Haversack
One Too Many
- Messages
- 1,194
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- Clipperton Island
In the UK, a certain amount of anti-SUV sentiment has been based more on class conflict rather than on the current environmental and safety issues. I recall that the _Sloane Ranger Handbook_, published in 1983, had the joke about the difference between a Range Rover and a hedgehog. The implication was that such comfortable, (let alone expensive), utility vehicles were primarily for the rich.
Of course, this brings up the subject of when did utility vehicles become _Sport_ utility vehicles? I recall the Willys, International, and Studebaker pickups and wagons which the ranching and mining side of the family drove. There was nothing "Sport" about them. They were durable vehicles meant for laborous work. Even the early Scouts, Wagoneers, and K5 Blazers were bare-bones with only an AM radio as an option. I suppose such vehicles gradually acquired both the cachet of wealth as more people took up skiing and other former 'sports of the rich' through the 1960s into the 1970s & 80s; and the image of being a hard, rugged outdoorsman just as fewer people had any actual outdoor work experience. It sort of tracks with the whole urban cowboy era. Of course the manufacturers responded to this growing market by making the things easier and more comfortable to drive, (particulalry at freeway speeds). They were also a macho alternative to the minivan. I think the trend topped out a couple of years back when the Navistar CXT made its debut. Bigger is better, after all... Of course some killjoy town councils have also started enforcing the tonnage restrictions on their residential streets...
Haversack.
Of course, this brings up the subject of when did utility vehicles become _Sport_ utility vehicles? I recall the Willys, International, and Studebaker pickups and wagons which the ranching and mining side of the family drove. There was nothing "Sport" about them. They were durable vehicles meant for laborous work. Even the early Scouts, Wagoneers, and K5 Blazers were bare-bones with only an AM radio as an option. I suppose such vehicles gradually acquired both the cachet of wealth as more people took up skiing and other former 'sports of the rich' through the 1960s into the 1970s & 80s; and the image of being a hard, rugged outdoorsman just as fewer people had any actual outdoor work experience. It sort of tracks with the whole urban cowboy era. Of course the manufacturers responded to this growing market by making the things easier and more comfortable to drive, (particulalry at freeway speeds). They were also a macho alternative to the minivan. I think the trend topped out a couple of years back when the Navistar CXT made its debut. Bigger is better, after all... Of course some killjoy town councils have also started enforcing the tonnage restrictions on their residential streets...
Haversack.