I guess I need to inform my family that I don’t want them to surprise me with a shiny new car in the driveway for Christmas — you know, like those commercials where a grinning husband surprises his oblivious wife, who apparently makes no contribution to family economic decisions, with a monster SUV, which always has a bright red bow on top. I think those commercials are clear evidence that some huge purchases are not made rationally, but as status symbols or weird nuptial gifts.
Anyway, I don’t want a new car now or any time in the foreseeable future, and I definitely don’t want a “popular” vehicle, the kind of monster machine that everyone seems to be buying and driving on the roads around me. There’s an ongoing idiotic trend that can only end when everyone is driving a tank.
Like a disease, car bloat is spreading. The United States is patient zero: 4 out of 5 new cars in the U.S. are now SUVs or pickups, a sharp increase from a few decades ago. Now, oversized cars are becoming almost as common in Berlin and Beijing as they are in Baltimore. SUVs alone comprised nearly half of car sales worldwide in 2023, up from 20 percent 15 years ago. The global ascent of giant cars is an ominous trend for climate change, as well as for road safety in the rich and developing worlds alike.
I use the term “car bloat” to describe the confluence of two trends that have transformed the U.S. automotive market. First, SUVs and pickups have supplanted standard sedans and station wagons, both of which the Big Three carmakers no longer offer to American consumers. Second, existing car models have steadily expanded in weight and size. The bestselling F-150 pickup, for instance, added 800 pounds, 7 inches of height, and 15 inches of length between 1991 and 2023.
Two reasons are given for this annoying and dangerous trend: consumers want high status cars, and manufacturers want to sell high profit machines.
Some of this growth is due to shifting customer demand, particularly in countries like China, where SUVs are “perceived as symbols of wealth and status.” But consumer preferences explain only part of the story.
“Automakers have a fair bit of culpability,” said Colin McKerracher, an Oslo-based analyst at BloombergNEF who focuses on the transport sector. “They’ve spent much of the last decade advertising bigger cars, and that’s because they make significantly higher profit margins on their SUVs and pickups than they do on sedans. They’ve told a story—‘Oh, this is what customers are asking us to build’—but it’s quite a coincidence that the models customers want make a higher margin.”
Yeah, people make bad decisions and corporations make evil ones. But how to end it? I think there’s one answer: regulation and taxation. Deflate the status seeking by making it clear that buying a giant car is stupid — we can see that already with the cybertruck, which is an object of mockery when they show up on the road (but people still buy them, because people are not rational) — and taxation can reduce the incentives to buy one.
After being caught flat-footed, some European governments are now moving to restrain car bloat through taxation. Norway and France, for instance, impose vehicle purchase charges that scale with weight and emissions, adding the equivalent of thousands of dollars to the price of an oversized car. These fees can have a major impact: In Norway, a 2023 rule applying weight-based fees to the biggest electric cars caused sales of the Hongqi, a gargantuan Chinese SUV, to collapse.
McKerracher applauds such moves. “Fuel economy rules are really, really important,” he said. “You need governments to regulate average fuel economy and push automakers, because they won’t improve on their own.” (Note to Americans: Project 2025, the de facto playbook of the Trump administration, calls for relaxing fuel economy rules that President Joe Biden has strengthened.)
Of course the Republicans will wreck everything, because they’re idiots. The article also mentions that the US is scaling emission standards to the size of the truck, making bloated cars easier to meet the standards.
Also, let’s kill those car commercials that make big fast cars look sexy and adventurous, just like we banned cigarette commercials. Not that that can happen with the incoming administration.
I want a big Canyonero! Because I have seen it on TV. And if I get road rage I can crush other cars.
You haven’t lived until you’ve tried to pilot a fucking huge Lexus hire car into the car park in front of a British Domino’s pizza franchise. Christ almighty.
When I first landed in the UK, I drove a Volvo estate car — an XC70 or some such — from London to Canterbury, and felt immediately that the thing was too damned wide for British roads. That was twenty years ago, and it’s only gotten worse. Fucking automobile makers.
Motorcycle & sidecar anyone?
Did you know that Jaguar started out as ‘Swallow Sidecars’ and their first cars used the ‘SS’ brand until it was tainted?
