Cars are designed from the outside in. Style comes first. Always has. I have never seen a designer sketch or model an interior, provide plenty of leg and head room, insert door openings that make it easy for people of any dimension to slide in and out, then finish the plan by drawing a body that nicely packages that cabin area.

Designers prefer to blue-sky exotic shapes with little regard for the passengers. Of course, design studios do build styling bucks to simulate the interior. After all, it's the only way to be certain that driver and passengers can actually be accomodated. Tall folks and bulky people, too? Forget it. Style sells, function is secondary.

What brought this to mind is an item currently circulating among various automotive blog sites which explains that car companies have made the amazing discovery that people are getting bigger. And not just in overfed, overweight America, either. Even those trim, slim Japanese have expanded in the last couple of decades (Sumo wrestlers excepted; come to think of it, why is there not an SUV called the Sumo? It would make for some great ad headlines).

According to the Madness of the Midnight Mind Weblog (produced by one of those slim Japanese, a pretty woman who also suggests ladies microwave their bra to keep warm in winter ), automakers are making seats wider, adding more space to interiors and using bigger virtual mannequins to help design vehicles. The item (actually from USA Today) claims that Honda, mercedes-Benz (R-Class shown), Subaru, and Toyota are widening seats and interiors. Good news, but I'll wager not one of their designers is working from the inside out.