Screw You, SUV's are great!

I'm sick of all these self righteous little envirofreaks dancing around in joy over the drop in SUV sales.
Yes, they are a bit over the top compared to the rest of the world's vehicles, but DAMN they are so great at what they were designed for!

Are you smug weasels so hopelessly out of touch that you think people will be happier with little tin cans? Do you honestly believe that dumping the Tahoe and buying a CRV is anything but a decline in the quality of life for a family (not an individual)?

Long story, boredom shall ensue:

I used to hate SUV's too. Why spend all that extra money for fuel and maintenance? Heck I was driving 2wd pickup trucks winter after winter and rarely ever had any problems. I just did not feel the added costs were worth the extra bit of traction of 4wd, unless you were a serious off-roader or construction worker or some such.
I could understand needing the extra room for a family, but why not get a mini-van or even a full size van or perhaps a station wagon (they still made big wagons back then, another vehicle I really miss)?

Then I got married, had a family, and the pickup had to be replaced with a family hauler.
Well, now I sure as Hell did not want no stinkin' mini-van! To me, that was the final step on the road to domesticity. The public admission that I was no longer a man, but just a castrated drone. Besides, they didn't handle and had no power.
I wanted a Caprice wagon, which was the only big wagon available late model used left at the time, though no longer built. It didn't handle that great either, but there were aftermarket parts to help with that, and it had a V8 engine as God intended cars to have,instead of some wheezy V6 turd like the mini-vans.

Wifey was having none of that, however, so being, in fact, a castrated drone though not wanting to admit it, we got a mini-van.
Now I began to understand a little why so many people liked the SUV's. You could have the room but at least be able to look like you had a pair.
I was a bit depressed, my only consolation was that I still had a motorcycle to prove to others, if not myself, that I still had a life to live.
Well now, the first time I threw a mountain of junk plus the family in that thing, I was a changed drone. I no longer cared that it had no power and didn't handle. Admit I was a fat, sappy eunuch? Yeah buddy, for the convenience of that mini-van, I'd shout it to the world and not give a rat's patootie.
Packing for a trip was now a breeze. "Uh,do you think we shoud bring-" "Yeah, throw it in." "What about this?" "Yep, that too, and that other thing over there, and those, and these..."
Once again, I lost respect for the SUV drivers. I had the space at less cost, and it did quite well in the winter.

That mini-van was a Ford, and like any Ford outside of a GT40, it was garbage. So, well before we were ready, we had to replace it, after spending a king's ransom trying to keep it alive (note to Ford owners, if it has over 80k miles on it, and the repair is over $100, just get rid of it).
We decided at this point to go Jap, no more American cars for us.
Ah, but Jap mini-vans have a very high resale value. OK, can't afford that, let's look at wagons - uh, nope not many of those around either - oh no...
Then at the Honda dealer, the salesman showed me a Passport, which is a smallish mid size SUV (it's junk too, but I didn't know it at the time. Subject for a future post). Damned if it wasn't right in our price range and just the right legroom, though much less storage space than the mini-van.
We bought it, and I didn't feel too hypocritical since I considered it no more than a 4wd station wagon.
And then the first snow came. And my wife got stuck in the driveway, she having to hurry to an appointment and having no time to shovel. Normally, time to reschedule, but she just popped it into 4wheel and drove right out.
Oh Mary, blessed mother, why did we not buy one of these long ago? More snows followed. Blizzards, freaking white out blizzards. Weren't nothin' to us, just throw 'er into 4wheel and mosey on down the road ("mosey" being the operative word because the brakes don't work any better on a 4wd than any other vehicle). The weather was simply no longer a factor in any of our travel plans. It was freedom, power, control.
After that, I loved SUV's, adored them. I decided that we would always have one from now on, and as soon as we could, we'd get a big one to get back the cargo capacity of the mini-van.

Alas, it was not to be.

The time came to say goodbye to the Passport. The Nissan Armada had been released and it was love at first site for me. I nearly swooned when one went by, which was a real pain in the ass if I was driving. Those things had it all and then some. Oh what a fantasy made real, to cruise down the road with all the family in comfort and an idiotically huge pile of stuff in the back, and with 4wd. Aaand, 0 to 60 in 7 seconds!! Oh be still my beating heart, I'd only ever had one car in my life that could do that. I was a kid again, and yet still a dad. No longer just a drone. I could have vehicular fun and a family at last.

But, as always when attempting to buy a new vehicle, I ran smack into my financial inadequacy. I simply couldn't afford an Armada.
What to do. American vehicles were not on the radar, and big Toyota's were even more dear. I hung my head, gave up dreaming, and checked out the Toyota AWD mini-van. But a 16 week waiting list and the usual "what's MSRP?" put the kibosh to that.

And so, in the end, we wound up with a Honda Odyssey mini-van. No 4 or All Wheel Drive.
I was disappointed, but the Honda handled very well for such a large vehicle and was very peppy to boot. Then too, we averaged 19mpg instead of the 14 the Armada would have returned on a good day. So I just dealt with it and decided that if I ever started earning as much money as a man is supposed to, I'd get the Armada or something similar.

As I alluded to at the beginning, I now feel this will never be. Gas will go down, probably to $3.50/gallon, but that's still more than I could handle with a 14mpg vehicle. I still don't make much, though much better than back then, and probably never will.
It looks like we'll run the Odyssey to the end of our kids time with us (being a Honda, it will likely last that long), and then we won't need a big vehicle any longer. Perhaps we'll get a small 4wd pickup, that would be fun, especially if I can find some decent performance parts for it.

You envirofreak tree huggers will never understand, and you're sneering and laughing at me and those like me right now. You are correct in that the SUV era was too much and had to end, but you are wrong to exult in it. You are wrong to think that tiny cars are what will make people truly happy, and that the popularity of the SUV was all from marketing and not from a real desire or need. You may be happy shoehorning your kids into an all but nonexistent back seat and then loading 20 lbs of gear on the roof, but I think you are just convincing yourselves of that in order to achieve Ecologic Spiritual Perfection.

The more you make fun of us and our beloved SUV's, the more we hate you and want to go back to the old ways. Turn on the spigots, let the gas flow.
May I humbly suggest that you be more tolerant of those different from you, more considerate of those with differing opinions. Accept that the SUV's worked for us, but gently remind us that it cannot be any longer. Don't exult in our loss, just remind us that it had to happen sooner or later, and that we should be thankful that we had any time at all to revel in the glorious excess that is the SUV.