The Hummer

This comical civilian take-off on the military Humvee is a curious beast.  Its styling is vaguely reminiscent of the plain and utilitarian Jeep, but its functionality is anything but utilitarian.  On the outside the Hummer is corpulent enough to make it difficult to park and maneuver in traffic, but on the inside it is strangely cramped, with minimal headroom and limited cargo space.  It is as expensive as a high-end imported car, but lacks the comfort and handling one would normally expect and demand for such a price.  The Hummer sucks down non-renewable resources at the rate of 11 miles per gallon, which means its resale value plummets as fuel prices soar.  The vehicle is awkward to enter and exit; and its high, angular profile reduces its stability in crosswinds.  It is, in short, a combination of all the worst elements of automotive design in a single vehicle.  All this makes the Hummer a decidedly poor choice for any civilian purpose, from short trips to distance cruising, from business to recreation   Even for exploring all but the most remote and rugged wilderness areas, there are many better designed vehicles available, at a fraction of the Hummer's purchase and operating cost.

We are left to speculate that the only reason someone might be suckered into buying such a monstrosity is to bolster a sagging self-image.  Indeed, advertising for the Hummer portrays its owners as free-spirited, independent, and in control—an especially appealing image to those who happen to be the exact opposite.  Desperate for a "cool" image, they are willing to take on a financial burden that would seriously deplete most people's ability to indulge in anything else considered cool, especially in an era when the availability of fuel promises to decline even as its price escalates.

Perhaps some fancy that driving a Hummer makes them look and feel like action-flick heroes.  Granted, Hummers draw lots of attention, but the impression is usually quite the opposite of that desired.  Rather than admiration and awe, Hummer owners are typically viewed with disdain and ridicule.  They are widely seen as freakish, abusive, self-indulgent nuisances attempting to emulate a comic-book GI-Joe existence.  Not cool.  Not tough.  Just childish, insecure, and foolish.  Let's face it:  Blowing a year's salary on a virtually purposeless and wildly depreciating item is far from the smartest move one could make, and certainly not a form of behavior that a rational person might seek in either a business associate or a lifetime mate.  So even for its sole conceivable purpose—image enhancement—the Hummer fails miserably (unless, of course, the owner happens to frequent neighborhoods where stupidity is stylish).

Considering all of the Hummer's shortcomings, utter lack of plausible purpose, horrendous expense, and deplorable image, we would propose that "truth in advertising" demands it be renamed:

the
Bummer!

 

 

SUVs – Sport Utility Vehicles

These truck-bus-station-wagon crossbreeds have become immensely popular, in the years since memories of the oil embargo and gas lines and the national 55-m.p.h. speed limit have faded.  Even though many SUVs can be bought fairly cheaply, their mechanical complexity and fuel inefficiency make them expensive to operate and maintain.  Yet most of them are bought by people who really don't need them:  people who rarely (if ever) carry more than one or two passengers, or cargo larger than a few grocery bags; people who drive entirely on paved roads to the office, the mall, or school; even people who complain about lousy pay, high prices, taxes, pollution, and inefficiency.  Yet they think nothing of blowing their paychecks on these rolling environmental disasters.  We have to ask why.  Let's start with an analysis of the term "SUV" itself.

• Sport:  When sport comes to mind, do you think of something lean, sleek, muscular, nimble, functional, and efficient?  Or something boxy, oversize, overweight, clumsy, non-aerodynamic, horrendously inefficient?  Okay, forget "sport."
• Utility:  The word suggests the convenient and efficient serving of a useful purpose.  Yes, a few SUVs actually get used occasionally for hauling several people or bulky cargo over rough terrain.  But the vast majority of them get only as far as school, the office, the shopping mall, or the soccer field, hauling one or two people and a briefcase or a few grocery bags.  They require extra effort to get into and out of.  Their handling and rear visibility are poor.  They guzzle twice (or more) as much fuel as a car, and generally require more maintenance.  Yet the closest most SUVs get to an off-road experience is an occasional pot-hole in the asphalt.  Face it:  For most people, an SUV is a waste.  A car, van, or pickup truck is a more sensible choice for utilitarian purposes.  Okay, so much for "utility."
• Vehicle:  An SUV can serve the purpose of moving people and their stuff from one place to another.  But in most respects it does a far poorer job of it, and with far greater expense, than a standard car or small truck.  For most people's transportation needs, an SUV makes about as much sense as a hot-air balloon.  Need an SUV in the Rockies, the Sierras, or the backwoods of Appalachia?  Good chance.  On a cattle ranch or in the Alaskan wilderness?  Almost certainly.  But in Manhattan or Cincinnati?  Unless you're in construction or emergency services, where you simply can't get along without a work vehicle that can pull itself through mud, sand, and rubble, owning an SUV is downright nuts!  Its purpose for most people is obviously something other than straightforward transportation.  Scratch out "vehicle."

