When I worked in the city, most of my customers rode the bus or piled into a ten-year old beater held together with bubblegum and duct tape. These weren't proud cars, but they were generally paid for, by virtue of not having cost that much in the first place. It was recycling of a high order. Those cars didn't get junked until the last possible mile was squeezed out of their rusted, retreaded frames. I don't think driving a beater makes one noble or a better consumer. There isn't a person driving one who wouldn't rather be surrounded by crushed leather and unmarred chrome. And I don't think people are evil for wanting the biggest car on the block. Ignorant, perhaps. Greedy and wasteful, certainly, but not evil. But what's the point?

The ads for SUVs show them on rugged mountain roads or blazing trails through the Outback. If you happen to live in Alaska or similarly difficult terrain, if you're a rancher or forest ranger, then all of this doesn't apply to you. But I live in northeast Ohio! The only Outback these SUVs around here ever see are the ones that serve Aussie Cheese Fries. The rugged individualists in SUV-land are the ones who take it out of the garage before it's fully warmed up. Four-wheel drive will help get one out of the driveway after the snowplow has come through, but for the most part, if you need four-wheel drive in the local 'burbs, then everything has probably been closed for the day anyway.

SUVs are about testosterone - Alpha males and their alpha mates preening. "If I want it, I'll have it - cost doesn't matter to me," is the unspoken boast. "Fuck the environment, fuck anybody who gets in my way and fuck you if you don't like it." Someday I know I'll see the bumpersticker that says "You can have my SUV when you pry it out of dead, cold fingers." The mentality is much the same as the more rabid of gun owners. They feel they have the God-given right to use as much petroleum as they want, take up as much road as they want. I don't feel morally superior in my Honda, because if I could afford a Lexus, I'd have one - they're great cars to drive. SUVs are not the disease, they're the symptom. The disease is dysfunctional consumers who want more, more, more while caring less and less about the rest of the world. I'm not sure what the cure will be.
8:20:58 AM    Comments?()