Cars are getting too massive for parking areas – so is YOUR ‘mega SUV’ far bigger than the standard house?

New cars are getting bigger. A recent report said the average model in showrooms is growing 1cm wider every two years.

The average motor has now swollen to 180.3cm wide – or 200cm with its wing mirrors out, according to analysis by green think tank Transport & Environment. 

However, there are many ‘mega SUVs’ that span 220cm across – which is a big cause of complaint in big cities with limited space and lots of cyclists.

With the average on-street parking bay just 180cm wide, this leaves many cars too big to fit into one at the kerbside. 

It’s become such an issue that the Institute of Structural Engineers (IStructE) has increased guidance for the minimum length of general parking spaces from 4.8 metres to 5 metres, and increased the minimum width from 2.4 to 2.6 metres.

Yet Which? has found that even with this new guidance for oversized cars, there are still a large number of models that will be too big for the expanded bays.

Which cars are over five metres long?

While many people probably think all the biggest cars are massive SUVs, in reality a lot of them are huge executive saloons.

Which? has rounded up cars that are over five metres long that it tested in 2024, and half (seven out of 14) fit into this vehicle segment.

The BMW i7, Mercedes EQS, Mercedes S-Class, Audi A8, BMW 8 Series Gran Coupe, BMW i5 and Genesis G80 Electrified are all over 5 metres long.

Out of all the luxury saloons, the electric BMW i7 is by far the biggest, measuring a seriously elongated 5,391mm in length. 

The Mercedes EQS – another flashy EV – is second at 5,261mm long, followed by its combustion-engine sibling, the S-Class, which comes in at 5,179mm long.

All the top three biggest cars come with very expensive price tags, costing around £90,000 or more.

In fact, size usually means a generally high price with the cheapest of the long saloons being the BMW 8 Series Grand Coupe which still costs £63,379.

Five of the rest of the plus-five metres long cars are SUVs, with the BMW X7 taking the biggest spot at 5,151mm, with the 2022-onwards Range Rover coming in at 5,052mm.

The other two cars are MPVs – the Mercedes V-class and the EQV – which are both 5,140mm long.

Issues caused by cars that are too big for the road and parking spaces

As reported by This is Money earlier this year, having a big car can trigger big problems for owners.

The first – and most obvious – is the difficulty to park in the first place.

However, it can also result in fines. 

Half of new cars sold in Britain in 2023 are too big to fit into on-street parking bays in major cities, Transport & Environment warned earlier this year.

This is making legally parking large and luxury SUVs impossible – and can result in penalty charge notices if a parking warden spots that the vehicle is outside the designated white lines.

Fines can vary across the country but tend to be between £70 and £150. It is worth noting you’re more likely to get fined for not parking fully within the marked bay (a clause on pretty much any private or council car park signage) rather than parking an over-length vehicle.

A freedom of information request carried out by Autocar earlier this year found that a few councils have added rules around vehicle length to their own car parks in addition to the more commonly seen weight and height restrictions.

Wokingham council updated its rules in June 2023, while South Hampshire, Broadland, Suffold and West Devon all have five-metre restrictions (based on those who responded to the FoI).

Thurrock’s response to the FoI request showed cars over 5.35 metres have been banned from its car parks since 2005.

Despite this being larger than the average space, BMW i7 would still be in breach of the rules as it’s 41mm longer. At 2.2 metres wide including wing mirrors, you’ll only have 20cm each side to actually get out if you’ve parked a BMW i7 in a modern car park.

It’s also causing access issues for other drivers and car park users.

A 2020 study found the growing size of new cars is making parking an increasingly difficult task for Britons.

This is because the traditional parking space at a supermarket or multistorey car park has remained unchanged for half a century.

Car buying platform CarGurus found that a 2020 Range Rover takes up to 86 per cent of a standard car park bay, leaving just 21cm of room for drivers to get out.

In contrast, the 1970s model took up just 69 per cent – the same footprint as today’s Ford Focus.

Another problem is how much space big cars are taking up on the roads.

T&E believes these hulking Chelsea tractors are ‘piling yet more pressure on roads from competing uses’ as it raised safety concerns particularly cyclists who share the streets with these enormous motors.

Its report said: ‘The wider designs have also enabled the height of vehicles to be further raised, despite crash data showing a 10cm increase in the height of vehicle fronts carries a 30 per cent higher risk of fatalities in collisions with pedestrians and cyclists.’

Sarah McMonagle, director of external affairs at Cycling UK says that bikes are often ‘bullied off the road to make way’.

McMonagle added that drivers of the largest SUVs on the road are often those who are ‘most likely to pass people cycling more closely than those driving narrower ones’.

Cars are even becoming too big to park in our garages

Another repercussion of how big cars are getting is that over a third of British drivers are unable to park their own car in their garage – which is on average 253cm wide and 518cm long (for a single) – due to their sheer mass.

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.

One in ten (11 per cent) told Churchill that their cars are so long that they can’t close the garage door.

Pay more to park a big car –  the ‘Land Rover Tax’

This is Money reported how it could become the norm for larger cars like SUVs to pay more to park in major cities in the UK.

Cardiff and Bristol councils are looking into introducing new parking strategies that would charge owners of SUVs more to park.

Cardiff would require drivers to pay more for a residential parking permit if they own an SUV, while Bristol would charge on-street, off-street and residential parking ‘based on ‘weight, emissions and size-based pricing’.

Already many London Boroughs, as well as cities like Bath, have emissions-based parking that means drivers of higher polluting cars (many of which are SUVs) have to pay more to park.

Some cities might even vote to implement a similar ‘Land Rover Tax’ as Paris, which charges triple the parking fee for SUV-style cars.

Cars weighing 1.6 tonnes or more have to pay an eye-watering €18 (£15) an hour for parking in Paris city centre – three times the current €6 price. 

Fully electric cars only over two tonnes are affected, while people living or working in Paris, taxi drivers, tradespeople, health workers and people with disabilities are exempt. 

The brands with the most over-length cars 

There’s a theme amongst cars that are too big for parking spaces: they’re made by prestige brands. 

Of the 14 cars Which? rounded up, BMW, Mercedes and Audi make up 11 of them, with Land Rover, Kia and Genesis all providing one example each.

The longest Mercedes is the electric EQS, which fits into a similar category to the BMW i7 and is 5.22 metres long. The longest Audi is the A8 at 5.17 metres.

The newly launched Kia EV9 SUV scrapes into the 5-metre category by 15 millimetres and the luxury Genesis G80 Electrified does so by just 5mm.