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Wagons Station Wagon vs SUV
1426 messages, Last post on Feb 21, 2007 at 8:37 AM
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Why not just import the dual-range tranny, through some 3rd party? Bob |
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boaz47 says "You and I both know that people buy what they can afford, period. Americans get the house, car, whatever based on what they feel they can afford." Or, more often, how much they can borrow, often on 19% plastic, just to keep feeding that good ol' overconsumption frenzy. Delayed gratification? What's that? Why wait until tomorrow (when I might have actually saved enough to buy a sensible vehicle outright) when I can borrow enough for an Expedition or Escalade today? Won't it be grand, driving along (by myself) in it, or maybe with the wife and two kids rattling around in all nine seats, flaunting our freedom to behave irresponsibly. $40 to fill the tank? No problemo. Just pull out the plastic again. Smog makes sunsets look better anyhow - right? If OPEC tightens the screws again, or I get in over my head, I'll just let the bankruptcy court tell my creditors where to go, and then start the whole process all over again. "You may have pointed out already, or someone has, that SUVs and light trucks, represent 50 percent of the vehicles that sold last year." Thank you for making my point better than I could ever have done. "Now living where we do tell me how you expect to change the american buying habits?" It begins with better education . It includes, if necessary, ostracizing those stubborn recalcitrants who refuse to get the message that free markets depend for their very existence on some minimal degree of responsible decision-making on the part of consumers. It ends, if large enough numbers of people continue to flagrantly disregard what should be obvious, with government-mandated incremental pricing for most resource-based commodities. Prices will no longer rise linearly with the amount you want, but rather rise exponentially. You want a McMansion or Escalade or 80' Cigarette boat? Go right ahead. Use ten times more gasoline or electricity or heating oil than your neighbor, pay 100 times as much. If you don't like that differential, change your behavior. If you refuse to change your wastrel ways, pay the piper. "Maybe I have been around long enough to know that we as a society aren't willing to give up what we can afford as long as we can afford it." The ominous writing on the wall is plainly visible, but apparently only to those who're willing to open their eyes and exercise a little self-restraint. Unfortunately, a not-so-distant future of real deprivation (or draconian restrictions on freedom, or both) will be brought on much faster - for all of us - by the thoughtless, selfish, ego-stroking excesses of those who cannot be persuaded to voluntarily moderate their wasteful ways. Escalades, Expeditions, H2 Hummers and Suburbans (and S-Class Mercedes and other over-5,000-pound gargantuan gashogs), being bought maily for daily commutes by millions of faddish lemmings, simply happen to be the to be the clearest evidence of a grotesque, unsustainable binge. It's time to go on the wagon. - jack Those of us who |
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Bob suggests, "Why not just import the dual-range tranny, through some 3rd party?" I'd think it would be pretty expensive on a onsies-twosies basis. Plus, somebody with expertise needs to discover whether it'll install onto the U.S. versions, and what peripheral components need to be replaced. Not an easy thing for any individual owner, but perhaps do-able by a Subaru specialty shop someplace. - jack |
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because the dual range Subaru tranny does not have a separate transfer case, as we know it. It's all in the main tranny, with no add-ons. I would think that's simpler and easier than to develop, engineer and manufacture a separate transfer case to add to the existing transmission. If you're talking about an automatic, then that's what you would have to do, as Subaru only offers the dual range tranny in a 5-speed manual. Bob |
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Whoa, guys, go drive an XT. I drove one yesterday, and then a Saturn V6 back-to-back. I was actually looking for a Redline, but the dealer said they won't be here until next spring. The regular Forester outran a V6 XTerra and V6 Grand Vitara. V6 Santa Fe, too. Check C&D's last cute-ute test. The XT will outrun the Pathfinder easily. Torque is about the same, but you've got about half a ton less mass to haul in the Subie. In fact I'd say the XT was as quick as the Altima 3.5 SE 5 speed I drove a while ago. The Vue felt downright sloth-like after the Forester, and yes it was the V6. Noisier and less smooth, too. The XT that fast. Felt like maybe 0-60 in the 6s. Low 6s. If Subaru puts the premium package option on a 5 speed, I'm buying one. And BTW, the no-haggle price with a few options was just $23.9k, freight included. -juice |
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Once again, where would that leave your dream car, the Rs6? Nice idealism by the way but in reality who decides what is wasteful? I did like the statement,: "It begins with better education . It includes, if necessary, ostracizing those stubborn recalcitrants who refuse to get the message that free markets depend for their very existence on some minimal degree of responsible decision-making on the part of consumers." I just tried to ask myself when the last time I saw the minority ostracizing the majority? I can't remember the last time the majority voted for someone that promised to tax, punish or ostracize them. Maybe I just happen to believe that long before they run out of oil they will develop another fuel source. I don't live that far from San Onofre power plant and I do believe their fuel source used to produce electricity has a useful half life of several hundreds of thousands of years. Not that I want the fuel source under my hood. I am not sure how that relates to wagons verses SUVs however? Credit cards, large families, bankrupcy? Is there a reason to assume that more SUV drivers are facing bankruptcy than wagon drivers? Will both our fuel usage and fiscal responsibility improve if we all decided to switch to wagons? Once the vehicle police re-educate us where and who will draw the line? Someone from the Hybrid forum maybe. They could assess our needs at nothing more than a Prius. I am sure they would be as equally passionate about what they felt was a responsible need. I hear your frustration but somehow it seems misdirected. The conditions of our society make it possible for us to strive for more. As long as those conditions stay the same then people will look at their wants and see what they can afford. Will some go bankrupt? Yes I am sure they will. Many large corporations with whole staffs of CPAs have gone bankrupt even with the best of advice. Do we make bad decisions on what we drive? Yes again but that is what makes this society so much more fun than so many others, we are free to make our own mistakes. for now at least I don't see the SUV drivers being ostracized by the wagon or Hybrid drivers. after all even if they were, who would notice? |