Well, it would seem that so-called SUVs are not really about sport, or about utility, or even about what constitutes serious vehicular transport for most of us.  So what are these misnamed monstrosities really about?

• Fun?  If you get your jollies fighting crosswinds on the highway and stewing over your maxed-out auto fuel-and-maintenance credit card, you probably need a psychiatrist, not an SUV.
• Toughness and durability?  Hey, tough guy, for the kind of driving you probably do, a little lavender Corolla gets higher marks in those than your Exploder or Escalanche.
• Cargo space?  You should learn to use a tape measure.  There's a lot more usable room in a mini-van or a small pickup truck.
• Towing capacity?  Get real.  Serious towing requires a serious truck, not a make-believe one.
• Visibility?  Yeah, you can see a long way from up here—all the way to the next SUV, one car-length ahead.
• Power and speed?  You'll cover more road faster in a decently handling car than in that tipsy little school bus.
• Sex appeal?  Oh, grow up!  Blowing your pay on an impractical toy makes you look hopelessly stupid, not incredibly sexy.  Of course, if all you want to attract are other hopelessly stupid people, an SUV might be suitable bait.  Put on your new Sunday bib overalls and go for it, Bubba!
• Style?  There's nothing stylish about a top-heavy box, no matter how "bad" you make it look, no matter how many lights and mirrors you stick on it, no matter what color you paint it.  There's no getting around it:  a box is a box.  Automotive style is about motion, about curves and lines and aerodynamics, not about boxes.  Unless you're from Texas, where folks seem to be confused about lots of other things, too.
• Safety?  Because most SUVs are bigger than the average car, many people assume they're safer, an illusion SUV makers are all too happy to encourage.  The fact is, SUVs don't handle nearly as well as cars.  Their high, angular profile makes them unstable in crosswinds, and during evasive maneuvers their pronounced tendency to roll over can get you deeper into trouble rather than out of it.  Ditto for four-wheel-drive on slick pavement.  In addition, most SUVs are not built with the standard crashworthiness features mandated in cars.  Indeed, their "massively rugged" appearance is mostly cosmetic—artwork of sheet metal and plastic.  The major selling point (lacking any other) that SUV makers love to drive home about "safety" is that the driver of an SUV is more likely to injure or kill the occupants of a car with which he has an accident.  Leave it to the fertile (i.e., bullshit) imaginations of marketers to transmogrify an inexcusable hazard into a "safety" claim!  The scary part is that the very ones sucked in by it are those who lack the reasoning capacity to operate a tricycle without getting into trouble.

When I see an SUV, I don't see sport; Miatas and Porsches are sporty.  I don't see utility; a Willys Jeep with an F-head four has utility.  And I don't see anything to recommend an SUV as a vehicle, inasmuch as an ordinary car, van, or light truck serves every aspect of that function with superior convenience, utility, comfort, safety, efficiency—and yes—even fun, and (for those who deem it important) style.  Granted, there are certain conditions in which SUVs do serve a valid purpose.  But as to the needs of most city-dwellers and suburbanites, I challenge you to name one that isn't far more capably fulfilled by something else.

What I do see in most SUVs (affirmed by the moronically macho way in which these rolling road hazards are typically advertised) is self-image support—a psychological "booster seat"—for the intellectually stunted and the emotionally immature.  The SUV is pitched as a gleaming invitation to the gullible loser to "be somebody," somebody important and powerful and sexy—qualities the loser typically lacks, and has little real hope of attaining.  So okay, if our hero can't be a real in-charge type, maybe he can at least achieve status as somebody to be reckoned with in some other way—maybe somebody dangerous and intimidating.  Now, that is certainly an achievable (if questionable) goal, given the typical end product of irresponsible immaturity and excessive horsepower.  Driving an SUV satisfies the insecure and immature "adult child's" longing to play boss, if only when he's behind the wheel of his make-believe 18-wheeler, tailgating, yelling, giving everyone the finger, and generally being a jerk and a nuisance.  In other words, the true function of an SUV—again using advertising and the suckers who buy into it as clues—seems to be to indulge impulsive and abusive attitudes characteristic of the immature and the unstable—attitudes which tragic experience shows render persons unfit to operate a vehicle on a public roadway.  That would explain a lot.