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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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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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the same folks who would "die rather than drive a mini van" would chew off their leg , at least, to avoid driving a station wagon...they would let their wives or nannies drive it. yeah, its about image and ego and millions of us get deeper into VISA and MasterCard every day on that track. now that it seems the forseter XT is getting lower than expected fuel efficiency, im gonna revist the normally aspirated forester and look again at the mazda 6 wagon that is supposed to be coming, or open the wallet wide and get a new sienna :24 mpg, seven seats and room for a 4x 8 sheet of plywood in back! okay, ill be giving up vroooom and handling for utility, but i wont be giving my neighbor's kid asthma attacks with the 8 mpg emmisions a 6000 lb SUV creates in dense city traffic, and i wont paralyze my neighbors wife in a rear end collision if i have an MI at the wheel at 35 mph. the tahoe is the latest "it" set of wheels for the drug-money urban noveau riche. dont tell me those 'rocks" are all that heavy! ranting against the machine... Mark |
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boaz47 writes, "Of the 4,214,598 SUVs sold in 2002, 1,240,132 were crossovers. Most of those crossovers were the smaller ones." Just to be very clear, my rants against SUVs have never been directed at any weighing under 4,000 pounds. Those in the 4,000 to 5,000 pound category are beginning to get problematic UNLESS the owner has the actual need to tow substantial loads and/or or carry a lot of people regularly. It's the SUVs weighing more than 5,000 pounds (and cars weighing more than 4,000, for that matter) which, IMO, ought to come under stingent government regulation or be subject to extreme gas-guzzler taxes. Not necessarily to eliminate them altogether, but to ensure that nobody is buying them who cannot strongly justify their size, weight, fuel consumption, air pollution, and threat to everyone else using the roads. - jb |
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I find those who argue against the large SUV's REALLY overstate the THREAT aspect. There is no data that confirms this at all. People will use stats regarding SUVs in a very slanted manner. When in fact if you look at the stats for all SUVs and cars, crash statistics show that there is no major difference in them. Owners of large SUVs already pay gas taxes when they buy the SUV at the dealership, plus they pay at the pump every time they fill up. So the argument that they should pay MORE is not valid, they already do. Now should people actually be penalized for buying whatever they want? Also, whenever someone brings up the point about sports cars that are way beyond any ones requirements and are often less practical than SUVs, the anti SUV crow never addresses that issue. Why are they not targeting speedsters on the road? |
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one reason is it is easier to pick or popular targets. If indeed accidents were a driving force in the argument against SUVs wouldn't a simple solution be to tax drivers under 25 at a much higher rate than drivers over 25? I agree it is a dumb idea but aren't we all aware that percentage wise that group causes more accidents then their percentages should indicate? Some might say they already pay more in insurance so they are charged more. Sure they are and so are SUV drivers at the pump and in some states as registration fees. Will we get the 5000 lbs plus vehicles off the road? I have a fleet of 12 the lightest being 6500 pounds. Ask any one of my drivers why your neighbors wife was slammed into and smashed like a grape and more than likely they will tell you she cut over in front of them to hit the off ramp to the mall in her Toyonda civirolla peewee 5 speed. Here is what I will grant the pro wagon get no more than you can prove you need people. If a SUV does get into an accident with a micro car the SUV wins, every time. last night on 60 minutes or one of those shows it demonstrated how much of a death trap the Honda Element was when struck by a full sized SUV truck type vehicle. The 1998 NHTSA study said pretty much the same thing. By themselves or against each other large vehicles were no safer and sometimes less safe than a smaller vehicle. However SUV to car and the SUV was the vehicle with the survivor. However it might be nice to know that the Forester acquitted itself pretty well. The suggested that the people in the Forester would more than likely survive a 35 mile an hour accident with a SUV. Score one for Subaru. None of this has much to do with what a person should buy or will buy. It still comes down to what they want and if they are thinking of themselves or someone else. Most people don't spend a whole lot of time thinking about someone else when they are looking for a vehicle. So when looking for a wagon verses a SUV they picture themselves in each vehicle and see what they like best. To date a great number have decided they like the outdoors look of a SUV. Some are beginning to turn towards the crossovers because they can get the seating position, the look, and a bit better fuel mileage. Still it isn't going to happen over night and those big guys will always be with us. Unless you ban recreational sports. Wagons just have to find a way to get in on the game. |
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