Stupidest idea ever

[dmaze]

The Zipcar du jour was Eva, a Ford Escape living in the Alewife garage. This is a vehicle whose rear-view mirror doesn't allow you so much to see the cars behind you as to see over the cars behind you, a vehicle with the general aerodynamic properties of a Borg Cube. It was, I'll grant, a fairly comfortable ride, particularly through the questionable pavement of Harvard Square. But the negative-zero-emissions-vehicle aspect of it seems contrary to the Zipcar environmental bit. Given that these are expensive vehicles, that are expensive to operate, they're kind of dangerous (both in the "roll over" and the "greater risk of putting your bumper through someone else's windshield" senses), why are SUVs so popular?

Comments

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

I assume they are popular because the modern world seems to contain approximately zero station wagons.

I mean, think about how many modern families need to use their cars. They need space for four humans, maybe more. They need space for gear for these humans -- if any of them play, say, hockey or lacrosse, that can be very large gear. A compact car, even a four-door, is probably not big enough for some of their frequent uses. Once upon a time they would have solved the problem with station wagons, but no one sells those any more, so they buy SUVs.

(Why are so many SUVs built? Aside from the fact that people buy them, it has to do with government fuel efficiency standards. Companies are required to have their fleet averages meet certain targets, but nothing is said about specific vehicles. Station wagons count as cars and, unsurprisingly, are likely to increase the emissions average of the car fleet. SUVs, however, are built on truck skeletons, and thus count as part of the truck fleet; their spectacularly poor fuel efficiency therefore does not impact the car fleet average.)

Oh, and, well, people just like having really big cars that let them tower over the other puny mortals on the road for the same reason they like huge showy houses and penis extensions, I guess.

[dmaze]

I suspect a lot of the reason Zipcar started having them is because people want to rent things with non-zero cargo capacity. But now that you mention it, yeah, the world mostly doesn't contain station wagons these days. The "light truck" bit does kind of irritate me since people are mostly buying them as personal passenger vehicles and not for actual hauling that you'd want a real truck for.

Hey!

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

They still sell lots of station wagons!

Loooooooooves my wagon I does.

Re: Hey!

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Huh, cool. I never see them, but it's nice to know they're still out there.

Re: Hey!

[eichin.livejournal.com]

The Magnum in particular seems popular around cambridge, or maybe it's just "what's that supposed to be" distinctive. And the smaller BMW X-series, and the Toureg/Cayenne, that sort of thing, are more "tall station wagons" (remember the AMC Eagle, from the late 80's?) than anything really Sport or Utility.

Another thought: tall vs. long gets you cargo volume without costing you the ability to *park*...

Re: Hey!

[arcanology.livejournal.com]

I would have called Toureg/Cayenne "offenses against god and nature" myself. I mean, the VW one is bad, but doing that and calling it a porsche... so wrong... now I feel dirty just thinking about it.

Re: Hey!

[iabervon.livejournal.com]

I think people just don't recognize station wagons without the fake wood. Of the cars that tend to park on my short block, there are four Subaru Outbacks, including the one I often drive, and I was still thinking that they didn't make station wagons these days. It's easy to think of modern ones as oversized hatchbacks if you grew up with the old wood-grain boxy station wagons as your prototype.