Most everyone has a 4x4 and they use them.
What you’re describing is why the Big Three are in the jam they’re in. They market their cars to people there in Michigan.
In the 80’s, GM execs would go out to California, look around and wonder what people had against GM/Ford/Dodge cars. Then they’d go back to Michigan, look around and see few, if any, import autos. And they’d think that California was some fluke.
Well, here’s where demographics becomes destiny: Michigan is losing population, not gaining it. The “center of population” in the US is shifting southwest, away from the snowbelt of the northeast. Detroit still doesn’t understand this. Detroit could design and ship a car that gets high mileage, has excellent crash survivability, works better than the current 2WD’s in snow, and doesn’t have hokey nonsense like the current hybrid vehicles - and if they did, they could clean up in California.
Instead, they decide to turn SUV’s into pimpmobiles.
Detroit chose to retreat into building SUV’s for people who wouldn’t know a transfer case if it lept up through the floorboards and bit them in their plush posteriors. And more to the point, for people like myself, who actually use a pickup as a pickup, Detroit decided to pussify 4WD vehicles with the sort of twaddle that belongs in luxury sedans.
As far as I’m concerned, a real pickup doesn’t have:
1. Leather seats.
2. Extra trim.
3. Carpet.
4. Electronic 4WD. Matter of fact, any 4WD vehicle that doesn’t use Warn hubs is a piece of crap.
5. Any extra electronics, like a DVD player, CD player, GPS system, etc. All crap I don’t need, never mind bluetooth networks to talk to my cellular phone.
6. A V-8. An inline 6 is easier to work on, smoother and lighter.
7. An automatic transmission.
Yet auto manufactures are busy loading up SUV’s with all of this utterly superfluous crap. They’re not SUV’s any more, so Detroit might as well just create a domestic version of a BMW 500-series sedan, put in a computer-controlled limited slip diff for driving in snow, and call it done.
My idea of a SUV is a 50’s Dodge M-37 Powerwagon. Take out the gas engine, put in a Cummins B3.9 with a turbo, a six-speed tranny and call it done. Sadly, Detroit can’t seem to deliver an actual working truck any more.
I’d be very curious to see if Michigan falls into the Democrat camp in 2008 after this monstrosity of a piece of legislation....