Word: wider
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AUTOMOBILES Despite Fisher's experience, most automakers are highly attentive to changes in demographics and consumer preferences. The wider profile of the U.S. buyer is cited as one reason that SUVs and other so-called light trucks outsold passenger cars in 2002. "The quickest way to alienate customers is to have them rubbing against something," says Michael Arbaugh, a top Ford interior designer. The seats in Ford's already spacious Lincoln Navigator were widened an inch for the 2003 model, and the room between driver and steering wheel was opened up considerably. In its 2003 Focus compact, Ford narrowed...
DaimlerChrysler and Ford have for years offered systems for extending seat belts. Honda has made the seats of its Civic and Accord two inches wider in response to customer requests. Car companies are starting to think ahead about this trend, perhaps because dealing with design problems after a product has been brought to market can be costly. Volvo recalled 65,000 station wagons for repairs when it learned that heavy passengers might short-circuit a heating mechanism in their seats, starting a fire...
...noticed that the average American is 10% larger now than when its king and queen sizes were introduced four decades ago, according to Don Hofmann, senior vice president of marketing. So Simmons placed a 66-in.-wide platform on the 60-in. queen box spring, making room for a wider mattress dubbed the Olympic Queen. Hofmann believes the model has fueled an 8% growth in sales of his firm's larger mattresses. His hunch that Americans need more room in the sack is borne out by industry figures. Although the trend has not been directly linked to the fattening...
Steelcase, based in Grand Rapids, Mich., makes a 500-lb.-capacity office chair, Criterion Plus, that is 5 in. wider than the 18-in. standard and sells for $1,500. Countless hours of watching people at work and noticing how much larger they had become, says product manager Ken Tameling, convinced Steelcase engineers that the seat of their ergonomic Leap chair should be set at 20 in. They engineered its backrest to produce greater resistance when heavy people lean back, as well as attached arms that move laterally. All this, says Tameling, has helped make sales...
...flat, of course, and when the soil freezes in winter, any slight bump expands, pushing the rocks up and to the side. When things thaw out, though, the bump subsides straight down, so the rocks stay where they are. Next winter, the bump expands again--but since it's wider than it was the first time around, it expands even more, pushing the rocks further...