Shrinking boots

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32493, 31 December 1970, Page 16

Shrinking boots

It was a phrase in a Ford hand-out referring to “the practic-ally-shaped 12 cu. ft luggage compartment” of the new Cortina that set me off on the Trail of the Shrinking Boot, writes John Langley in the “Daily Telegraph.” When the first Cortina was announced in 1962, the makers said that “luggage is taken care of by a 21 cu. ft ‘big car’ boot.” Since Ford claim that the new car is better in every way than its predecessors, it seemed unlikely that they could have, cut the luggage space by nearly half. Although the boot of the new model may be slightly smaller than before, it is certainly not all that much smaller. What has happened, I found, is that Ford are now using a different and more realistic method of assessing luggage space in their own and competitors’ cars.

At one time, it was common practice to calculate boot capacity by pouring sackfuls of ping-pong balls or polystyrene granules (the size of puffed wheat) into every usable and unusable part of the luggage space. As anyone who has done the holiday packing will know, polystyrene granules do not bear much resemblance to suitcases or anything else that families tend to take on holiday. Ford finally decided to call a halt to this meaningless practice and introduced a new standard based on (believe it or pot) a selec-

tion of "hard” luggage. The test set comprises two men’s suitcases, two men’s overnight cases, two women’s overnight cases, a woman’s pullman, a woman’s train case and a bag of golf clubs—nine items in all. . Using this yardstick, they deduced the new Cortina’s genuine luggage capacity as 12 cu. ft. Had they used the old polystyrene granules tecchnique, the figure would have been an impressivesounding 18.9 cu. ft. For too long, “how big is the boot?” has been the motoring equivalent of “how long is a piece of string?”—so I welcome Ford’s effort to provide the customer with more meaningful information. Unfortunately, it will not be of much use as a comparison with rival models unless other British manufacturers use a similar standard.