The new standard of measurement, the WCU

In my line of work I am often questioned about the size of cars, specifically trunk capacity. Usually this involves some abstract idea of suitcase numbers and sizes and really no one knows until they try to stuff a few bags in there. Certainly there has to be a better way to express cargo room using something that everyone can visualize, thus ending confusion and changing the world as we know it. Thanks to a ridiculously in depth and utterly pointless conversation with one of my employees, we bring you this - the Wheel Cheese Unit, or WCU.

Simply put, the WCU is based on the number of wheels of cheese that one can fit into a car. Now, I can't take full credit as the idea came to us after watching an episode of Top Gear. And while it was very entertaining to watch Jeremy Clarkson stuffing cheese into a BMW estate car (station wagon for us on this side of the pond), we noticed that it was neither uniform nor exact. We could improve on this!

The first thing we had to do was standardize. This proved to be a problem because when cheese is formed into a wheel, apparently any roundish type container is used. There tends to be a lot of variation in the size of cheese wheels. Searching for a standard cheese mould was of little help, there are only about 500 different sizes. Enter American Inginuity (TM). We used a very scientific way to determine the average wheel size. It was based on the size of a Chevy Aveo steel wheel, which looked like a good size for cheese. The official decided measurement would be a wheel that is 12 inches in diameter and 6 inches high. Not to leave the rest of the world out, we also standardized in metric - 30 cm diameter and 15 cm high, slightly smaller than the American counterpart, but most things European usually are. Having standardized, we were now getting somewhere. Then the question came up of extra space not accounted for. A cheese wheel is cylindrical and having several stacked next to each other would leave empty space unaccounted for, possibly as much as one or two more wheels. We could improve on this!

Now comes the fun math. Rather than use the volume formula for a cylinder taught to me by Mr. Huke in sophomore geometry which I've long since forgotten (thanks for passing me, btw), it seemed easier to convert WCUs straight to cubic inches (or cubic cm for my readers abroad). Are we squeezing a couple of extra inches in? You bet, but no one seems to mind when engine builders round up. Besides, this is cheese, folks. So the volume of the WCU would simply become a rectangular solid with a formula of hxwxl or 864 cubic inches, metric WCU 13500 cubic cm. Ironic that we chose to take pi out of the formula since pie is shaped like a cheese wheel.

Ok, so now we have a visual marker and a conversion factor. Let's see how it applies in the real world. Actually pretty simple, all we need to know is the cargo capacity of a particular vehicle. Let's choose one of my least favorite, the Chevy Aveo 5 door hatchback. (On a side note, the engine size of the Aveo is 98 ci/1598 ccm or roughly .11 WCUs. And it runs like it still has the cheese in it.) Chevy lists the Aveo as having 15 cu. ft. of cargo volume with the rear seats up and 37.2 cu. ft. with the seats down. Kind of abstract. Let's get to work. Since one WCU is half a cubic foot, there are 2 WCUs per cubic foot. So, the Aveo has a WCU rating of about 30 with the seats up and about 74 1/2 with the seats down. Now, go out and find the WCU of your car. Tweet me the results @ chkm8r.twitter.com and I'll be sure to tweet the largest WCU's. As always, comments are appreciated.