I think it's kinda funny. In the time I owned my first v8 f-bod (a black shiny 98 Z28) and also my vette - I've had on occasion guys come up to me (i.e at a red light or when I'm parked or washing the car) say things like 'Hey man, nice ride, blah blah blah... I used to have one of those... BUT MY WIFE MADE ME SELL IT AND BUY AN [insert brand of SUV here]". Then they go on to say how much fun "that car" was and how the wish they "still had it" blah blah blah.

People need to get their priorities stright... "Look honey... either the f-body stays or I go with it, capiche" Maybe more people should get marriage pre-nups with special car clauses .

 

You know what I find funny is that society has everyone tricked into thinking that if you have children you must have an SUV. I dont know about the rest of yall but when I was growing up we had two vehicles: A regular cab F-150 (my dad worked construction and had a boat) and a Thunderbird. Did we complain once? Hell no. And like Ive said a thousand times, nobodys going to look back on these SUV's with fond memories. But everyone will look back on the time they spent in their muscle cars and sigh wishing they could be back there when they never had to leave. Just my .02 cents on the matter.

 

I agree with you, but I also think that living in a place where it snows(like Chicago), you have to have some 4WD car to have for emergencys, and SUV's do the trick.

 

I agree with USHotRod... a lot of folks have been conditioned into thinking they must become "responsible" once kids arrive and languish in a big fridge-on-wheels minivan or a big heavy SUV. Why? I have two tykes, 6 and 3, and they love riding in the back of my Trans Am with the tops off. I hope to "condition" my kids with muscle-car love!

 

Now thats the spirit. I tell ya if everyone keeps raising kids in trucks and suvs there wont be a muslce car following because no one will know about them. I wasnt a car person at all until my dad let me drive his 69 Wildcat one time. After that I was hooked.

 

At the end of the day it's about personal choice... I don't think it would be democratic to force people not to drive SUVs as some of the more extreme groups in this country would propose (not saying that anyone here is that extreme... just trying to prevent this agrument getting too outa hand).

Me - I really hate the bloody things, and would not shed a tear if SUVs disappeared overnight. The best we can hope for is that the current upcomming generation (i.e. teenagers) choose to shun SUVs and that we see a stepping up of the fledgeling renaisance in the affordable performance car market, driven by demand for cars that are pleasing the eye, fun to drive, reliable and just economical enough to be everyday drivers for most people, yet with enough potential for serious upgrades.

Fact is that with the bigger profit margins on SUVs (compared to cars), there's no reason for the big makers to stop making them - unless people choose to stop buying them.

I'm with BigDarkNFast - my kids (when they arrive in this world) are going to grow up loving the sound of a 550 HP, 40 MPG LS-10 revving free under the hood of a shiny 6th gen f-body (hey, gotta have hope).

 

So why would anybody own an SUV?
Purely personal situation...

My wife and I are the true rural urbanites... we live in the country (way in...), work in the city, and each drive at least 50 miles a day, me typically 100. I must be at work - regardless of weather. We have a farm, and frequently drive through goat paths, around the edges of fields, and across pastures - even in the mud and snow to get horse food or wormer down to the critters in unexpected times of need. We often take my parents or her parents out for dinner, making 4 adults and one 5yo in the same car. When we go to the beach (couple times/year), I drive about 7 miles out onto the dunes of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, to a secluded place near a Sea Turtle nesting area to surf fish while the wife and kid play in CLEAN sand without cig butts and bottle tops in it. We go snow skiing in our mountains and during a squawl, the roads are often closed by the NCHP to 4wd vehicles or chains ONLY.
This is a demanding set of circumstances for one vehicle to satisfy.

