Hummies

I'm cutting a show about the rise of SUVs for a popular cable network. I started work on the show very ambivalent* about the whole controversy (political, environment and social) surrounding them. Coming out the other end, I still don't know how I feel about SUVs in particular, instead I'm more conflicted about corporate responsibility.

According to the narrative we're advancing in the show, the first SUV was the Jeep Cherokee XJ in 1984. It was designed with two things in mind 1) To be a big, rugged Jeep-branded vehicle and 2) {very important} to be fuel economical. When design began, America was still coming out of the 1970's energy crisis, so the Cherokee was totally designed from scratch around a light weight car body.

It sells incredibly well. The Big Three automakers take notice and try to clone the vehicle as quickly as possible. How do they do this? Ford takes it's (big, heavy) pickup truck chassis and throws an SUV passenger cabin on top. Soon, all the Big Three (Ford, Chrysler and GM) all have SUVs based on pre-existing pickup trucks. Since there's little redesign and they can built in pre-existing truck factories, each SUV sold generates between $5000 - $10,000 in pure profit. (In fact, the infamous Hummer H2 is just an ugly ass, military looking body on top of a Chevy Tahoe chassis...and premium you pay for the Hummer brand {and that ugly yellow color} is $16,000 more than the Tahoe.) And because these truck chassises are heavy, the SUVs get horrible gas mileage.


So why all the automotive history? Well, the SUV saved Detroit. Seriously. The auto industry was not doing well at all before the SUV came along. Suddenly, though, it was boom time again. The question then is, after being saved from the brink of bankruptcy, how much responsibility do the automakers have to do the "right" thing? (For the sake of my argument, the "right" thing would be to consider fuel economy, environmental factors and social order and "force" responsible cars on us. They could still make SUVs {of course}, but make them so prohibitively expensive that they actually are the automotive equivalent of lighting a cigar with a $100 bill.)

But how much responsibility do the automakers have to force the public to swallow the vehicular version of Listerine? (And I mean original Listerine, not that nice new citrusy stuff.)

"Drive this smartCar, it'll be good for you."
"But I'm a scared white-surbanite/ scared rapper / scared yuppie...I want a tank!"
"No!"

For a decade now Americans have shown a willingness to buy cars with lousy mileage, high pollution and (shockingly) inherent safety flaws. It's that classic "We have met the enemy and he is us" situation. Auto executives aren't going to greenlight cars with "features" (good mileage, environment concerns) that only Laurie David, Al Gore and their acolytes are going to buy (I'm talking about you -- you white, East Coast, university educated liberals, you!) It's simply not worth it.

So do I blame the automakers? No. I blame the SUV buyers. But SUVs and huge minivans make up over 50% of the car market. So I can't really blame them individually. They are part of a huge mass of society. And society has made isolationism, paranoia and elitism in our cars seem acceptable. Where those feeling come from, I don't know....but it certainly doesn't begin and end on the road. It's from somewhere far deeper in the American psyche.


* Although I'm personally embarrassed by my parents' gianormous Chevy Tahoe, it's mainly because it's so damn big and unnecessarily showy...not because of any political or environmental reasons. Beyond that, my thoughts were laissez-faire, anyone else {or thier parents, for that matter} can drive whatever they damn please.