Idk who
You’d have to be pretty dumb to get an SUV
The other thing is that people like comfortable cars that are easy to drive. Up until the long/low/wide era of the late 1950s, most cars had high roofs. easy cargo spaces, high hip points and chair-like seating, all of which was sacrificed on the altar of styling.
SUVs brought us back to the easy-to-own, easy-to-drive vehicles of that era, at the expense of being unpleasant to drive compared to cars. That’s where crossovers come in: they’re cars with that tall roof and hip point, but without the body-on-frame construction of truck-based SUV that gets you bad handling, worse ride and terrible fuel economy.
And yes, it’s true that crossovers were yet another way to boost margin, but they’re also better in almost every way than the low-roof cars that came before them, and consumer-oriented design counts for a lot.
Pre-SUV era minivans entered the chat.
No one, either in comments, nor in article, actually touches on form factor. The fact is that sedans are only good for moving people, but there’s better options for that: like cycling or train. The real benefit of an SUV’s form factor (or pickup, or station wagon, or hatchback) is that you can move cargo with it, the kind of stuff that you can’t move with efficient people movers.
The point that you kind of touch on in your comment, is that SUV’s generally aren’t better than a hatchback/wagon. In my experience, most SUV’s aren’t efficiently using their space, so they feel more luxurious to ride in, but have horrible cargo storage. @notjustbikes@notjustbikes.com talked on his podcast about being picked up (with his wife) from the airport in a huge SUV (I think it was an Escalade) and being unable to get their luggage in the trunk.
I move more shit with my hatchback civic than most people do with their pickup trucks and SUVs you don’t need a fucking SUV to do things, you just need a functional brain
You clearly have never owned a hatchback
Brinley at S&P Global Mobility says the rise of SUVs is a reflection of consumers’ desire to get greater utility out of their vehicles, which means the capacity to move more people and cargo.
Adams said when choosing a vehicle, most SUV buyers don’t make their decision based on something that’s going to satisfy “95 to 99 per cent” of their driving needs, which is commuting and running errands.
“They purchase their vehicle for the one weekend of the year when ‘I tow my boat up to the lake and I want to make sure I can do that,’” he said, noting “it is ironic when they make that purchase and then complain about high gas prices.”
Man, people need to look at renting for that one weekend a year what if more…
