Kill the SUV (angry, barely focused rant)
This started out as a comment inspired by Funkiller's post on rising oil prices and our culture's sick obsession with bigger and bigger vehicles. only it grew so large I decided it deserved its own post...
I've felt a personal abhorrence to SUV's since one killed my father. Actually, it was an obnoxiously huge Ford F-350 Super Duty that knocked his little, economical Chevy S-10 100 feet out into a field, accordioning it up like a train had hit it (and him). I hate huge vehicles. Katrina and I find it maddeningly absurd that our fifteen- and twenty-year-old cars (1990 Toyota Camry, 1985 Nissan pickup) get far better gas mileage than their modern counterparts. Our Camry (4-banger, but with a lot of pep) never gets less than 27-30 miles to the gallon, and pulls over 35 in highway driving. My little pickup has improved to about 23-25 since I put a canopy over the bed. The current Camry and Nissan pickup can't even come close.
How is this possible?
Advancing technologies, better and better ways of doing things... extrapolating out, at the rate we were going back in the 80s, all cars now should get 40-50 miles to the gallon, hybrids notwithstanding. Shame, shame, shame on all of us for allowing car manufacturers to sell us a bill of goods.
Has anyone observed the bigger and better notion in naming Ford SUV's? In the early 90s, they came out with the Explorer, which was a reasonably-sized 4-wheel-drive vehicle. Next up came the Expedition - bigger, with more power. Following it was the Excursion - the friggin' Titanic raised from the sea bed and fitted with an automatic transmission. What's next? My vote for the next "Ex-" - named Ford vehicle is "Executioner," because that's what that vehicle will be if it hits you in anything smaller than itself.
Just ask my dad.
posted by scooter @ 10:09 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Yeah, but we need the F-350s of the world to be able to tow your Nissan pick-up when it stalls out. I want to thank you, though, for showing just how irresponsible it is for car manufacturers to create small, dangerous cars that can't withstand accidents.
Hmm... when touring junkyards to find parts for my now 20-year-old Nissan truck, it's nigh on impossible to find *any* Nissans there, although I see many of them, my vintage and older, still on the road. Can't say as much for Fords, though, which cover a good acre or more of land in junkyards.
And, I don't know if you read my post correctly, but my father was killed while driving a Chevy S-10 - not a behemoth like an F-350, but certainly not a "small" truck like mine.
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