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Boaz47 replies, "Once again, where would that leave your dream car, the Rs6?" It leaves it exactly where it belongs - as a dream, not a reality. I could readily afford to buy an RS6 today, but I don't. Other, far less costly vehicles (like the practical, multi-talented Forester XT I'll bring home next week) meet all of my transportation requirements without consuming so much fuel and without requiring me to invest so large a sum in a mere car, even if it is a magnificent one. "Maybe I just happen to believe that long before they run out of oil they will develop another fuel source." Well, then, you and I share an abiding faith in the ability of human ingenuity and technology to find solutions to major problems - but who knows how long that will take, and how much oil will remain? Oil has value and usefulness to all of us far beyond merely burning it for energy: Fertilizers, chemicals, plastics, pharmaceuticals, lubricants - the list goes on. What we burn, we cannot use - now or ever - for any of these other competing uses. Why doesn't it make sense for each of us to burn as little as necessary to get our basic energy needs met, and conserve more of this precious, non-renewable resource for all of these other important uses and others we haven't even yet discovered? And if that doesn't resonate with you, why doesn't it make sense for more people to carefully and deliberately choose NOT the largest, heaviest vehicle they can afford, but rather the most fuel-efficient vehicle that can still readily meet all of their actual transportation requirements? I am not suggesting that every single purchase of every gas-guzzling, CAFE-exempt SUV is unwarranted by that particular buyer's actual, demonstrable transportation requirements - but it seems to me that an awfully lot of them are. "I wouldn't be caught dead in a (take your choice: hatchback, minivan, wagon - practical vehicles all), so instead I'll go with the fad and go in hock to buy a 6- or 7,000 pound Expedition for my family of 3 or 4 that will never tow anything big and will never venture farther off-road than the nearest gas pump." These are the people who are going to wreck things for all of us, and you know as well as I do that there are plenty of them. Buying what you want with zero concern for adverse social impactson others, merely because you can or because your neighbor just did, is no excuse for buying more than you actually, reasonably need. - jack |
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| that this has become a second anti-SUV thread, and they are right. Someday (or never) the automakers will step up and admit that all the crossovers currently regulated as SUVs are just raised wagons, and make them comply with the regulations for cars, as appropriate. Until then, I thought this one was more about the relative practical advantages and disadvantages between the two? | |
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You or I make that kind of decission every day. Not only in our personal life but our business life. Other people will as well. I am sure some people, many in my sons generation, that would rather die than buy a mini van, and they see some reason to buy a SUV. But even SUVs are coming around and aren't the gas hogs of old. Of the 4,214,598 SUVs sold in 2002, 1,240,132 were crossovers. Most of those crossovers were the smaller ones. Give people credit for assesing needs but just realize that fads take time to change. I will go out on a limb here a bit and contend that SUVs are a prertty small part of the fuel problem. I think the move away from the econo box towards the V-6 Accords and Camrys have more to do with it. While the New SUVs are getting better fuel mileage than the old ones did small cars have stayed stagnate in fuel mileage. Yes they are getting more power for the small cars but they are getting that bigger engine and more power with the same fuel mileage as the old small car, in some cases slightly less. If trucks and SUVs are 50 percent and we know that while they tend not to meet CAFE they are getting better what about the other 50 percent? Not too long ago they told us there was very little if any oil to be found. The estimated oil reserves was based on that belief. After the last gulf war we were told that Iraq's methods of extracting oil were so antiquated that they weeren't even reaching 33 percent of their oil reserves. Last time I looked that makes 66 percent more oil even in that one reagon. I wonder about Iran. Now the news tell us they may have found Oil in Australlia. So we do not know how long that oil supply will last. So we may have time for people to latch on to some other vehicle as being cool? Maybe even wagons. At the same time we are working on clean burning diesel which would make the truck based SUVs meet or exceed CAFE even today. I just don't think it is a bad as people think. |
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| It should be about SUV verses wagons. There are obvious advantages and disadvantages for both. Wagons merge a bit with hatches and SUVs merge a bit with crossovers and tall wagons. Somehow however the very idea or use of the word SUV is like a red flag in front of a bull. In many cases large SUVs at one time would have been called Club wagons and it you took out the windows they would have been panel trucks. I have no problem with calling them whatever they want. I have a Pt that some call a Sedan, some call a wagon and it can even be called a truck. Do I care? Nope, it is a PT. In my case it took the PT and a truck to replace the old SUV. Not a problem everyone has I know. But the truck can sit for a week and the PT can be a daily driver. It also must have lowered Shell's stock market share when I switched. If the All road is a wagon then there are some wagon options out there. The problem is with most wagons they fall short of meeting the desires of so many consumers. While many of the SUVs may be over kill many of the wagons, unless we redefine wagons, fall short of peoples expectation. Because of that failure explorer sells about 400,000 units a year. | |
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