4 thoughts on “S.U.V. in Studio City….”

1. Glen,

   You’re forgetting that wasteful sports cars are subject to the gas-guzzler tax. Wasteful SUVs are not, because they’re “light trucks.”

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2. SUVs are largely the result of US government fuel-economy regulations.

   It used to be that families who wanted to haul around the soccer team or the cub scout patrol or a load of lumber for building a deck bought station wagons. (Indeed, I grew up in one of those families in suburban Phoenix.)

   The family station wagon largely disappeared (and was mostly replaced by SUVs) as a result of US CAFE (Combined Average Fleet Economy) rules.

   These rules require manufacturers to maintain an overall *average* fuel economy for their whole fleet of cars sold in America.

   Passenger cars and light trucks are averaged separately.

   According to the government classification stystem, station wagons are passenger cars, but SUVs are light trucks.

   So a station wagon with an engine big enough to haul the soccer team safely up the freeway entrance ramp drags down the overall passenger car average.

   Manufacturers don’t like that.

   At the same time, an SUV of similar capacity and power only has to (help) meet the (much lower) mileage requirement of the light-truck class.

   Most mid-size SUVs – the most popular station-wagon-equivalent – actually improve the overall light-truck fleet average.

   So manufacturers quit making station wagons and started promoting SUVs to familys who wanted hauling capacity and power.

   (Light-truck regs are also less stringent on emissions and safety – though these days many family SUVs have more safety equipment than most cars, due to market demand.)

   The switch from station wagons to SUVs was, ironically, largely an unintended consequence of efforts to promote fuel economy.

   I’ll buy that the obsession with the “extreme macho” SUVs, starting with the Hummer, came out of the gulf war.

   But the massive market shift from family wagons to family SUVs was a result of the CAFE rules, not the war.

   (As of the 2008 model year, wagons and SUVs must meet the same emissions targets. Have you noticed the recent market upsurge in station wagons from manufacturers like Chrysler and Mercedes and BMW?)

   I also have to say that I notice that when I ask this question, the respondents almost always shift ground: at first it’s all about dependence on foreign oil, or polluting the atmosphere, or contributing to global warming or subsidizing terrorism.

   But once I point out that SUVs aren’t the only sinners in those regards, the argument always shifts to something else: they take up too much room on the road, their drivers are rude and don’t signal their lane changes (as if Porsche drivers are always polite and use their blinkers! Hahaha!) and some of them park badly.

   And, usually, the sports car issue just gets waved away. “It’s true that any car uses gas.”

   Well, yeah, but it’s also true that some cars use a heckuva lot more gas to do a heckuva lot less work than many SUVs.

   They’re far more wasteful on a per-passenger-mile basis (never mind the cargo hauling).

   So if you’re going to complain about people doing more than their share to encourage dependence on foreign oil, you might want to at least include these wastefully self-indulgent sports cars alongside the hard-working family SUVs.

   And just for clarity: Not ALL two-seater sports cars are wasteful. Some are rather thrifty. It’s not as simple as “sports car=evil”.

   And I’m NOT claiming that families need huge SUVs.

   I’m just saying that the reason they buy huge SUVS instead of huge station wagons (like the huge Old VistaCruiser wagon I grew up in) is that the Law of Unintended Consequences applies even to well-meaning government regulation.

   (And I should probably also point out that today’s SUVs get substantially better mileage – and emit far, far less pollution – than the suburban wagons of my youth. In fact, they’re cleaner and generally more efficient than the flower-bespangled VW buses once favored by us early eco-freaks.)

   (Not, I repeat, that I’m defending them. But still…)

   Anyway. Didn’t mean to be quite so long-winded. But I think it’s important that we look at real issues of efficiency and wastefulness, complex though they may be.

   It’s not as easy or as fashionable as just hating on SUVs, but it makes a lot more sense.

   IMHO, anyway.

   Your Mileage, as they say, May Vary. 🙂

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3. It’s true that any car uses gas, and therefore is contributing some way to global warming and Islamic terrorism. But SUVs you must notice are not only piggishly wasteful in consumption of fuel, but they take up more room on the road, in parking lots, in blocking the views of other drivers on the highway, in their arrogance of changing lanes without signaling. I see everyday, women on the phone, drinking coffee, and just speeding along at 50 mph on 35 mph streets, oblivious.

   They are also inspired by war, the popularity of the S.U.V.s came out of the glorification of the first Iraq war; with the macho culture of bigness and pounding along without regard for the rules of the road or the health of the planet.

   How come families in the US survived 60 years without S.U.V’s? Growing up in the 1970s and 80’s no family needed one. Wonder why?

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4. I’m not going to defend SUVs, but I’m curious: why is this sort of outrage always (and only) directed at SUVs?

   There are plenty of 400-hp two-seat sports cars that get worse mileage and emit more pollution than many of the thriftier SUVs.

   And they don’t even have the “working vehicle” excuse – you can’t carry the soccer team and their gear, or a week’s worth of groceries, or even drive the whole family to the mall (unless your family is very small).

   There’s barely enough room for the driver, his ego, and his mid-life crisis in most of these overpowered boy toys.

   But does anyone ever slap an “I’m Changing the Environment” bumper sticker on a Porsche 911 or a Jaguar XK or a Ferrari Testarossa?

   Or blame them for supporting the terrorists?

   No. It’s always about SUVs.

   Large, useful family vehicles are the targets of all sorts of moral approbation; while small, wasteful self-indulgent sports cars get almost no mention at all.

   Who contributes more to dependence on foreign oil: the single father who shows up at the soccer game with his girlfriend in his new Porsche, or the married-couple-with-two-kids neighbors who gave his kids a lift to the field in their “family-size” Ford Escape SUV?

   But it’s almost always the SUVs that get criticized in outraged blog posts, not the sports cars.

   Why is that?

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