Hummer Drivers, Feel Stupid Yet?
Almost every other day now they announce on the news, “gas has reached a new record high price.” High volume SUV producer, General Motors, shares has dropped to a 53-year low. New and used car dealers can barely sell an SUV, even with 0% financing and other incentives. GM Chief Executive Rick Wagoner is crying to the press, when at the end of the day, it was his decision to ramp up SUV production and go for the “get rich quick, yet the heck with the environment and safety of other drivers” business methodology that has landed him in a big pile of big SUVs even half-smart people no longer want. In light of the old adage “what goes around, comes around,” being proven once again, many environmentalists now feel it may be an appropriate to take a brief moment and, very subtly, gloat.
Soccer mom’s, road power trippers, and cell phone to ear while driving suits are now finding their flashy SUV is hurting them financially. Each group ignored the fact that “SUV”, Sports Utility Vehicle, was simply one of the most ingenious marketing terms ever created by the forces of corporate greed in this nation to trick gullible people into, not only wanting, but trying to justify the purchase of a highway behemoth for their own use.
Let’s take a moment and recollect the most common flimsy excuses for ownership:
1. I need 4-wheel drive for the winter.
2. I want to keep my family safe.
3. I need room for my kids and their stuff.
4. I need something to haul my boat with.
Yet, somehow growing up in a large family myself, and living in rural America, on an old country road, that would go several days after a snow storm before being cleared, we always got to school and the parents to work in the rear wheel drive 1970 family sedan. On the farm we had a pickup truck and a family car. We managed to survive.
However, the first time an SUV driver suddenly realizes their 4-wheel drive doesn’t help them to stop on the ice, as they slide though an intersection, impacting a car driven by a mother and with two children passengers, killing them all, because the bumper on the big SUV met up with the side window of the much lower car, does the driver of the SUV think for just a moment, “was this big piece of crap really a necessity?”
Typically, no. Too many Americans are too self involved and seek only instant gratification.
The marketing term SUV came about long before anyone had heard of the scientific term “carbon footprint.” The marketing term SUV, combines “sport” (oh gee so much fun) with the term “utility” (this is something practical that we need) to sell something that only the wise were able to realize was neither that sporty (after all, sport used to mean Corvette or something like that) nor very practical (it’s a friggin gas guzzling minivan on steroids). Yet, as weak as the justification behind ownership of an SUV is, owners spend more time denying the reality of global warming even though there is a growing body of scientific proof backing it up.
You want to deny global warming? Fine, but don’t try to justify owning an SUV, that’s weak.
Yes, General Motors shareholders and executives are now getting what they all deserve. They killed the EV1 Electric Car and dropped a lot of economy cars from their production to invest heavily in SUV production. Now they are suffering while Japanese automakers, that more wisely diversified their production lines including far more economy cars and hybrids, are overtaking General Motors in domestic market share.
But GM and Ford should not fear, because big government will likely bail them out when it gets really rough, because most politicians are also driving big SUVs.