Quotes of the Day
The men standing in front of the pool hall would look up and see the big black crate ghost down the street at forty, and one of them would spit on the concrete and say, "The bastard, he reckins he's somebody," and wish that he was in a big black car, as big as a hearse and the springs soft as mamma's breast and the engine breathing without a rustle.
Robert Penn Warren wrote those words about a Cadillac, in a novel set in the 1930s. Back then a Caddy was what you drove to announce that you had power, which is why people desired them even as they loathed their owners. Today another automobile is inspiring such passions. As sport-utility-vehicle owner Amy Dickie says, "The SUV is the Cadillac of the new millennium." Dickie is 30, brokers insurance in Atlanta and owns a Lexus RX 300. Ads hint the thing could haul a yak carcass across Tibetan grasslands; though it's one of the smaller SUVs, it can tow up to 3,500 lbs. But Dickie uses it to drive, by herself, three miles each way to the office. She also occasionally lugs scuba gear in it, but mostly she likes its style. Which makes her much like millions of other Americans who have bought the big vehicles—drivers now surprised to find themselves labeled tools of terrorists in the brawl over SUVs.
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
In the past few weeks, what started in the '90s as a quiet debate among car enthusiasts and greens has become, as former Nissan design chief Jerry Hirshberg says with a sigh, "a religious war." On one side are devout environmentalists and icky Hollywood types as well as reputable safety experts who say SUVs can be death machines. A lefty group called the Detroit Project has produced slick ads charging that because SUVs use so much gas, and because some of the crude oil for that gas comes from the Middle East, and because some oil-rich princes have funded Islamic extremists, SUV owners are supporting terrorists. (Got it?) Some of the anti-SUV people take their mischief very seriously: on New Year's Day, three Fords were set ablaze at a dealership north of Pittsburgh, Pa. There have been at least seven such attacks since 2001.
On the other side are champions of the land barge. These assorted auto lobbyists, free-market enthusiasts and moms on car-pool duty say there's nothing wrong with roominess, four-wheel drive and a seat high enough to give you a look at the world. Owing to their Establishment orientation, SUV partisans aren't burning anything (except gas); their defense is mostly carried out in sedate Op-Eds. After enduring months of attacks, pro-SUV forces cheered last month when it was disclosed that the Bush Administration wants to increase a tax break allowing small businesses to deduct much of the price of the heaviest SUVs from their taxes—even when those SUVs won't be hauling anything more than the boss and his morning Starbucks.
At first blush, then, the SUV war looks like a fight between two groups of élites—the overeducated vs. the overcompensated, the Whole Foods crowd vs. the Outback Steakhouse crowd, New York Times people vs. Wall Street Journal people. Keith Bradsher, a Times reporter, wrote High and Mighty, a book published in September that calls SUVs "the world's most dangerous vehicles." Recently columnist David Brooks attacked Bradsher in the Journal for his "broad generalizations about people's souls on the basis of what car they drive."
Broad generalizations are indeed skidding wildly through this debate. First of all, many critics fail to note that not all SUVs are created equal. Today's fastest-selling SUVs are those like Dickie's RX 300, a so-called crossover SUV, or CUV. Whereas traditional SUVs are built on truck frames, many crossovers are essentially tall cars that get O.K. gas mileage. While sales of the largest SUVs dropped 2.4% last year, the crossover market grew roughly 30%.
At the same time, it's wrong to think shifting consumer tastes have rid the roads of gas-sucking, top-heavy SUVs . Though total passenger-vehicle sales fell 1.9% in 2002, SUV sales rose 6.9%, to nearly 4 million—more than ever—and only 1 million of those were the crossovers. The rest were traditional SUV, which will pack the roads for years. And while SUV sales slipped 3% last month, the car companies are responding with rebates as high as $4,500 for hefty SUVs like the Dodge Durango. Car analysts at J.D. Power are predicting that by year's end, SUV sales will have posted yet another increase. At the luxury end, the jump could be significant: the hottest SUV on the market now isn't one of those crossover hobbits but the Hummer H2, a three-ton beast with the attitude and fuel efficiency of a battleship. The H2 has led the luxury-utility segment in sales since last summer; many dealers have months-long waiting lists of drivers eager to pay an average of $53,000 for them.
