Pop quiz. How many giant rolls of housing insulation can you fit into a two-door hatchback? One. Pretty crappy quiz I know, but a fun start to the day. I found this giant roll of goodness on the side of the highway. Smack bang in the middle of 6 lanes. I oohed and aahhed for about 7 seconds before taking the next exit, smashing out a fine handbrakey, and flinging myself in the opposite direction to work. To retrieve my roadside gold, I’d have to split, on-foot, all those lanes in 7:30am traffic on Australia’s number one highway, 50k from the city. It was buuuusy. The roll itself I gauged to be about the size of four 6-foot men duct taped together. Not as heavy as men, naturally, but awkward. Would it fit into the open-sesame hatchback of my girlfriends car?
Bloody oath it would, talk about custom fit! I imagine the scene between half a dozen fine people of Hyundai, gathered around a glass table on the 77th floor of their Seoul headquarters. After niceties and tea, a man gets up and says… “we must, at all costs, allow a large roll of housing insulation, roughly the size of 4 Western men duct-taped together, to fit into our next hatchback!!!!’. He looks at Ken, the chief designer. “Ken, make it happen or it’s your job”! And so good old Ken made it happen. The backstory is that Mr. demanding was renovating his house at the time and was using his company car hatchback for hardware runs. He was getting increasingly frustrated with the awkward, impractical nature of the boot area, so took out the back seats and built in a tradie deck. His wife was infuriated because the deck took a week to build, and put them behind on their renovations. With only two seats in the car, his two kids were equally annoyed, now having to walk to school instead of being dropped off.
Mrs. demanding made her husband head into the office and demand that a car be made to fit a large roll of housing insulation, roughly the size of 4 western men duct taped together. And that is why, my friends, this mornings commute loot was made possible.
like a glove!