Why do people driving firebird, camoroes, and other long car not take time to learn to park? Yes, they are long, but I’ve parked one a few times. With just a little effort, they can fit into ONE single park, and people can park beside you. I am tired of walking a mile to class and seeing countless parks that I couldn’t get in becuase you are too brainless to park so that others can get beside you. To the red firebird, I am the one that alerted secuirty to your foul parking ;). Three days in a row is a bit much.
To be fair … it goes far beyond car make. Believe it or not, it is the actual owners who are dicks, not the cars. Life isn’t Knight Rider.
And yes, I hate “line straddlers” too. The trick is to squeeze on in there and park with your passenger-side door about an inch from their driver-side door.
Well as a Mustang driver, I can tell you it’s not because the car’s long. It’s because they skimped on amenities in the pony cars, and thus there’s no speed sensitive steering in the newer models, while parking spots have been getting ever tighter because so many new cars have that. It’s also that they wanted the car to feel all kick-ass in the curves, so the steering is optimized for higher speed driving, and when you’re idling it’s like driving a stoned whale with arthritis. I’ve driven my grandma’s '82 Lincoln Towncar before, and it’s tighter at parking than my Stang.
As a Honda Piece Of Shit driver, I can tell you … figure it out. It’s a parking space, not a shuttle launch.
We have two idiots in my complex who do shit like this. They take up four parking spaces between 'em. Lines. Keep in them. Easy.
I drive the offending Firebird (1998), and my NEXT car will have a turning radius! It is a fairly wide car, so I do not even attempt to park in the “compact” spots at work or elsewhere. And did I mention it doesn’t turn well? That being said, assholes who purposely take up two spots by going over the line get a note on the windshield, telling them to “learn to park, or go to a bigger spot.”
I never had a problem parking my old Camaro. Well, that is, never until it was stolen. Kind of hard to park it then.
Well, if you can’t make a Olympic-class turn into the parking space for whatever reason, then turn the other direction and back in. It doesn’t take more then half a minute longer.
My sin is wasting a parking space with my motor scooter instead of cruising around and politely checking for cycle-width spaces first. I probably would if I could count on them, but I can’t, so laziness wins out.
I wonder if they’re doing it purposefully, to protect their car. I knew a guy once who did that. It’s a shitty thing to do.
Reminds me of a stand up comic’s routine about how you can tell a lot about a person by what kind of car they drive.
Porsche: Asshole, but he’s got a really good coke connection. (I expect Johnny L. A. to come in and rebutt this.)
Camaro: That man has no penis. 
Many of my friends and acquaintences back in Buffalo call the act “Italian parking.” They have a very good reason for the name. Visit Buffalo, and you’ll see a disproportionately large number of Camaros, Firebirds and Monte Carlos, vehicles preferred by old school guidos, double parked or worse, across three or even four spaces.
Here in Kansas City, more often than not it’s the bling-bling cars that cover two spaces. They’re little two door early 1990s-era Honda Civics and CRXs, too, which makes it worse.
As presidebt said, I think you see “Italian parking” from folks who take a lot of pride in their cars, and would be devistated or outraged by even a tiny scratch. Why they can’t park it in distant areas of a parking lot, where the real car fanatics park, I don’t know.
Tuckerfan wrote:
Down in Central Florida, working class whites of a rural, Confederate cultural orientation (I’m sorry, but I don’t want to get flamed for using the “r word”) would often display short phrases across the top of a front pickup truck windshield. A few I remember are “PARTS AND SERVICE”, BIG RIG", “FULLY EQUIPPED”, “MY OTHER BIG TOOL” and “I AIN’T COMPENSATIN’”.
Or HAD, based on at least one guy I know that just got a Porsche Turbo… but he kicked the coke habit back in the '80s.
I tried this when I owned a '97 Firebird after I started noticing many dings and scratches on my car. It never failed though, that even though I parked in the boonies with no one else around, I would come out of the store to find it surrounded.
Also, it’s not so much that I was trying to be an ass, I actually tried very hard not to be on by parking in the boons (but always just in one spot), but the doors on the Firebirds and Cameros are so long and the seats so low, that it’s difficult to get in and out without plenty of space to open the door wide. So it’s not always a case of an asshole at work, but unfortunately for the rest of us, most of the time it is.
I notice this kind of things with Firebirds and Camaros too! But what REALLY gets me is this: When they try to parallel park, they end up parking about 2 feet away from the curb, so their car is sticking out into the street. God forbid they rub a tire on the curb!
FTW, I had a '79 Cadillac Fleetwood, almost 21 feet long. I had no problem parking in most spaces that weren’t for ‘compact cars only’.
People really can learn.
What’s more likely is that they intentionally take up two spaces just so their precious cars don’t get dented/scratched and to hell with anyone else.
Bob
Well, I’ve got a new Taurus, which is a hell of a lot longer than Firebirds, Camaros, my mom’s SUV, etc. Yeah, it’s a pain when you don’t have a good turning radius, but it’s not brain surgery. If you can’t fit in a regular spot, don’t be parkin’ in one!
When I learned to drive, my dad had a Mustang. That “stoned whale” comment cracked me up!
I drives me a Firebird, and I parks it jes’ fine right on my front lawn next to the warshing machine.
There is a logical answer to this question. Camaros and Firebirds have some of the longest doors in modern car history (no BS), up there with the Corvette. It’s possible to fit into a parking space–though they’re wide, another problem–yet still not be able to open the door sufficiently to get out. Crawling out the window is not a reasonable option, unless you don’t mind leaving your car with the window open. The final option is to crawl out the back (hatch). Less lazy F-Body owners park far out where nobody can trap them out of their cars.
Again, you can always use a modified Dukes of Hazzard to get in through the back. Stretching helps.
Others, forced to make some accomodation, park to one side of the space–usually to the right. Then, at least the driver’s door will open.
On preview, CherryBomb mentioned this in passing. The hell with it. submit
C-A-M-A-R-O. Not Camaroe, or Camero (Neil Boortz). If you are going to make jokes about allegedly stupid car owners, please, spell the car correctly.
I came across some shlub who parked diagonally across three spaces to keep his pristine car …pristine. I parked in the space beside him, as close to his front bumper as I could. Unfortunately nobody took me up on the invitation by parking at his rear.
Also, if you park right up to the curb and the road is a bit sloped, you can’t open the driver’s door far enough to get out without scraping it into the concrete. So you’re forced to park maybe 8" from the curb.
These little ergonomic annoyances are what made me stop buying Camaros.