Posted on 05/09/2005 6:52:14 AM PDT by MississippiMasterpiece
It's a Saturday morning on San Leandro's Marina Boulevard auto row, and the big SUVs have been sitting on the lots, waiting for someone to come in and start that dealer dollar dance that ends up with the customer slightly bewildered but paying a lot less for that vehicle than he thought he was going to.
Once in a while, there are takers, although the dealer has to discount the SUV heavily just to get it moving.
Salvador Sotello, for example, recently paid F.H. Dailey Chevrolet in San Leandro $41,000 for a new Chevy Tahoe LT (yes, with leather) SUV that had a sticker price of $58,000. The sale was an anomaly in what is otherwise a pretty dismal selling season. "It's been pretty quiet," saleswoman Crystal Gonzalez said the other day. "Been pretty slow."
At Broadway Ford in Oakland, the grilles of the Mustangs, SUVs and the lone Thunderbird smile at the passing traffic, but the showroom is empty, it appears, of customers; several salesmen are in sight. Up at Albany Ford-Subaru, salesman Myers Howard, sitting a few feet away from a big Ford pickup truck, says things on the Ford side of the showroom "are slow." That might be the understatement of the day.
Just this past week, General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. underwent the humiliation of seeing their credit ratings reduced by Standard & Poor's Ratings Services to the status of junk. The reasons are becoming clear -- the two big companies can't sell much of what they produce.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Me too but we're in a minority here on this topic.
Your key phrase is lined up at a stoplight. We're not talking about the off-road here, or about people who live high up in the mountains and have to come down to town occasionally for vittles.
People who PAY THEIR OWN WAY with money they earn can spend it on anything legal. If you don't like it, spend yours in another way. If gas jumps to $4/gal and someone wants to buy a hummer, well, more power to them. It is their money. It is their choice - unless you favor doing away with liberty...?
The stories I've read say that the battery replacement cost on the Prius is around $10,000. One of the stories indicated that this will be the ultimate "sticker shock" when owners try to trade their Prius' in...
My general rule of thumb: if your vehicle is going to completely block my line of sight, don't expect me to let you merge in front of me.
Yes! Thank you.
And gawd-awful ugly is right.
I HATE autos but it was a family decision.
The problem is not that my SUV is too big, but rather, your sedan is too small.
The nation of Quatar is developing a new form of diesel fuel which burns cleaner than gasoline. Evidently the technology was originally developed by Nazi Germany.
There was a story a few weeks back in the Wall Street Journal about it. Unlike today's diesel, this stuff looks like water. From an economic point of view, as long as crude stays above $40 a gallon, Quatar is ready to start exporting the stuff commercially.
It doesn't take much morphing to turn a minivan (by looks) into a SUV. Reading this thread, one of the arguments people have used against SUVs are that they're larger and higher than cars...well, so are minivans. Other than gas mileage, how much different from minivans are SUVs?
I just don't see why SUVs are villified, when in practicality, it's not a huge, evolutionary leap from a minivan. Maybe people buy SUVs...drum roll, please...just because they like them.
The real funny part is that some people are buying the Pirus and other hybreds because they think they are saving money.
"It's called a minivan."
But a minivan is so practical. A minivan makes so much sense, and fits the purpose so well... it's just downright uncool!!!!
My own guesstimate is 90% of the SUV owners buy them purely for the status/cool factor. I had a neighbor with 4 boys. They bought an Expedition. Huge vehicle. I asked why that instead of a cheaper, more functional minivan. He said he wouldn't be caught dead driving a minivan.
So, until Fity Cent rolls up in his own pimped out minivan with 20" rims, hydrulics, and ground effects, sheeple will continue to clamor for SUVs.
It's a free country, it's your constitutionally given right to be a stupid as you wish.
I don't own one, but I have driven one and know a lot about them. What's your question?
The funny thing is, SUV's are deadlier to their occupants than regular cars.
Yes. And there are people who think that we will have cheap gas and a demand for high mileage autos at the same time too. The reality is that nobody wants to drive a micro hybrid car if you don't have to. If gas is cheap, well SUV's are great to drive. If gas is dear, then the micro hybrid starts to sound pretty good, even if you have to shoe horn yourself into the dang thing.
Plain economics, supply and demand. Car companies in America, since they don't look past the next quarter, are going to be batting clean-up after the japanese one more time yet again.
So you believe people should not have the freedom to buy a vehicle that might keep their families safe in an accident? I will buy the vehicle best suited for me and my family, and no one should be able to tell me I can't. At this point in time, that happens to be a mini-van. If I decide later, I'd like to have an SUV, I should have that ability, if I'm willing to pay for it.
Many people like the SUVs because they are taller than most cars, and the driver can see over the traffic and know what's coming up on the road. Of course, with many more folks driving SUVs, that advantage is reduced, but I still like being higher up off the ground, even if the mini van is not as tall as an SUV.
Same MPG range as my 95 Civic (American made) and its slightly more than zippy.
"Products evolve, so did the station wagon."
I disagree. If you called it a station wagon, no one would touch it. It would negate the "cool" factor. An SUV is a "Sport" Utility Vehicle, therefore, it's cool.
Also, station wagons were simply longer cars. They fit into traffic well, they got decent milage, and were as easy to drive as a car.
I can't tell you the number of laughs I've gotten trying to watch some little soccer mom try to park her oversized SUV.
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