Pretty funny article on SUVs (or a review of a book about SUVs, more specifically)here.

According to market research conducted by the country’s leading automakers, Bradsher reports, SUV buyers tend to be “insecure and vain. They are frequently nervous about their marriages and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence in their driving skills. Above all, they are apt to be self-centered and self-absorbed, with little interest in their neighbors and communities. They are more restless, more sybaritic, and less social than most Americans are. They tend to like fine restaurants a lot more than off-road driving, seldom go to church and have limited interest in doing volunteer work to help others.”

He says, too, that SUV drivers generally don’t care about anyone else’s kids but their own, are very concerned with how other people see them rather than with what’s practical, and they tend to want to control or have control over the people around them. David Bostwick, Chrysler’s market research director, tells Bradsher, “If you have a sport utility, you can have the smoked windows, put the children in the back and pretend you’re still single.”

I’ve never really understood the huge SUVs in the city thing. Unless you’re some incredibly rich athelete, wouldn’t you care about the extra cost and lack of extra benefits that an SUV brings? Need cargo space? Get a van. It has to be about image, and this book seems to nail it. Or it could be a “fuck off” to liberals. That’s always possible. And isn’t this supporting terrorism anyway?