical model for each of the six car lines: a 165 inch Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac, Chrysler, Ford and Lincoln as well as a 175-180 inch model in each line and maybe one top-of-the-line model of no more than 190 inches for the premium lines using their old premium names: Cadillac Eldorado or Fleetwood , Buick Roadmaster, Chrysler Imperial and Lincoln Continental. The small Chevy could be called the Monza.
I have not included Dodge in this list because I think that it should and will be discontinued as a car line and become, like Jeep and GMC, a truck line.
I think in order for this reduced-size car plan to succeed, Americans must become more number conscious.
But if we as a people are to become more number conscious, we must become more attentive to our everyday events and much more accurate in our descriptions. This is not a bad thing. It is nice to pay attention and to be able to clearly and precisely describe objects or events.
Numbers really do count and size really does matter, even if we are not aware of it.
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