Explorer is the answer to everything. It's our 1-does-everything vehicle. It cleans-up pretty nice - you look acceptable getting out of it at church, at a funeral, or at a nice restaurant. If you have a kid, 4 doors are a great help. If you like a rear hatch on the F-car, you'd LOVE the hatch and storage on an SUV. On icy mornings, I drive the wife to work, then go on to my job. We ski all day in a blizzard, then still get to drive home when we're done regardless of the 12-16" of snow on the road. You ONLY see trucks and SUV's out on the dunes at the beach - go figure? We can go out for breakfast on Saturday morning, stop by Southern States and get three 50# bags of protein feed for the horses, then drive down the muddy/slushy path to the (remote) barn and drop them off - all in the same vehicle. Tow the boat. Get $200 worth of groceries while out with another family. Haul bicycles and dogs and kids - all at the same time. Carry the neighbors' kids to the soccer game with ours. You name it, they can do it (within reason ).

I currently get 20 mpg in my '86 Bronco II. I average 20mpg in our '95 Eddie Bauer, and 21mpg in the '91 Eddie Bauer Explorers. Bronco II has 361,000 miles on stock motor/drivetrain. '91 has 227,000 miles - all stock. '95 has 160k miles - also all stock. The things are WELL BUILT, and do take abuse well - and I promise, mine do get abused!

Now I LOVE my Mustangs, and wouldn't take the world for them. But those cars are for my driving enjoyment, racing, and showing. I drive one of my Mustangs to work more often than anything else, because of the fun factor - I like the muscle car torque and driveability. It is a great road car. Mileage is better at @ 28 mpg. I also am typically all alone, and only doing the home-work-lunch-work-home routine. But Mustangs are not for everyday life of a country boy with tractors and horses and such. I have a Superduty 250 that I use to pull cars, tractors, the big boat, the hay wagon, etc. It does big work the Explorer can't. Likewise, the Mustangs give me the speed fix that the Explorer can't.

When I got out of high school, I needed one vehicle to go to school (in the snowy mountains of NC), hunt, fish, date, and everything else in... I left my ordered '86 GT on the lot (after test driving it too ) to buy my '86 Bronco II instead on my parents recommendation. I didn't totally agree at the time, but now I can admit THEY WERE RIGHT. It was what I needed - a one-does-all vehicle that fit my lifestyle. I have owned an SUV ever since, and don't see a day that I won't own one in the future.

All that being said, I realize that I am one of the few people that actually put an SUV in 4wd during it's life. Most people don't get 1/2 the utility out of an SUV that I do, and I think those socialites that just want to "look utilitarian" could better use a car than an SUV, but it's a free world and it's their money.
All I'm trying to point out here is that some of you guys need to be aware that there are people like me out here that DO use an SUV at it's limits of capability.

Now, why someone that lives in downtown LA owns one is beyond me...

 

I agree totally w/ Proud Pony. My sister and brother-in-law live in the country, w/ horses, et al. They NEED a vehicle like what they have (full size Bronco, OJ edition). But that doesn't keep them from having a Ninja for fun, or a Beemer for her to putz to town in.

Now the people here in the metroplex, you can forget about Explorers, we're talking Excursion, Expedition, and Suburban country here. And 90% of the time it has 1 person in it. The only off roading I see them do is when they get tired of waiting in line on a backed up highway, and they drive over the curb, across the grass to the access road, then back up the next ramp so they can gain position.

When the occasional ice storm hits here, it doesn't matter what we drive, as we're all clueless on ice anyway, we could all have snowmobiles and it wouldn't matter.

And for those who think their luxury SUV gives them some status, a word of advice. When sitting at a light, when you open your door to spit on the street from your black Lexus SUV, any perceived respect you think you have because of your vehicle, just went out the door so to speak .

 

Ok, proudpony. You, sir, need an SUV and/or trucks. But its not the explorers and broncos that are getting everyone up in arms. Theyve been around for years. Its the "bigger is better" thing that is getting ridiculous. Is there really anyone out there that needs an H2? Or and excursion or expedition for that matter. I doubt it. And its always them that are the first ones to bitch about gas prices when they are just contributing to making them higher. It just pisses me off when I see a mother of one driving around a damn Excursion and then try and justify it by saying she has a kid. And in San Antonio, TX there are a lot of em.

 

LMAO!

