There are too many SUVs on the road and the vast majority of them are driven by the wrong people for the wrong reasons. Most people who drive an SUV don't ever use the vehicle in any way that's unique to an SUV, i.e. off-road or in any kind of "tough-duty" driving. Most people who actually do have some need for the large people-hauling capacity of an SUV would accomplish their purpose with a minivan or, better yet, a station wagon. Remember station wagons? I don't recall Americans chafing at the inadequacy of their station wagons for hauling the kids around or picking Grandma and her bags up at the airport 30 years ago. But I digress ...
What's so bad about SUVs? First and foremost, they are far larger and more massive than the use to which they are put requires. This means two things: They are terrible "road hogs" and they are horribly wasteful. Hauling around a ton of unnecessary steel requires power, and that means a big V-8. Now don't get me wrong -- I love big American V-8s. But when they are put to the use of hauling a ton of unnecessary steel with the aerodynamics of a shipping container, they get gas mileage in the low teens in around-town driving (the use to which most SUVs are put). Can you say slavery to Arab oil? The next time you hear a red-blooded American patriot complaining about Islamic fundamentalist terrorists, and then drive off in her giant Chevy Subdivision, think about it. Now, take a look around the next time you're on the road. How many SUVs do you see? How many people do you see in each one? It would be more efficient if SUV drivers drove real cars and just mailed checks to Al Qaida. Oh, and this same person is probably one who "doesn't like American cars." Huh?
What else do I hate about SUVs? Most people who drive them probably don't realize this, but "real" SUVs are trucks. Suburbans, Expeditions and their slightly smaller siblings are ladder-frame trucks with solid rear axles. Now if you're in the business of hauling literally tons of cargo, ladder frames and solid rear axles are a good thing. But if, like almost all SUV drivers, you simply need to take yourself, (occasionally) one or more human passengers and a little bit of inanimate stuff from point "A" to point "B" on paved roads, this automobile design became outdated 20 years ago at the latest. Now I'll confess that Detroit has done some amazing things to civilize the handling of the truck since Americans decided that they wanted the least sophisticated design possible for their cars about ten years ago. But an SUV is still a truck and it handles like a truck.
And what does Detroit think about all this? They love it. Why? Because when they sell an SUV, they're selling their lowest-tech vehicle that has the least R&D expense and costs the least to produce, since its basically the same product they've been selling -- as a truck -- for the last 50 years. Come on, people! Challenge Detroit! Ask for a product they have to break a sweat to design and build! "No thank you," says Mr. and Mrs. America, "even though we spent the 1980s and 1990s putting down American cars as being technologically inferior to European and Japanese products, we've changed our minds now and want to buy cars that American manufacturers were good at making -- in 1950."
So much for the idiotic decision to buy an SUV that America has been making in showrooms for the last ten years. What about SUVs on the road? Let's face it: Most people aren't very good drivers and even the best drivers have bad moments. This is one reason SUVs are popular. When I rant about SUVs to my friends (many of whom drive SUVs), they often respond that they feel "safer" in an SUV. They're right, in one sense: Surrounded by a ton of unnecessary extra steel, they're likely to come out of an accident with a normal-sized car better off than the people in the car. But they don't ask themselves whether being in the SUV may have contributed to the accident in the first place: With a higher center of gravity, poor handling and terrible stopping power due to the extra mass of the vehicle, I think this is a real factor in a lot of accidents. But, please, let's not think about what we're doing, OK? Let's just wrap an extra ton of steel around the kids.
Now, what about the effect of SUVs on other cars and the general flow of traffic? Well, there's an arms race on America's roads now as a result of the SUV craze, folks. I think there are people out there buying SUVs as a purely defensive measure, because they were tired of not being able to see around the lines of towering monsters clogging our roads. And some people -- like me -- are rightly afraid of the hordes of giant steel behemoths hurtling along our roads, being piloted by regular people. (Note that the driving ability of people, like all phenomena in nature, is distributed on a bell curve. This means that a whole lot of those SUVs are being driven by incompetent morons.)
I occasionally get a reaction to my regular anti-SUV rants that runs something like this: "Aren't you some kind of libertarian? How can you be against SUVs if that's what people want to drive?" Well, let's get one thing straight: I think people should have a right to be stupid and, if they have that right, the market's going to respond by supplying as much stupidity as can be sold. Thus the Fox Network, OK? I do not think that SUVs ought to be outlawed, and just because I happen to agree with a lot of tree huggers about them doesn't make me a communist.
Another response I sometimes get is, "Hey, don't you drive a Corvette, for chrissakes? Doesn't it have some humongous engine in it that gets terrible gas mileage?" Well, yes, yes and no. Because my car is very light and has extremely good aerodynamics, I get gas mileage comparable to an "economy car" from ten years ago -- over 20 miles per gallon in the city most of the time and as much as 30 miles per gallon on road trips. Really. That's the difference between a car and a truck.
OK. I feel better now.
I was listening to "Car Talk" this morning -- you know, the "Reds of the Road", Click and Clack. They were ranting against SUVs, and had a caller from Eugene, Oregon -- you know, People's Red Brigade Number One -- who quavered with confusion because she had seen a sign at an anti-war rally she had recently attended that indicated that SUV-drivers should be the first to die in the coming war to liberate Iraq. She was afraid for her politcal purity, since she drove some kind of small, Japanese-built SUV-ette (an Amigo, if I recall correctly). Comrades Click and Clack assured her she was OK, because her SUV got good enough gas mileage to be politically correct.
Naturally, I almost puked. I've hated Comrades Click and Clack for years, with their sneering disgust for any kind of performance car. Apparently, the only kind of car that their PBS audience should be driving is either a Volvo (if they're part of the liberal elite) or a Japanese econo-box (if they're part of the masses). Should I re-think my position on SUVs? And what about the "What Would Jesus Drive?" thing that turned up after I wrote my original rant against SUVs above? Can I stand being in the same position as people like that?
I took a few deep breaths and decided I'd stick by my guns. Just because stupid people agree with me doesn't mean I'm wrong. Even stupid people can be right about some things.
| This guy hates SUVs more than I do |
|
|
|