It's of course ridiculous to accuse even H2 buyers of lending support to terrorists—just as it would be silly to call them patriots because their big-ticket purchases help the economy. But the SUV boom does raise serious questions that affect everyone who owns an SUV or drives near them: Are these vehicles safe? How much are they fouling the air? Are they making us more dependent on oil pumped in places where people burn U.S. flags before breakfast? While no one should demonize SUV, is it fair for the government to subsidize them with tax breaks and regulatory loopholes?
Most americans—55% of those surveyed in a recent TIME/CNN poll—believe SUVs are safer than cars because of their sheer size. But that's not necessarily true. In 2001 the most recent year for which the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has figures, there were 162 deaths per million SUVs (including crossovers) and 157 deaths per million cars—meaning the death rate for SUVs was slightly higher. Why? There are several reasons, but in blunt comments last month, Dr. Jeffrey Runge, the NHTSA administrator, highlighted the most important: partly because of their high center of gravity—a feature drivers love—SUVs are prone to tip over. Rollovers account for more than half of SUV fatalities, Runge said.
George W. Bush—whose party received more than $10 million from the auto industry during the 2002 election cycle—appointed Runge, so you know he's not padding around NHTSA's headquarters in hemp sandals. And yet during a Q&A last month at an auto conference in Dearborn, Mich., he said, "I wouldn't buy my kid a two-star rollover vehicle if it was the last one on earth." According to NHTSA's website, 22 SUVs in the current model year have a rollover-resistance rating of two stars out of five, including the Jeep Grand Cherokee and the Cadillac Escalade EXT. (Chevrolet Blazer two-wheel-drive models get just one star.) "People, when they choose to buy a vehicle, they might go sit in it and say, 'Gee, I feel safe,'" Runge continued. "But gut instinct ... isn't very good for buying a safe automobile." Runge is expected to testify on SUV safety at a Senate hearing next week.
His comments on rollovers infuriated auto executives: "We have thousands of employees who work on safety issues every day," says Jay Cooney, a GM spokesman. "They wouldn't put their own family or anybody's family in a vehicle they thought was unsafe." Auto lobbyists point out that NHTSA generates its rollover ratings simply by calculating the height of a vehicle's center of gravity in proportion to its width—how top-heavy it is, essentially—not by measuring its performance in the real world. (Which is true, though later this year NHTSA will begin using a more subtle ratings system.) SUV makers also emphasize that 76% of the 2,142 people killed in SUV rollover crashes in 2001 had not buckled up. "Safety is a shared responsibility," said a spokeswoman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.
But do buyers have the information they need to assume that responsibility? Bradsher documents other surprising SUV safety concerns. For instance, 2003 is the first year that SUVs must meet the same brake regulations as cars; many earlier SUVs that are still on the road have less-sophisticated brakes. What's more, by their nature, SUVs are heavy, which means they are harder to maneuver.
Nearly 4 out of 5 SUV owners said in a 2002 R.L. Polk & Co. survey that they value their SUVs for driving in harsh weather. But while four-wheel drive can help you blast through snow even as light rear-wheel-drive cars spin out, it won't help you stop on slick roads. Says Joe Orlando, spokesman for the New Jersey Turnpike Authority: "People think that if they are in a four-wheel drive, they can go through anything." Orlando, who owns two SUV, had to go on TV one recent snowy morning to ask SUV drivers to slow down. "We had a really high number of accidents that day, a lot of them involving SUVs ." A study by the Washington State traffic safety commission found that between 1993 and 2000, SUVs accounted for 9.1% of the vehicles involved in all fatal crashes; however, they were 16.6% of the vehicles involved in fatal crashes in icy and snowy conditions.