And the people with the Chevy 2500 with a 400hp hemi, jacked up on stilts and running 40″ mud tires on the highway at 90 mph are the first ones to complain about high gas prices. I gave up my motorcycle because of these assholes.
I have a modest SUV (Honda Passport) out of the necessity to occasionally haul big things, but I barely drive it out of those activities. I got myself a “fun” car (Mazda Miata) with the proceeds from selling my motorcycle. The Mazda gets driven much more, save for the winter, because well, it’s fun to drive and also gets 30-40mpg compared to the Honda’s 15-25. I’m always a little sad with the first snowfall because that means the Mazda gets garaged until it all melts and the rain washes away the salt. Until then it sits cocooned in the garage.
The whole trend is bewildering to me, especially the trucks with short beds. They get the same crappy mileage as a truck with a full-sized bed – so why not have that extra capacity to haul things? But see… I actually live on a farm and raise livestock etc. Our truck is normally parked, but when we need to haul livestock, or hay etc, we have a full-sized bed to do it with. I don’t understand driving one of these things all the time on purpose in traffic, either. The suspension is set up for heavy loads, not frail human cargo.
I used to drive a large V8 sedan because I covered long highway distances and carried a lot of gear on weekends away. Now I drive my country’s most popular car. It is a small city tourer. Not the smallest one around but it is more than adequate for my needs. Admittedly I did get the luxury version with leather seats and collision avoidance and a 1.6 litre engine instead of the 1.3 litre in the base model. I can afford it, its cheaper to run, covers more than 90% of my driving needs and easily keeps up with the Leadfoot Larrys who can only drive so fast on the city’s motorways. I occasionally use the very efficient train service when I don’t want the hassle of finding parking and my destination is close to a station. . really long distance trips are either done with my son’s family in his necessarily larger car or I hire a larger vehicle. Fortunately the obesity epidemic hasn’t hit cars over here and there are very few steroid infused SUVs. The reason is the government imposes a weight tax on vehicles and a surcharge on vehicles with larger engines. Of course such librul communistic practices would never be allowed in your country.
Yeah, people make bad decisions and corporations make evil ones. But how to end it? I think there’s one answer: regulation and taxation.
Also, let’s kill those car commercials that make big fast cars look sexy and adventurous, just like we banned cigarette commercials.
Your logic makes perfect sense, but Americans no longer use logic to make important decisions. The Super Ego has taken over Americans decision making. First, “people make bad decisions.” This is getting worse every year and there is no end game at the moment. Plus, nothing is going to stop the capitalism nuts from making a profit on people’s bad decisions. Banning sexy SUV and truck commercials will not even be a consideration for the next four years. We can just compound that issue.
I had a Toyota Corolla, a Hyundai Elantra, a Honda Fit and a Ford Fiesta as my last four cars. At retirement I bought a small luxury SUV, Audi Q3. It was a retirement present. The upgrade had made me wish I did it earlier.
The Elantra was a five-speed manual. Do they even make them anymore? Loved the Corolla. My back told me it had to go, it was a two door and couldn’t get my new daughter’s child seat into the back seat. The Fit was awesome, the back seats folded perfectly flat and allowed for me to take my German Shepard everywhere, camping, local parks and such. Also, the damn thing held almost as much cargo as my wife’s Mercury Mountaineer. My wife always had a second larger vehicle for hauling things. The Fiesta had a great drive feel, handled well and had decent pickup for a small car, but it had the worst visibility of any vehicles I ever drove.
It is facts like this that make me very happy not having owned anything with 4 wheels since 1991 and that the city I wereI i live has a great public transport system.
“There’s an ongoing idiotic trend that can only end when everyone is driving a tank.”
or coal fired steam traction engines?
Working from home is a huge help. I buy fuel less than once a month (for my 2017 Dodge Grand Caravan with the backseat TV screen) and only go out for groceries and doctor appointments. I also figure the less I’m on the road, the less chance anyone will crash into me.
I have to conclude that my oldest son, Alaric, is the smartest member of the family, since he never bothered to get a driver’s license, never learned to drive, and has never owned a car.
