Sport f/utility?
By: Evan Dyer
Date: 2001-04-30
This article is a transcription of a CBC Radio One program that aired in Canada on January 31, 2001. The printed version appeared also in The Ottawa Tri-Star magazine, Mercedes-Benz Club of America. Evan Dyer also wrote a four-part documentary entitled Fuelling the future.
Twenty years ago, no-one but farmers and contractors drove pick-up trucks. Sport utility vehicles were unheard of. Today, SUVs and light trucks account for about half of all vehicles sold. Behind the outdoorsy image lurks a polluter. But that won't last. Environment Canada is preparing to put a sock up the tail pipe of SUVs within a month when it announces new emissions controls.
Evan Dyer takes the sport utility for a test drive.
(Music): Can you name the truck with four-wheel drive? Smells like a steak and seats 35, Canyonero ... Canyonero.
The dimensions of Homer Simpson's legendary Canyonero may sound like a joke. But consider the latest Ford Excursion. It won't even fit in a standard garage. But it does have ten cupholders.
"I was backing up to hook onto a tree, got a little rambunctious, smashed the bumper in."
Some people really need SUVs. Take Rob MacKay and his Pathfinder.
"This truck has been in the bush, it's been damaged in the bush, it's bottomed out on bedrock. It's been through shallow rivers. As a matter of fact what I'll often do is put chains on the back of this truck and hook it up to a tree and pull it out of the bush."
But Rob MacKay isn't your typical SUV driver. Although most commercials show SUVs fording rivers and tearing up ski slopes, Ford estimates that about 90 percent of Explorers will never set a tire off a paved road.
The closer you live to a big city in Canada, the more likely you are to own an SUV. Maybe the most honestly named SUV is the monster Chevrolet Suburban.
(Door slam) : "We're now sitting in the 2001 Chevrolet Suburban 2500 series 4x4 truck."
It's sold by a man who must be the world's most honest car salesman-Kevin MacDonald of Myers Chev/Olds.
(Laughs) : "I don't think I've ever sold a Suburban that's been driven off-road. You certainly wouldn't want to scratch this thing with the price tag that's on it. I would almost call it a Texas Cadillac. That seems to be a reflection of the kind of clients that want it. But I think it's predominantly an image thing. You're sitting in a big, brawny, vehicle. You can run over somebody in their little Geo Metro-could be a bit of that, too."
GMC recently decided the name of its Suburban was a little too suburban, so it changed it to the more adventurous-sounding Denali. That's the place in Alaska that President Bush wants to open up to oil exploration. And we just may need all that oil.
"To say the least it's a pig ( laughs ). But in my opinion people who buy these are never concerned about that."
The American Union of Concerned Scientists says they should be concerned. Engineer Jason Mark says SUVs don't just guzzle gas, they also burn it far less efficiently than cars of the same size.
To prove that SUVs are dirtier than they have to be, the Union of Concerned Scientists designed its own, using a Ford Explorer as a starting point.
"We took what is essentially in mass production today in Honda Accords-a VTEC engine-and dropped it into the Ford Explorer. We boosted its fuel economy by 50 percent, cut its tail pipe pollution by a factor of four, and it actually goes from 0 to 60 a couple of seconds faster than the base model. We estimate that the cost of all the fuel economy and emissions savings is something like $700 for a Ford Explorer, and in fact you get that money back at the pump."
In the United States, new emission standards are about to close the loophole that allows SUVs to pollute. Environment Canada plans to make an announcement about SUV emissions next month. Starting in 2004, new SUVs will have to meet the same standards as cars. [SUVs are allowed by law to emit much more air pollution from the tail pipe.]
Low tech?
Most SUVs are just pick-up trucks with rear seats, a roof, and a mark-up of several thousand dollars thrown in. A lot of what goes into SUVs is just old-fashioned. Four-wheel drive SUVs don't have better traction than all-wheel-drive cars like Subarus and Volvos. In fact, manually engaged four-wheel drive wastes gas, burns tire rubber, and interferes with steering.
Real off-road vehicles like modern military Jeeps, Land Rovers, and Hummers have the same full-time, all-wheel drive as many ordinary passenger cars.
(Tires squealing in snow) : Of course, some people care so little about traction they buy SUVs with two-wheel drive. That saves about two thousand dollars. But watch where you park that Cherokee or you might need a tow.
And what about SUV suspension that's supposed to let you drive over rocks and streams? The big live axles and wagon-wheel leaf-springs do mean a rougher ride, but they don't perform any better on-road or off-road. That's why military Jeeps and Land Rovers all have independent suspension with coil springs-just like a modern passenger car.
But at least those SUVs are built Ford tough, aren't they? Just ask the insurance industry. Brian O'Neill is director of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in Virginia, which crash-tests new vehicles:
"We've discovered a number of things about SUVs over the years as a result of our tests. First, they are not the tough, rugged, durable vehicles as promoted in advertising. We find many of them have very fragile bumper systems, for example, allowing very large amounts of damage in five-mile-an-hour crashes."
A typical parking-lot fender-bender would cost the owner of an Isuzu Trooper nearly $5,000 on average. SUV fender-benders can cost ten times as much as the same mistake in a car, because car-bumper standards don't apply to SUVs.
Are they safer?
Safety is one of the main selling points of sport utility vehicles. But when the Insurance Institute crashes them harder, at 40 mph, it finds that the rigid twin-rail truck frames of most SUVs are anything but safe. The Insurance's Institute's Brian O'Neill: "By and large, the truck-based SUVs don't crash particularly well because the frames are not well-designed to absorb the energy. So the crumple zones tend not to crumple where they should, and so the safety cage is collapsing in many of these vehicles."
Chev-Olds salesman Kevin MacDonald agrees:
"Generally speaking, there's the illusion of it being a safer vehicle to drive. I don't believe for an instant that in the year 2001 this particular Suburban at $57,000 is a safer vehicle than a $30,000 minivan. I've always felt that to drive this vehicle for a safety reason would certainly be a frivolous waste of money."
That $30,000 minivan is in fact usually safer than an SUV, because its center of gravity is closer to the ground. Brian O'Neill:
"SUVs in the real world have higher fatality rates than the public understands. And that's largely because they're very much over-involved in single-vehicle fatal crashes, and most of those are rollovers."
SUVs are more than three times as likely to roll in a crash than passenger cars. About half of all SUV fatalities happen in rollover crashes. That's one reason why drivers of SUVs are actually more likely to die on the roads than drivers of mid-sized cars. But there is one kind of crash where you're better off in the SUV. That's when the SUV crashes into the passenger car. In fact, the only real gain in safety from driving an SUV is at the cost of other people's safety. SUVs usually take longer to brake, and when cars and SUVs collide, the occupants of the car are four times more likely to die than the occupants of the SUV.
The guilt factor
If new laws and high gas prices don't reverse the SUV trend, the guilt factor might. Most of the things people like about big SUVs come at somebody else's expense.
- You sure can see better when you're high up, but you block the view of the car behind you.
- You'll look outdoorsy, but you pollute.
- You're safer in some kinds of collisions, but you make life more dangerous for people who drive cleaner, safer cars.
Could it be these mechanical dinosaurs are heading for the all-terrain graveyard? Ole' Canyonero's still got some gas in the tank. But it's burning up mighty fast.
(Music up): Well, she blinds everybody with her super-high beams. She's a squirrel-smacking, deer-crushing driving machine. Canyonero, Canyonero. Come on Canyonero ... whoa, Canyonero ...
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