All the metal surrounding you in an SUV might help protect you in certain accidents, such as broadside collisions with a car. That's one reason SUVs generally have lower death rates than small cars. But that protection comes at a cost to the half of U.S. drivers who don't have trucks or SUVs . Because they are so much heavier and higher off the ground, SUVs can ride atop cars when they collide, crushing the smaller vehicles. Last week automakers and a safety group met in Washington to address this issue, known as "crash compatibility." It's a daunting problem: NHTSA research has shown that if a car rams another car on the driver side, the driver of the struck car is 6.6 times more likely to die as the driver of the torpedoing one. But if an SUV hits the car, call the undertaker: the driver of the car is 30 times more likely to be killed.
Many drivers intuit these odds, which is undoubtedly one reason for strong SUV sales. Says Abraxas Baker, 26, who manages a Dallas bar: "I have peace of mind knowing if I was in an accident, I'd have a better chance of walking away. Everyone in my family feels that way. We all drive one." It's hard not to see such attitudes as evidence that a highway arms race has begun. Asks Gregg Easterbrook in a recent New Republic piece on SUVs : "Can it be a coincidence that road rage started to become a national concern in the mid-1990s, just as these pharaonic contraptions began flooding the road" (Perhaps so, but Easterbrook hurts his argument when he suggests SUV drivers have "serious psychological problems.")
Consumer groups and auto executives may spar over the mixed safety profile of SUV, but there's less argument about the vehicles' environmental impact. It's simple math: SUVs are heavier than cars, so they take more gas to go the same distance. And burning more gas releases more garbage into the air. According to the liberal Union of Concerned Scientists, 2001-model SUV, pickups and minivans emitted 2.4 times more smog-forming nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons than cars and 1.4 times more tailpipe carbon dioxide (a global-warming gas) than cars. The Natural Resources Defense Council says Americans use 5 billion more gallons of gas a year than they would if the balance between cars and light trucks were the same as in 1975.
It's not only traditional liberals who are fretting about all this gas consumption and pollution. Even some Evangelical Christians have joined the anti-suv chorus. A group called the Evangelical Environmental Network, based in Wynnewood, Pa., has produced TV ads with a provocative tag line: "If we love our neighbor, and we cherish God's creation, maybe we should ask, 'What would Jesus drive?'" The late-night comics went berserk, but Evangelicals take seriously the idea that Christ should be at the center of daily decisions. Says the Rev. Richard Cizik, a conservative minister and registered Republican: "I'm not on an anti-suv campaign — But we are for fuel efficiency and pollution reductions. If Evangelical Christians cannot be for that, I think they're missing the full sense of how the Gospel touches every point of their lives."
The way Cizik parses the issue is instructive: the focus shouldn't be SUVs but overall fuel consumption. The problem with the furor over SUVs isn't that it's groundless—SUVs do pollute—but that it's carried out in a strange void, as though Americans don't live in the most sumptuously energy-guzzling society of all time. For at least the past two decades, North America's per-capita energy consumption has been about 41—2 times greater than the world average, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
Gas for our SUVs is only one of many ways we devour power: Why don't we have a campaign against overly air-conditioned cinemas or those pricey double-wide refrigerators (many of which chill a nice bottle of Riesling and not much else)? Arianna Huffington, the columnist who helped start the Detroit Project—the group with the ads saying SUVs support terrorism—says that whenever she is invited to a swank gala, she has a chauffeur take the wheel of her gas-sipping Toyota Prius. We weren't rude enough to ask how heavy her chauffeur is, but his extra body weight is burning extra fuel, some of which may be coming from Persian Gulf nations that may have funneled money to ? If it takes a Prius three trips to Sam's to carry the same load of paper towels and salsa that an Expedition could manage in one, is the Prius evil? While only 1% to 10% of SUV owners actually use their vehicles' off-road and towing capacities, it's wrong to say those extras are wasted on the majority. Surely many of the buyers made the rational calculation that off-roading and towing might be useful in an emergency. (At a time when everyone is duct-taping the windows, it doesn't seem so crazy to think you would one day drive the family into the mountains.) How else to explain GM research showing that the No. 1 reason people buy midsize SUVs is that the vehicles have four-wheel drive, a feature most people rarely need? Americans frequently pay extra for security: alarm systems, travel insurance, fire extinguishers. If you consider what they can do on dirt and snow, SUVs aren't materially different.
