ADUK Archive

Garrison wrote:My wife is 5'2" and wears size 4. She has to make sure that her heel position is well into the foot-well. To start operating the pedals, she has to consciously bend back her toes to get the maximum height from heel on the floor to the pedal. Placing the heels towards the seat would result in not enough length in her foot to operate the whole pedal travel.

More for further purpose rather than immediately remedies - have you tried Japanese cars?

My wife has difficulties across all our European cars from Mondeos Mark 1 and 3s through to Mercedes S-Class. Ergonomically not only pedals but the ranges of adjustment on steering, side mirrors, interior mirrors, steering to seat to mirrors relationships, angle of attack on the pedals, etc. She is more comfortable with our MR2 or Mazda RX8 or even Nissan Maxima QX (an exec-sized car).

We also find that the Japanese version of the same chassis to be ergonomically very different. We had a Mazda 6 MPS and she found the seat, steering and mirrors relationships and adjustments much better than our three Mondeo Mark 3 Ghia Xs. For example,
1) her knees are very much touching the steering column on the Mondeos whereas there are a few inches of gap under the steering column in the Mazda 6,
2) the passenger side mirror would be at the end of the adjustment range for her in the Mondeos whereas there are still plenty of mirror travel in the Mazda 6, and
3) the door tweeter speaker partly block the side mirrors in her driving position in the Mondeo but the Mazda 6 side mirrors are placed further rearward and out/away from the A-pillars as not to partly obstruct if you have your seat forward.

Lastly, our Smart Roadster Coupe pedals are all floor-hinged and the current Smart city car's pedals are also floor hinged.

http://www.theonecar.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/smart-roadster-67.jpg

Hope this helps.

StressedDave wrote:You'll be lucky - whilst you can get cars with floor hinged accelerators, I'm not aware (this side of a classic 911) of any with wholly floor hinged pedals outside real exotica.

StressedDave wrote:You'll be lucky - whilst you can get cars with floor hinged accelerators, I'm not aware (this side of a classic 911) of any with wholly floor hinged pedals outside real exotica.

jcochrane wrote:

StressedDave wrote:You'll be lucky - whilst you can get cars with floor hinged accelerators, I'm not aware (this side of a classic 911) of any with wholly floor hinged pedals outside real exotica.

I found adapting to the idea of pointing the toes to depress the clutch on these old 911s very strange at first.

StressedDave wrote:After a few hours you start to wonder why all cars aren't like this.

dvenman wrote:I had a Boxster before him, so I reckon he got the idea off me !