I love Harris Farm Drummoyne, but the car park terrifies me. Each visit, I drive around it praying to the parking gods that all the SUVs have left so I don’t have to shoehorn my car into the narrow gap between two three-tonne megafauna.

In the past, sandwiched between two Balmain tanks, I’ve often had to open the door a crack and wriggle one arm and leg out of the car before levering my torso through the space. Then, like a re-enactment of the Thai cave rescue, I slide along the door panel, shut the door and flick in the side mirror in order to squeeze out. And my car is a tiny Kia Picanto. Anything bigger, and I’d have to grease its sides to make it fit.

When there’s nowhere else to park...Credit: Marija Ercegovac

If you think that parking your vehicle is much harder than it used to be, you’re right. The problem is not that car spaces have magically shrunk – it’s that cars have become much, much bigger. Seven of the top 10 best-selling cars sold in 2023 were sports utility vehicles (SUVs), 4WDs and utes. By contrast, in 2004, the top-selling cars were Holden Commodores, Ford Falcons and Toyota Corollas.

In the past 20 years, thanks to a combination of preferential taxation and........

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