Detroit Free Press driving columnist writes a brutal epitaph for the SUV

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080731/BLOG13/80731025/&imw=Y

Brutal epitaph for the SUV

BY MATT HELMS • FREE PRESS DRIVING COLUMNIST • July 31, 2008


I’ve never been a fan of SUVs, as longtime readers know.

I remember back in the '80s when my dad drove Ford Broncos, which were huge and an exception on the road. Dad towed a lot of things and could justify owning them.

Then other versions of them began popping up everywhere, and all I could think was, “Wow, there must be a lot more people towing things these days.”

Except there weren’t. I rarely saw trailers or boats behind them. They sure did crowd spaces in parking lots, though, and some ATMs started raising windows and keypads so drivers in tall vehicles could reach. There were all sorts of other impacts, from the annoying to the dangerous.

SUVs became a status symbol and a supposed necessity for parents and others who insisted there was no other way to haul their families and their gear.

Well, so much for that line of thinking. Gas at $4-plus a gallon will do away with false perceptions.

Friends and relatives of mine say they felt safer in them, and liked the view from up high. I always felt uncomfortable driving something so big, after years of small cars.

They wish they got the gas mileage that sedans like mine do.

Still, the Detroit boy in me cringes to read columns like this one by a frequently amusing and insightful San Francisco Chronicle writer.

We’re hurting in Michigan because our main industry hitched its star to untenable beliefs about driving. And that's a harsh truth.



Find this article at:
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080731/BLOG13/80731025

automakers lived high on the SUV hog for over a decade; gas and real estate was cheap, working parents didn't mind 30+ mile commutes to work, and SUVs were the must-have suburban accessory...and for automakers, profit margins rose...a shame the majority of automakers had ZERO foresight about a world of more expensive gas and changing consumer tastes

coming....and they were so high on their greed and obscene profits that they ignored all of the signs, "Danger, Danger Will Robinson"!!

They had 7 years to adjust their business plans and build more efficient vehicles....they chose not to...and today they are posting catastrophic losses....

Many workers will lose their jobs but you can guarantee that the CEO will walk away with millions. These companies hitched their ride onto the * bandwagon and the wheels literally fell off....

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/30/DD9D120QM2.DTL&hw=Morford&sn=001&sc=1000

Remember the dinosaur known as the SUV?
Mark Morford
Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Let us be perfectly clear: It ain't over yet. Millions of dinosaurs still roam the Earth, the giant meteor of merciful annihilation has yet to strike.

But it's coming fast. The dinosaurs are trembling, scribbling out their wills as fast as possible. They know the end is near, the signs are all in place, as that giant $63K Toyota Land Cruiser V8 you bought just a couple years ago violently depreciates to less than half of what you paid for it.

Yes, the imploding petroleum economy has spoken, and this is what it said: The era of the SUV is over.

Will you celebrate? Mourn?

Twenty years. That's about how long these ridiculous beasts stomped the Earth without peer or predator or even much coherent justification, giving soccer moms and frat dudes alike a false and often dangerous sense of security and capability, when all the beasts really offered was horrible mileage and appalling handling and fiery rollover deaths, mixed with aesthetics straight from the caveman-with-a-sledgehammer school of design. Ah, we loved them well.

Shall we enjoy a brief retrospective? Because I believe it was Ford MoCo that fired the opening salvo that shocked both itself and the world when it (sort of) invented the first mass-market SUV back in 1990 merely by tacking some extra seats and a few hunks of cheap leather and soft shocks onto a lug-nut pickup truck. It painted it a pretty color and called it an Explorer and sold about 50 million in a week.

more...

There is a plethora of the damn things. What is wrong with these people, the biggest hill is 90 ft. above sea level and unless you are driving on the sand dunes, there is no need for even a small four=wheel drive vehicle. Pa., Maine, places with lots of snow maybe, but no LI. People here turn them over at an alarming rate, but if you really must demonstrate you are a fool, so be it. I ride a motorcycle, and a driver going 70 talking on the phone and putting on make-up or shaving at the same time in a hummer worries me.

As the author of this piece points out, SUVs were largely a small specialty market before the 1990s. Their benefit was generous horsepower which suited their intended purpose, namely hauling boats around. If you look at a lot of the early SUVs, the downside was obvious: atrocious fuel economy. The popularity of these behemoths was wholly dependent upon fuel prices staying low, which they did for about two decades. Coming out of the Malaise funk that produced atrocities such as the 180 BHP V8 engine, American car companies sold the SUV as a high horsepower, manly alternative to the minivan and the not-long-for-this-world station wagon. Drive them to work, drive them to the mountains to go snowboarding or the lake to go fishing - it will fit your three kids, dog and a shitload of gear. Nothing exemplified American perceptions of outdoors living quite like the SUV. It was outdoorsy but with a constantly regulated temperature and leather seats and ate a barrel of crude oil in a day.

That's the trouble with the market economy. The market may be able to tell you what people want but what people want is an immediate and not strategic or long term basis for manufacturing.

The U.S. auto industry has been so out of it for so long, that most people have no memory anymore that we were once a leader, and a standard. The entire industry here has been using its clout and lobbying to do nothing but fight against better gas mileage, fight against universal health care even though that would take a huge burden off of them as an employer, fighting against unions and consumer rights groups, even fighting against employee discounts and pensions. The attitude of the whole industry has been arrogant, hostile, and strangely cut off, for about a generation now.

I remember even during the 1980s, people starting to talk about how they couldn't find what they wanted among American automakers--no great selection of front-wheel drive or all-wheel drive until everybody else had done it; big, hulking cars, when people were starting to want cute little trucks or Jeep-type things, on and on. They were so out of it, did not allow the designers or engineers to run things, innovate, respond to what people wanted, as other corporations did. They turned the whole operation over to these damn advertising types, who kept giving one stupid "macho" ad campaign after another, re-labelling new cars with classic old names, that had none of the excitement of the original cars, etc., and not improving quality until all American vehicles were branded with the claim that they were all cheap and second-rate, even when they weren't.

This has been building up for a long time, the industry not listening to people telling them to respond to what customers want, and stop just fighting everything and giving us the same crap forever, and they never did. Now, of course, they are not getting on the green/hybrid, etc., trend, and will miss that too,and fall further behind. All the wrong people are still running things, and they all still have all the wrong attitudes. They still think of their employees as the enemy, and the problem. Yet another crisis, and possibly the end of the whole industry, caused by asshole, corrupt management.

The real men were having their SUV's washed.

Wish I could remember the manufacturer.

so Americans will go back to the SUV's and giant pick-ups. This was all played out back in the late 70's and the American people didn't learn then I don't think we are any smarter today. Here is an interesting fact, the first Honda Accord had 68 HP (200 less HP) than todays Accord V-6 at 268 HP. Remember the little old Datsun pick-up everyone was buying back in the 70's, look at it's offspring the Nissan Titan it probably weighs as much as three Datsuns.

on edit: This also shows the foreign auto makers are guilty too.