The car is equipped with fender mount mirrors in Japan because of this. It is caused by Federal rollover regulations that require the pillars to support certain amounts of weight in an accident. Thick A pillars like this are not going away any time soon and will be getting worse.
Thanks much for this information. Federal requirements or not, it is a dangerous design; I am surprised there haven’t been accidents/fatalities and resultant negligence lawsuits. You can kind of tell they know it’s a problem because of the little window they put at the bottom of the A pillar, but it’s not enough to address the problem.
This is all caused by making the car seem bigger than it is by mounting the engine transversely, and then extending the front of the driver’s compartment into what used to be the engine compartment space. Sure it gives more room but also creates this major blind spot problem.