And where did the perception that SUVs are symbols of wealth and status come from? Is it just one of those weird cultural things that just seems to appear from nowhere? Or is it in fact the result of vast sums of money spent over a period of decades with the express intention of manufacturing exactly that perception?
The first really effective step in stopping people smoking was restricting cigarette advertising.
My opinion for 20+ years is that two of the worst inventions of the 20th century were executable content, and the SUV.
@ ^ AstroLad : Does Fauxnews cont as an ïnvention” here?
Ditto Murchoch media and its approach to reality and science genrally?
Ditto Musk’s purchased X which sadly isn’t “ëx” just yet at all?
Or is it?
X-Twittier sure is dyin’ fast.
I’ve never owned or driven a car, but if I had, it would’ve been the BMW Isetta.
Alternatively, key any SUV you can, andor slash the tyres.
I drive a Kia EV6 GT-Line RWD. According to the NTSB it’s an SUV, but it’s a 4-door hatchback. I charge it up off my solar roof most of the time. It’s comfortable, stylish, fast, and totally Jetsons. Love that car.
congrats alaric. y igualmente, i never had a license either. but the most noteworthy thing to me here is the chinese selling the norwegian an suv called “honkey.”
A lot of us don’t like/can’t afford those fat cars:
FTR, I drive a small 29-y.o. pickup – for which it has become ever more difficult to find replacement parts.
Best ever name for an SUV: the Mitsubishi Pajero. The Japanese apparently didn’t know that ‘pajero’ is Spanish slang for ‘wanker’. Or maybe they did.
The american automakers push large gas guzzling behemoths at people because that gets them the most money/profit and helps big oil to earn bigger profits, too.
The drooling idiot magats in this country are all too happy to literally ‘buy into’ that and get a huge wasteful vehicle that will survive the ‘destruction derby’ that is traffic here.
I’d be happy with a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_KR200 for most of my driving. But, the huge high snout of the new cars means that they wouldn’t see mine until it was a hood ornament after they hit me.
This topic is just one more of many recent reinforcements of our assessment that we are entering (yes, you guessed it) The New Dark Ages
People, I admonish you: Stay Safe, Stay Rational, Stay Honest and be a Caring person who does what they can to thwart the ever destruction of the corporations, the rtwingnuts and the xtian terrorists.
Oh, for those of you that are superstitious, today is Friday the 13th.
For those of you that are sane and rational, today is still Friday the 13th.
Sometimes I’ve just got to (en)lighten the mood.
I’m still driving a Volvo V70 estate (station wagon) bought about fifteen years ago second hand. It has leather seats and all the bells and whistles available when it was new in 2002. We got it because it fits two large dogs in the back and we had two German Shepherds, also the leather seats don’t hold the smell of wet dog the way fabric ones do even if the dogs are in the boot. It will probably have to be replaced soon because the microchips are starting to go and the only source now are other V70 estates. The reverse lights are iffy at the moment, it won’t automatically unlock the back doors, and it won’t lock the rear hatch at all. But that’s better than the time the break lights stopped working and I got stopped by the police, they thought I wasn’t insured because their computer was acting up, a quick call home solved that with a photo of the relevant document so yay for mobile phones. The car tells me it does 58mpg, which seems unlikely, but I haven’t bothered to check what mileage it’s actually doing.
The only reason I drive an SUV is because my father gave it to me after my beater Hyundai Accent died at the same time he was buying a new Highlander. I’d get rid of it instantly if it meant I could drive a less-gas-guzzling sedan, but that isn’t in the financial card for me… ever.
This really just reminds me of two things that have become increasing obvious, though they have been around a while:
– media companies are the biggest threat to democracy – when money drives what is shown rather than accuracy, we get problems. Opinion being passed off as news is insane
– the ability of people to recognize truth in the blizzard of BS is getting worse, and the amount of garbage is increasing, but people think they are able to determine truth with great confidence, despite contrary evidence
– democracy has failed to contain capitalism because money affects both public sentiment and funding for political parties too much. Without adequate reforms, kleptocracy is the destination.
Car bloat is just a symptom of the problem
You really can’t buy anything other than an SUV or big car these days. Car manufacturers are still making small cars but they don’t get released in the US – we get the Honda Prelude SUV but not the Honda e commuter car, Volkswagen ID.4 but not ID.3.