Finally, many SUV drivers accrue a simpler but equally important benefit from their burly automobiles: fun. Presiding over several tons of metal from a heated leather seat is great entertainment. "It's not like I'm living large, but I like when people take notice," says Brent Bormaster, 24, a Dallas executive recruiter who drives a 2002 GMC Yukon.
The right way to frame the SUV debate is not whether SUVs should be dumped, but whether society pays too much, and their drivers too little, for the benefits SUVs provide. One point that environmentalists and auto executives agree upon is that gas prices, despite their recent rise amid the talk of war, remain low by historical standards. Eron Shosteck of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers says his members offer more than 30 passenger vehicles that get at least 30 m.p.g. (compared with, say, the Range Rover, which gets 14). "But very few people buy them," Shosteck says of the fuel-efficient cars. "Gas is cheaper than bottled water. There is no incentive for people to use less."
This argument is a little too convenient, because there's little automakers are expected to do about fuel prices. And it's unlikely that cheap gas really bothers the industry, since the most gas-gorging SUVs have had huge profit margins. Until the recent economic slump and the new era of 0% financing, buyers were willing to pay a premium for autos that aren't very difficult to build. "Take a normal sedan or truck, and just whoosh—blow some air into it—and add a little dimension off the ground," says Nissan's Hirshberg, who designed the Pathfinder. Manufacturers generally make 15% to 20% in profit on an SUV, compared with only 3% or less on a car, according to Michael Flynn, director of the University of Michigan Office for the Study of Automotive Transportation.
SUV profits have been crucial to the auto industry's rebounding economic performance over the past few years. That has meant more jobs not only in Michigan but in other states that produce SUV components. Which is partly why SUVs live in a kind of unprickable bubble in Washington. SUVs can get horrible gas mileage because the 1975 law that created fuel-efficiency standards made a distinction between cars and light trucks. (SUVs count as trucks because of their weight and off-road capability.) Everyone agrees that when the fuel-efficiency law was passed, Congress had no intention of exempting a huge class of passenger vehicles from regulation; SUVs didn't really exist back then. There were only the precursors—the Jeep, the Chevy Suburban—and they were considered work vehicles and novelties. In the 1970s American Motors Corp. sought to have Jeeps classified as light trucks to avoid cars' emission standards, which would have required design changes. AMC rightly pointed out that the Jeep was built on a truck chassis.
In late 1983 AMC launched a new version of the Cherokee, the first four-door SUV to become a big hit. (The S-10 Chevy Blazer also appeared that year.) Other carmakers jumped in, and by the '90s, America was in love with SUVs ' rugged looks and capacious interiors. The Ford Explorer became one of the best-selling vehicles of the decade. Normally an American success would be quickly challenged by foreign competitors, but SUVs were protected. In 1964 the U.S. had placed a 25% tariff on foreign light trucks in retaliation for a European tariff on U.S. chicken. The tariff still exists, but foreign manufacturers evade it by building light trucks at U.S. plants or in Canada and then importing them under the North American Free Trade Agreement. That's why BMW, Honda, Porsche and Toyota make SUV, as will Volkswagen, beginning later this year.
Proposals to hold SUVs to the same standards as cars are usually killed by a coalition of union-backed Democrats and industry-backed Republicans, even though 70% of those surveyed in the TIME/CNN poll said Congress should require SUVs to get better gas mileage. Last March Senators John Kerry and John McCain could find only 38 votes in the Senate for their bill to raise fuel-economy standards from 20.7 m.p.g. for light trucks to 36 m.p.g. by 2015. (In December, the Bush Administration moved to increase the standards by a meager 1.5 m.p.g. instead.) Meanwhile, despite improvements in technology, the fuel economy of the average American car is lower today than it was in 1980.