I have to agree with Clean and USHotRod about the way Texas people are with SUV's. I can vouch for what Clean said about the Metroplex, everyone here just wants the biggest most obnoxious land monster to show off. Hell even my family is guilty of it. Well, except for me I hate SUV's. My parents are the worst when it comes to huge vehicles for almost no reason though. My mom wrecked her 95 Lesabre about 2 years ago and just had to have an Expedition. She gets hardly gets any more practical use out of it. I guess its nice to use on the weekend when my parents go out to dinner with their friends. But most of the time she is getting 13 MPG and just taking my sister to school. And my dad is the king when it comes to wasting gas. He drive the biggest Ford Truck Monster out there. F250 V10 with a small lift. Thing gets like 12 MPG on the highway. My dad drives all the way to Dallas a few times a week too. That’s like over 100 miles round trip. And I get yelled at when the gas card bill comes in. MY car gets like 28 MPG on average highway speeds. Hell I figured out just recently I some how pulled 31 MPG highway on a trip back to school. Oh and why did my Dad decided to get his truck? Well he says its to haul stuff to our country lake house. But I know its just his own "cool" factor.

Like it was mentioned earlier by USHotRod, kids these days aren’t getting exposed to muscle cars like they used to. I consider my self lucky that I'm even into muscle cars. I thank my best friend because to this day my family just isn’t that into motor sports. (I mean my dad will come to the track with us but he doesn’t get into it all that much. He a fisherman.) I was raised in Blazers for crying out loud. 5 of them. But anyway if it wasn’t for the year I spent watching and helping my friend restore a 1970 Boss 302 when I was 15 I'd probably be driving an F150 right now. This summer we are going to be working on a 96 GT already making 400 rwhp on nitrous. Man I love this stuff! Too bad all my friend does is Ford.

But we can totally give up on the youth. I met a kid on here just last week. He is 15 and totally obsessed with the Camaro. I might even sell mine to him later this summer.

Oh and about Texas and ice storms. Its pretty funny to sere how unprepared we are here. Lets just say the body shops start smiling real big when the ice starts falling.

 

I think the funniest thing Ive seen yet out of the people in San Antonio was when I was driving to work at 4:00 am on a night it had froze over the roads and there was a pickup truck driving down the road with two guys in the back tossing salt on the roads with a police escort in front of em. I cant believe people are this bad about dealing with ice.

 

I am totally with you and CLEAN. I have my needs justified just fine with the smaller units, so I can't make a claim for the mammoths on the road.

The Expedition/Tahoe sized models are kinda iffy - to pull a decent Ski boat with IB/OB drive or a mid-sized car on a trailer, these vehicles are much safer and better equiped than an Explorer or Trailblazer. But for plain transporatation of people, it's hard to justify the added size/cost to operate. I honestly think real 3/4ton trucks are better suited for that kind of load-pulling type work - much more so than SUV's are with their higher Cg's and softer riding suspensions.

And as for the Hummers and H2's, I can't see ANYBODY with a NEED for those vehicles. They are purely shock factor vehicles that give the owner some false sense of being "special" or different than everyone else. (BTW the new Mercedes BOX Suv is more fugly than the Hummer by far IMO, yet costs about as much.)

I can make ONE case for owning a diesel-powered Excursion... If you have a BIG boat (like a Fountain 32' offshore or a cabin cruiser), an Airstream camper, or pull an enclosed car trailer with some equipment to races or shows often, you could benefit from the size and power of the Excursion. It's basically an F-250 Superduty diesel truck with rear doors and cargo area instead of a bed. It gets 18-20 with the diesel and 3.55:1 rear-end, and it will pull like nobody's business. But for grocery-getting and soccer mom duty - TOO MUCH. Wrong thing for the job. And unfortunately, that's what 95% of them are bought to do.

 

Actually this is pretty funny. My wife had a 4-door Blazer, however she wanted a Tahoe because when the two of us would ride in the Blazer our elbows would touch. "We need more room", she said.

I own two Camaros. I also recently bought my 16 year-old a supercharged Mustang GT. I guess I'm irresponsible. So sue me.

My uncle's father-in-law and I were shooting the breeze at Easter. He's a hotrodder going way back. We were talking about my 67 RS and what I was planning for it. You could tell he's still into hotrods to this day.

Too old for a musclecar? If you think that way then you shouldn't own one to begin with.