I was looking to replace my aging Prius, but there’s such a dearth of small commuter cars that I just gave up. And the federal regulations and tariffs make it simply uneconomical to import anything yourself – you’d need to handle all of the safety and emissions testing requirements yourself.
Before our minivan phase we’d driven a Ford Fiesta, a VW Polo, a Dodge Colt, and a Ford Escort so when we recently bought a used Hyundai Kona EV it didn’t seem small to us… but it’s absolutely tiny compared to nearly everything else on the road. Sigh.
Not at the federal level, but when California tightens emissions standards, automakers sit up and take notice. They could also surtax sales (in California) of any vehicle being advertised (anywhere) in a problematic way.
I think we need to bring back the radical subcompact muscle car. Maybe not this batshit though:
Or maybe that batshit because Mad Max conditions are right around the corner. The Youtube algorithm is rocking my world with crazy car videos.
I did get a bit spooked by some videos discussing the downsides of the CVT in my small crossover SUV. I love the higher off the road stature of the HR-V than my previous Civic and the gas mileage is good, but CVTs can fail expensively. Why couldn’t the algorithm have told me that 8 months ago.
Y’all still drive tanks?
How the heck do you transport your space shuttle to the cottage on the weekend? I can’t imagine driving around in anything smaller than a crawler-transporter. Those tiny little main battle tanks would just get crushed like a bug in a crash.
This is a tank compared to the Shelbyfied Dodge Omni, but if we’re shifting to oversized SUVs I won’t feel too guilty with this supercar coffin:
I have a different preference for excess than the jacked up megatruck coal rolling set. 71 Panteras are stark. No fancy Lambo or Rari nonsense. Plus a basic Ford V-8. Easier to service.
And I mean coffin. A car one could have fun dying in. If I got one there’s no doubt what band I would be jamming to if I could hear them over the frickin’ V-8 roaring right behind my head.
Hemidactylus, that’s absolutely puny power output by today’s standards.
It’s only a coffin because of the primitive frame and engine and weight distribution and brakes and transmission and steering.
My mate has a stage 2 Audi TT RS, and likes to fang.
Lotsa G-forces, but rides flat as a tack.
(Makes a mockery of 70s tech, everything from the traction control to the transmission to the suspension to the braking. No comparison at all, really)
—
I asked my AI friend:
“Stage 2 Audi TT RS
Engine: 2.5-liter TFSI inline-5 turbocharged engine
Horsepower: Up to 409 HP (91 Octane)
Torque: Up to 455 lb-ft (91 Octane)
Top Speed: Approximately 174 mph (280 km/h)
0-60 mph: Around 4.2 seconds
De Tomaso Pantera
Engine: 5.8-liter Ford Cleveland V8 engine
Horsepower: 296 HP
Torque: 332 lb-ft
Top Speed: Approximately 174 mph (280 km/h)
0-60 mph: Around 5.5 seconds
Comparison
Horsepower: The Stage 2 Audi TT RS has significantly more horsepower compared to the Pantera.
Torque: The TT RS also offers more torque, providing better acceleration.
Engine Type: The TT RS uses a turbocharged inline-5 engine, while the Pantera has a naturally aspirated V8 engine.
Performance: Both cars have similar top speeds, but the TT RS accelerates faster due to its higher power and torque.
The Stage 2 Audi TT RS offers modern engineering and performance enhancements, while the De Tomaso Pantera provides a classic, raw driving experience with its powerful V8 engine.”
[BTW, “Highway Star” or “Space Truckin'” or “I’m in Love with My Car”? Another?]
[Oh, and a great sound system. No worries about hearing it over the engine/tyre/wind noise, because, well… modern]
John Morales
If you actually watched and paid close attention to the video, which of course you didn’t, this particular 71 Pantera has a modded 351 Windsor (oh Canada!) not a Cleveland and is at around 600 hp. So yeah. Jay Leno warned aspiring owners to use the Pantera clubs to locate one with the dealer applied upgrades that made them less not ready for prime time. If I were to get an Audi I’d rather a heavily modded JDM Skyline or tricked out Honda, Mazda, Mitsubishi or whatever.
Or RX-7 rotary farter!