Every few months, it seems, someone says the SUV boom has peaked. "For five years, 10 years, we've predicted the death of the SUV," says Wolfgang Bernhard, chief operating officer for the Chrysler Group, "and all we see is stronger sales." Still, there are signs that the market is changing, if not weakening. After the 2.4% drop in sales of full-size SUVs in 2002, the industry expects another decline this year. For the first time in several years, the 2003 Detroit auto shows featured no new Ford or GM SUVs built in the traditional two-piece, body-on-truck-frame style. (Sales of such SUVs fell 14% last month.) Instead, both companies showed off such carlike crossovers as Chevrolet's Equinox.
The Equinox is something of a gamble because it looks rather like the station wagons of yore, but the larger class of midsize crossovers, like Toyota's Highlander, has already taken off. Sales of midsize crossovers will jump from 1.4 million last year to almost 2.9 million by 2007, according to new estimates by the Planning Edge, a Farmington Hills, Mich., firm whose predictions are used by auto suppliers to prepare for production runs. Automakers must guess now whether the predictions are right: given the long lead times required to refit production lines, the companies must move quickly if they are to meet high demand for crossovers. But if that demand evaporates, it will be a costly error.
One does sense a cultural change. Though DaimlerChrysler builds the big Durango SUV, it has a minivan ad that makes fun of large SUVs . A few years ago, celebrities seemed to be driving the biggest, baddest sport-utes they could find. (As Bradsher notes, the Oscars came to resemble "a gathering for a black-tie off-road derby.") But recently Leonardo DiCaprio's publicist had this to say when Time asked him to confirm a report that DiCaprio, an outspoken environmentalist, drives a Hummer: "Leo was never shown a Hummer, never given a Hummer and never drove a Hummer. Leo is against people who drive Hummers." And if Leo's against them, can a million teenage girls be far behind?
Some Detroit executives are concerned that Gen Y already sees SUVs as uncool, the same way boomers began to see sports cars as unfashionable in the crunchy early '90s (when the SUV began its rise and people liked Hootie & the Blowfish). Only one SUV is among the top 10 vehicles bought by those under 24—Ford's Escape, which is No. 8—though that's partly because SUVs tend to be expensive. (The $13,000 Honda Civic is No. 1.) Younger buyers "really haven't formed an opinion yet," insists David Bostwick, market research chief for Chrysler, though he notes that twentyish folk do appear to want more fuel efficiency. (Perhaps that's why Ford is planning a gas-electric hybrid version of the Escape which will get 40 m.p.g.)
It's important not to make too much of market research. Bradsher's book boldly says industry data has shown that SUV buyers "tend to be more restless, more sybaritic and less social than most Americans. They tend to like fine restaurants a lot more than off-road driving, seldom go to church and have limited interest in volunteer work." But Bradsher admits SUV buyers don't necessarily have all those traits; they are just more likely to have them than minivan owners. Last week Kelley Blue Book, an auto-information company, released a survey of new-vehicle buyers who had visited its website; respondents said the No. 1 attribute of SUV drivers is that they are "family oriented," not self-oriented.
Automakers say most people have practical grounds for buying SUVs. GM research says that among the top reasons consumers give for picking a full-size SUV are that it seats more people and that the size makes them feel safe (a misperception that SUV manufacturers aren't eager to correct). Similarly, the switch among a minority of SUV buyers to crossovers probably reflects a simple shift in priorities during lean, uncertain times: we want fuel economy and safety wrapped in SUV trimmings. Says Shosteck: "The market is showing that consumers want more of the attributes of an SUV, with the handling and ride and the comfort of a passenger sedan."
There's much dispute in Detroit about whether the trend toward crossovers will last. Some are urging us to write an obituary for the big suv. But anyone who has ever driven one of these towering carriages knows it should be more of an elegy: halflings like the crossovers will never tickle the desire to pilot something enormous and fearless. Maybe it's only a matter of time before the massive SUV rigs go the way of three-martini lunches, cigarettes and, one fears, Big Macs. But it's been a glorious ride.
—With reporting by Melissa August and Eric Roston/Washington, Sean Gregory/
New York, Alison Onianwa/Fort Lauderdale, Adam Pitluk/Dallas, Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles and Joseph R. Szczesny/Detroit
- John Cloud