AUTOS: Small-Car Syndrome

The latest thing in auto accessories is "jaguar chest" and "corvette hip." So reported Dr. Jerome F. Strauss Jr. of Chicago last week, in a letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association. The use of smaller cars has become so wide spread, said Dr. Strauss, that doctors should watch their patients for a "small-car syndrome," marked by complaints of chest and hip aches. He suspects that the aches can often be traced to a smaller car or sports car, which has less room, requires more muscle power to drive.

"Modern automobiles have a lowered silhouette with an acutely angled windshield, which greatly hampers entrance and exit," he wrote. "The smaller automobiles may add the additional problem of narrower doors and often depressed floors and offset control pedals. The enthusiast may tend to forget that he is using the muscles of the chest and shoulder girdle in a fashion to which he is not accustomed when he first acquires his new automobile.'' The hip and back symptoms are caused by the necessity of rotating the hip when entering or leaving a smaller car and "limitations in foot room that com pel the front-seat passenger to sit with the lower half of the body rotated in order to secure the maximum available space."

Dr. Strauss first noted the symptoms in patients who had just bought small cars, discovered that the signs usually develop a day or two after the driver begins using the vehicle. The most common complaints are mild muscle spasms or muscle tenderness. The only sure way to relieve the symptoms is to stop driving, says Dr. Strauss, but small-car owners are more likely to make their malady a badge of brotherhood, like a dueling scar. "Once the diagnosis was established," Dr. Strauss notes, "the patients were content to live with their discomfort."