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SUV bashing bashing
This is a response to a theme that runs through a lot of Paul Graham's essays, and was most immediately prompted by his essay "How Art Can Be Good", though it's not really about most of that essay.


I'm a fan of Graham's essays, but one of the things that's consistently irritated me about his essays is the gratuitous SUV bashing, because it's clear that SUVs bother him, and he doesn't understand why people buy them. (I own an SUV at the moment, but didn't when I bought and read Hackers and Painters, and it bothered me then, too).

There are a number of reasons why SUVs are popular, and the reasons Graham likes to trot out seem weak and shallow. Of course, he appears to view those who buy SUVs as weak and shallow, so perhaps that's not surprising. :)

In no particular order, here are some (partially overlapping) reasons people buy SUVs:

SUVs seem safer than smaller vehicles, due to size and styling. This is borne out in accident studies, so it isn't all appearance.

SUVs have comfortable seating for 5 adult Americans, who tend to be at least somewhat overweight. When we go out to eat or to see a movie with friends, it's always our SUV rather than our friends' cars we take, because all 5 (or sometimes 6) of us can fit without crowding.

SUVs have cargo area that can be used even when all the seats are full, and doesn't require reconfiguration of almost anything you'd want to put in there, like a hatchback or trunk does. We can just fold the seat down and put my wife's wheelchair directly in it, which is a huge time-saver when spread over 50 trips a month.

SUVs often have 4 wheel drive, making it less likely that one will get stuck going around accidents or driving slightly off one side of the road to avoid construction (Yeah, I'm looking at you, route 3 between Chelmsford and Nashua; we didn't have an SUV the winter of 2003-2004, but we sure were jealous of the SUV drivers who went by our Corolla while we waited helplessly).

SUVs have offroad capability, as long as "offroad" means "within about 50 feet of the road, or in the median". That may seem like a tiny bit of offroading, but it's the part you always see regular cars stuck on, because, having seen an SUV save an hour of waiting in traffic jam by hopping the median and doing a U-turn, the owners of the regular cars think they can do it, too, having convinced themselves that their car can do anything that pansy SUV can do.

Because SUVs cost more than regular cars in the first place, and are expected to suck down gas less efficiently, more features can be added without impacting the price very much. Power windows, a back window wiper, or a HUD for an SUV cost about the same as for a regular car, but since the price for the SUV is higher anyway, more of these features can be included in the base model.

Because they're larger and more spacious, SUVs are easier to get things into and out of, easier to clean, easier to see in a parking lot when you come out of the store, and easier to change a tire on (seriously; you can see what you're doing in an SUV wheel well).

SUVs are just like station wagons for storage, but more so, and just like regular cars for comfort, but more so. A couple can buy an SUV when childless, in the expectation that they will be able to use it for all the kids when said kids arrive, rather than buying a regular car now and trading it in for a station wagon when they have kids. Since SUVs can serve this dual purpose, and few people strongly prefer gas guzzling station wagons to gas guzzling SUVs, car manufacturers have almost stopped making station wagons.

In short, there are lots of reasons why people buy SUVs, but the only ones really related to appearance are those that concern safety and power. SUVs look big, safe, and powerful, and in the context of most suburban couples, they *are* these things. Given that very few Ferrari drivers will ever drive over 100MPH, there are no practical reasons to have a Ferrari, only reasons of appearance. One buys a Ferrari to make a statement about how much one can afford to pay for a basically useless tool, not because it's the most practical and useful vehicle one can buy.

And there's a place for that. It's *fun* to make such statements, and to consume conspicuously. But denigrating SUVs in favor of status symbols like Ferrari or Porsche misses the point that SUVs are useful, whereas those muscle cars are all about image rather than substance.