I wonder how many anti-SUV people have families. Would you be so cavalier about disdaining the mini-van of the 1984-1995 or the station wagon of the 1958-1982 period which are more clearly associated with their designed purpose - hauling families around?

And make no doubt about it, the SUV on the truck chassis designed to keep all those vehicles exempt from CAFE calculations, is the "new" station wagon.

If you want to get rid of SUV's you better lower CAFE standards and bring back the bigger 17-20 mpg 6 person passenger cars.

Put simply - no family buys a car in which they have to leave some of their children behind when visiting grandma.

The Excursions, Yukons, Suburbans etc all have 3 rows of seats just like the family station wagon of 1958-1982 or the minivans of 1984-1995. That's almost their SOLE appeal. Manufacturers and advertising folks had to work hard year after year, to convince families they weren't driving a "truck" - but the truth is they were.

GM and Ford stopped making most of the big station wagons in 1987 and had already shifted folks into "mini-vans." Chrysler shut down their big wagons in 1978 before the bailout. The 6 passenger Caprice/Impala/Roadmaster/Fleetwood chassis was shut down in 1997. So we now have about TEN years of family folks FORCED into SUVs. Look at the raising CAFE standards for each year to understand WHY this happened - then thank the self-same elitist environmentalists sans family.

Almost no one buys a large SUV that doesn't have family to haul around.

So your elitist liberal, anti-family take is duly noted and recorded.

And now, hopefully, clarified for everyone else.

;-)