I wonder sometimes.... (yeah, OK - I wonder about a lot of things but this one might actually make sense to someone other than myself :)
Being an avid reader of the blog of Nick & Nora Charles and their latest post: Weapons of Mass Traction, I started thinking about my opposition to SUVs.
Simply put, I oppose these vehicles not on the basis that they are destroying the planet or use too much fuel or any other melon-headed reason to do with being a saviour of nature who wants to tell the world how to live.
I don't like them for a number of reasons - the main one being that most in this country are 4-wheel-drive variants designed for going offroad. Now, when going offroad, you have beefier suspension that floats a lot more to compensate for rough roads. You also have additional driveline components intended to help you get through those rough patches - all of which you pay a premium for. They don't go fast like a sports car and they definitely don't handle like a sports car - but how do you often see them driven?
Simply put, I think that anyone who spends a shitload of money on a vehicle that is not used for it's intended purpose (ie: actually going offroad as opposed to having some diminutive female/pussified male at the controls who wants to show off to the world and never leaving the blacktop) is a waste. It demonstrates to me that the owner (usually driver) of this vehicle is an impractical moron whose driving skills usually match their intellect.
I like SUVs and trucks and sports cars and motorbikes and station wagons and bicycles and all modes of transport - but I don't give away my hard-taxed money to impress some fool down the street. Who the hell cares about their opinion? Why buy something designed to do a job and then not doing it? That's like hiring a prostitute to live in your home and then have her wash walls!
In saying this, my next vehicle will be slightly larger than the car I have now (1987 SAAB 9000 hatchback), which, incidently, has gone further offroad and carried far heavier loads than most of the wankers in South East Queensland who own SUVs. It can also turn corners and drive at 200kph should I so desire (but I don't). I want a Ford F250 (or a Dodge Ram) because I have had enough of the cocksuckers in their pristine-clean, never-seen-a-grass-footpath, Toyota Landcruisers trying to push me around. I want a truck, so I'm going to buy a truck.
Let's see you maggots in your wannabe 'truck' show me who is boss then! (I would go bigger and actually drive something I am licenced to drive, but it can be difficult to take 20+ tonnes of truck into an underground carpark to do the grocery shopping).
I think I will also include a sticker on the back: "Taxi Hunter" with a running tally of those who ignore the road rules and stop dead in front of me to pick up or drop a passenger. Use a mirror you so-called "professional drivers"!!
4 comments:
I prefer to use my KTM 300 to go offroad! :-) My pickup truck is a regular 2-wheel drive - a friend once said that a four-wheel drive will get you into more trouble from which you can't extract yourself, while a two-wheel drive will get you close enough to where you want to go, and make you stop.
Yep - sounds about right! If you drive to the conditions, you can get almost as far in any old car as you can in a glorified station wagon.
Of course, when I pick on SUV owners, I'm not referring to those in 4WD clubs or live in the country and actually use the vehicles in the manner in which they are intended.
With my great-uncle directing me, I once drove my old Karmann-Ghia across a couple cornfields and up a hill to a bluff overlooking a canyon - might have been the only canyon in Nebraska. Farmers have been using regular vehicles for unintended purposes and on inappropriately unpaved areas for years. ;-)
Sounds like a perfectly good use for a Karmann-Ghia :)
It's good to get instruction from some of the old blokes - there are a few around who have forgotten more than I will ever know about driving.
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