April 13, 2000
E-mail a Response
Four Wheel Drivel
Opinion
Hey you! Sport Utility Vehicle Man! Mr. All-Terrain, Whitewater Rapids Edition, Jeep Geronimo Triceratops Cruiser! Do you really still believe that "there's only one Jeep"?! Look around you! Our campus has more Jeeps than the faculty has Volvos!
I get it, "Grand Cherokee" like the Cherokee Indians! Like the "Trail of Tears"! Rocking! Doesn't it just make you want to hit the road and find your destiny? Woohoo!
So, Backwards White Hat, what does Freud have to say about the fact that you drive a "Jimmy"?
I must admit that it takes my breath away to see a Nissan Pathfinder accurately navigate the complex Manhattan blocks. And what awe to watch a Ford Explorer fearlessly probing Interstate-17 rest stops! On a brave Expedition for more gas!
The sad fact is that nowadays, when you drive a ÒRodeoÓ, you have little to do with wild horses and everything to do with Rodeo Drive. I have to pause to relay a Classic SUV Moment that will forever color my Big Red memories.
We were on Williams St. - you know the really steep one - chuckling at the Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo 4WD that just couldn't seem to make it anywhere but sideways up the snow-covered road.
When the exacerbated driver finally got out and approached us, he was obviously in a bad mood and we felt bad for deriding his predicament. Until, in a gruff voice with eyes averted, he conceded, "Hey, do any of you guys know where the 4-wheel-drive button might be on this thing?"
At that moment, time stood still - the snow stopped, and we just looked at him. Wide-eyed he looked back, well aware that the facade was over, that he had posed and failed. We showed him where the button was. But somehow he would never be a Mountain Man again.
But I don't just see this problem in the guys with the big engines that don't know how to use them. I also see it in the petite sorority girl who even with 4 inch heels, has to struggle to climb into the cockpit.
To demand a 5000 pound Durango to transport a 100-pound frame up Buffalo St., just because she's too lazy to walk - it's all so sickeningly absurd.
Despite their inanity, the number of sport utility vehicles on the road has actually doubled in the last five years. In some states, one in seven drivers now drives a SUV! The polls say that Americans abhor them, yet we're buying more of them.
Networks of individuals with common sense are working to stop the spread, but are making little headway. This is because we're simply not attacking the problem at its source.
Notice that gas prices are up and it sucks to be a prototypical frat boy. $1.70 a gallon! Goddamn Saddam and those OPEC troublemakers for curtailing our God-given right to charge through the suburban wilderness with reckless abandon.
It's about time we got our diplomacy together and sunk them! What about some more economic sanctions? Cut off their medical supplies - then maybe they'll show some common sense. Oil for food - they starve us for adventure, we'll starve them period.
But no matter how far up the prices go, the SUV's keep flowing between Ithaca and Long Island. Gas prices don't make a dent - sales aren't hurt, and people drive just as much. Economic incentives do nothing to topple the SUV's power.
What about appealing to some sort of deep human morality? Say, concern for the environment - everyone goes for that nowadays. It's fairly intuitive that SUV's can produce 30 percent more carbon monoxide (CO), 75 percent more nitrous oxide (NO), and devour a lot more gas.
But big business nonetheless succeeds in marketing their innovation under regulations reserved for utility trucks, claiming that that's essentially what they are. Never mind that they unabashedly target all ads at suburban families that don't plan to use them to move anything but passengers.
Chrysler and friends simply needed to save the American auto industry, and they found their salvation in the SUV, for which people will gladly pay a lot more than it takes to make them. As a result, SUV's now account for 50 percent of all domestic auto profits, while only contributing to 20 percent of sales.
Simply put, every one sold is a rip-off. Their enormous success can be attributed to their being targeted at the most gullible Americans - those that sadly don't know value when they see it.
The greatest injustice is that manufacturers could make SUVs as clean as normal cars, for only a few hundred dollars more per unit. Nonetheless, with the help of the intentional legal loophole, U.S. auto makers are able to sell overpriced supercars - legally emitting 2 to 5 times the fumes allowed for passenger vehicles - as passenger vehicles.
As a result of the corporations' savvy, the trend pioneered earlier by the Japanese towards more economical, fuel-efficient cars, has been quickly reversed. All appeals to morality fall on deaf ears, and sales continue to climb.
Fortunately, there is hope. Because here at Cornell, status is king. It's true that we're damn susceptible to things that give us false senses of status. Like towering above the rest of the traffic.
Having a commanding view of the road. The rush of big-bumper invincibility. These things go to your head, and perpetuate the myth that you've found something that truly makes you happy.
But our focus on status, on being elite, is also the thing that will save us from our SUVfering. Because all of us, even the newest batch of freshmen, are acutely aware that SUV's aren't quite as cool as they used to be. Back when I was a freshman, anyone that had them was simply the bomb - nobody had seen anything like them.
But a couple of years have passed, and suddenly the vehicle which used to put you on par with the hardest outdoorsmen now only gets you a little above average. Suddenly you are no rougher than moms picking up the kids from soccer practice. And all at once you are no more rugged than a bored housewife doing the Ram Charge to pick up broccoli at the grocery store.
It's about time that the novelty went, because now we can get back to status symbols that aren't so socially abrasive. Everybody already agrees that Jeeps are gas-guzzling, CO-pumping, armor-clad wrecking balls that barrel down the highway to eradicate any human life that happens to be in the way when the driver loses control of his substandard handling.
For the same price tag, why not buy an even smoother ride, in the form of an Audi or a Beemer. Then you at least get the quality that you pay for without the disruption to the political and ecological dynamics.
So if your parents do insist on buying you a nice new trinket because you worked so hard, ask for something with some class, at least for the visual diversity of fraternity parking lots.
And if Mom insists on buying you something in the name of safety, remember this: With a SUV you're maybe 15 percent more likely to survive a collision, perhaps 40 percent with the biggest vehicles. But then again you're 300% more likely to kill whoever you hit.
You claim to drive it in the name of safety, but really you're behind the wheel of a machine that is making the roads dramatically less safe. Thank your mom for me when she doesn't do the rest of us this disservice.
Generally, by driving a SUV nowadays you're wearing a stamp on your head to display these values: your safety over ours, your comfort over the rest of the world's. It's a "rugged" individualism that is plaguing our nation to an increasing degree.
With any luck the revolution against the image of the SUV as a trendy accessory has long begun, and it's now just a matter of ushering in its conclusion. Because at this point, "sport utility" vehicles are being used for neither of these things.
Nathan Wilson is a graduate student in the College of Engineering. The North Façade appears every Monday.
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