Ever since its introduction the SUV, and more recently the small SUV have, has always been a highly desirable vehicle amongst various social classes, even despite much public and media hostility fanned by environmental activists (the green brigade) who coined the term "gas guzzlers" for them in order to tarnish their reputation with the concept that owning one was somehow selfish, greedy and environmentally hostile.
Some critics of the SUV have gone so far as to accuse its rise in popularity to be an indication of the degradation of social relationships and the loss of mutual trust in society. They claim that owning an SUV is all about being obsessed with looking tough and the need to feel isolated, protected from and unthreatened by others; essentially to appear as intimidating as possible to any potential enemies.
Is all this just paranoid arm waving, or is there any validity to these criticisms?
The main characteristics of an SUV are they are four wheel drive, they are high with more ground clearance than conventional cars, they have a high driving position, and they have a large load and passenger space. They originated in the US as an alternative to the pick-up trucks on which they were based, though their real ancestry is military vehicles, and in particular the jeep in the US and the Land Rover in the UK.
Our love affair with SUVs began in 1982 and took off during the early eighties with rapidly expanding sales, and the small SUV was introduced during the late 1980s as a lower priced alternative. Initially the SUV was a status symbol favoured by the fairly affluent, but it was soon adopted by the middle classes who enjoyed its practicality along with its image of freedom and machismo. Its popularity continued through the 1990s and into the early twenty first century.
The feeling of safety is certainly one of the main appeals of the SUV, just witness the number of them that are used for the school run: their four-wheel-drive gives them good handling in poor weather conditions and their height gives their drivers an excellent view of the traffic ahead, enabling them to take early action should there be any problems. But the feeling of safety extends further than that: the boxy style and macho design gives the vehicle an image of that seems to suggest “mess with me at your own peril”. However luxurious and comfortable modern SUVs might be internally, outside they retain their strong manly looks, they appear to be invincible and many women feel safer driving them.
Perhaps to an extent our love affair with the SUV is a response to real risks that are encountered in the modern world, and if it feels that there are fewer of them when one is safely cocooned inside one of these powerful vehicles, then that is praise for the car and not a criticism. And modern ones don’t even guzzle that much gas either.
