Why SUV?

It used to be that the additional height made them easier to drive. You could see further ahead in traffic. You could commandeer the road as people in cars got out the way. Now everyone else is driving them the view is blocked by other SUV and they ain't going to give way.

Many are still on wobbly ladder frames with 2 bits of tin on top. Something that stopped being used for cars 70 years ago. Ride is harsh as the suspension is designed to take big variation in laden weight. As they have the behaviour of a pogo stick, they have to slow down a lot more for traffic calming cushions than I do in a low slung sports coupe. Side impact test contact so low on the vehicle that the floor pan takes the hit. Very good until a truck knocks the body off the frame, then it folds up as it's got no frame to support it.

Engines tend to be cruder "truck engines" and run rougher than passenger cars. It's a utility vehicle to get a working party to a building site etc. Although they are big they are cramped as about 1/3 the length is the load bed (and 1/2 of what's left is engine bay). The 2nd row of seats in a "crew cab" tends to be bolt upright about like a bus seat (not a coach) and not the armchair that you get in the back of a saloon car. It is not something you really want to drive your kids around in (though if they kick fragile car interiors to bits, it is). A proper SUV shouldn't have carpets but hard plastic or painted metal to wash the mud off easily. For a working vehicle it will tend to have more paint visible and less sound deadening insulation inside than a passenger car with fully trimmed interior. If it has carpet and trim it's not a functional SUV and the owner is probably dysfunctional.

Got our first SUV 4 months ago (an '05-plated Lexus RX300) and love it. For me personally it was down to my health. I had a back injury a long time ago and it's getting worse, the pain being almost constant now. The SUV is *much* easier for getting in and out of and, being a Lexus, the seats are *very* comfortable, which is what I need.

Once you have a Lexus you do wonder if anything else gives the same bang per buck, my GS300 is twenty this year and still looks good and drives perfectly. Worth nothing on the open market, though since I paid just under 7k for it when it was 7 years old, it owes me nothing. I get to drive late Mercs sometimes and think they are very poor in comparison to my Lexus. Service costs have been very minimal. The seats and climate control are that comfortable that I often get to my destination and don't want to get out.

Fashion.

Well the original reason (in the US), was tax. There was a lot less purchase tax on utility vehicles than normal road one.

Just fashion now.

Tim

"affordable" personal lease, targeted advertising and vanity aspirations :(

However something has to cheer up the economy, I do like the look of some of them.

Tax?

Fashion. The majority of those who drive them round London don't seem to be keen or skilled drivers - they never seem to know the width of them.

Napoleon complex?

Only the proper 4x4s & pickups rather than the fashion items the OP means. And I'm not even sure that applies to the modern Disco's[1] and the like anyway. "Proper" SUVs are just jacked up monocoques; Freeloader, X5s, Cashcows and the like.

Also, as I understand, because it counted as a lorry rather than a car the manufacturers could keep on producing gas guzzlers while meeting a target for average mpg over their model range.

If you mean the double cab pick up trucks, then I'm in the market for one.

I want to tow a large caravan and sling loads of stuff like awnings, water carriers and a generator in the pickup bed.

I also want to be able to drag this caravan across a muddy field if required.

Style SUVs (Nissan Quashquai anyone?) seem to be jacked up saloons and hatchbacks with no utility credibility and not much sports either.

I have found that most 4x4 estates have no more (often less) luggage space than my current Volvo 850R Estate. I'd stick with that if it had a higher towing limit.

So in my case drag race performance and sporty handling go out of the window and I am quite likely heading for a chugging lugging lump of steel on a ladder frame.

Still, I will have a vehicle with "Animal" or similar branding to show how tough I am to be driving it. [Note: to me this is similar to the branding of computer memory and graphics cards so that you know that having something labelled "Raptor" means that not having a girl friend is no big issue.]

Cheers

Dave R

The ones who keep stopping because they don't know the width are not as bad as the ones who know the width and don't care!

IMHO they cause the most problems parked up. Usually just by a side turn as the drivers can never parallel park, so have to be on the end of the row. And you can't see through them in an ordinary car.

I only just noticed this in the works car park a few days ago. All the big catafalci (as my Italian missus calls them) are on the ends. They prob'ly have to turn up early to get there. Not as bad as the idiot in the 'really expensive car' (no idea what it is) that parks in the middle of two spaces so's no-one'll scratch his doors.

Even the Aston DB9 that is frequently parked on works car park doesn't do that.

Nor did the DB5 that turned up last week.

I'd never seen it before, either. The owner must be really 'hard-faced'.

A scratch or dent matters just as much on a well kept cheap car as an expensive one.

I tend to park at the far end of the carpark. Hopefully with a wall on one side.

I had one car dented in a carpark by someone opening their door - while I was in it.

Me too. I generally end up in a far corner, and don't really understand people who have to get as close as they can to the door of wherever they're going. But the person I referred to in the earlier post parks in the middle of two spaces, not just in a single space with a free space either side. Directly over the white line, every day, in the same place. Never seen that before.