It’s Not “Which SUV?”—It’s “Why SUV?”
Buyers looking for a family hauler are asking themselves the wrong question.
Sport-utility vehicles, the high-riding machines that have captivated American hearts and pocketbooks for a quarter of a century and more, have been a source of eternal bedevilment to me. Especially since I wrote the world's first anti-SUV op-ed for theNew York Times, back in 1994.
Not unlike today, the concept of dissing or despairing runaway SUV sales was not well received by the industry or its friends in the media it largely supported back in the day. For a while, pretty much everybody was happy to pretend that the SUVs suddenly proliferating were suited for purpose, and their owners vital outdoors people who might put the vehicles' rugged capabilities to good use, living off the beaten path and traversing challenging terrain.
Of course, this ignored the fact that, by employing just such appealing imagery, marketers had long since convinced a nation to imagine that freshly paved cul de sacs and driveways alongside tract homes in suburban subdivisions were also ideal locales for Jeeps, Blazers, Broncos, and other vehicles meant to connote the healthful virtues of sportiness, adventure, love of the outdoors and concern for the environment. Even if you never went off-road, as most owners never did, or never attempted anything more outdoorsy or environmentally aware than weekend mall excursions and late-night beer runs. Even if SUVs burned more gasoline and so were necessarily bigger polluters than their passenger-car and minivan relations.
An additional fantasy purveyed to prospective owners lay in the thinly veiled suggestion that the high and mighty vehicle offered not just passage through inclement weather and rough conditions, but an increased measure of safety. The latter was particularly not true back then, during the early SUV days of pickup-truck frames, high centers of gravity, and limited or nonexistent stability controls. But all of it paled next to a larger point. SUVs made big money for the industry. People would pay more for what was in essence less in the way of engineering, design, and manufacturing costs. A magic combination the carmakers had going and one of their most cherished hands, they obviously had to play it, so why couldn't I shut up?
Well, because, as you know, I can't help myself. I continued and continue to point this stuff out. Then, as now, as a matter of policy, the benefits of using less gasoline were obvious. But fortunately for the automobile and oil industries no one listened to me and other likeminded critics. They still don't.
Instead I get, "What's the best SUV to buy right now?" It's a question I've been asked far too often over the last 25 years, first when thatTimespiece came out and they booked me on a bunch of radio shows. Irate listeners calling in to dress me down for unAmericanism was one thing, but this question? Overbroad in its contours, you might say, though, something a car tester ought reasonably expect to be asked. Except one who has just written a piece decrying SUVs and the SUVs they rode in on.
When confronted off camera with this "What SUV should I buy?" query through the years, I learned to politely hem and haw and ask people what their new vehicle's intended use might be, gently trying to steer them elsewhere, genre-wise, if that's what was indicated, or if not drilling down into which type of SUV they really needed—XL, XXL, or XXXL. "What can I do, I've got two kids?" is a rhetorical question put to me more than a few times by persons on the verge of buying an Expedition or something else too big, but who called for my advice, which they already knew and had no intention of taking, anyway.
