Not guilty. Those Toyota Landcruisers are amazing off-road vehicles. I wouldn’t even put them in the same class as sports futility vehicles, these babies can go anywhere, especially if you put on the after-market differential lockers. They’re definitely better than the old Jeeps; I prefer them to the old Landrovers, and they’re much cheaper to take care of than the formidable Mercedes G-Wagen.
You’re okay in my book. 
Same goes for my PathFinder. Sport, nope. Utility, completely.
Today, I brought home
40’ 3/4" hard copper pipe
20’ 1/2" hard copper pipe
40’ sched 40 2" PVC
20’ sched 40 1 1/2" ABS
(I’m putting an addition on my house)
I did not need long pieces so I had it all cut to 10 foot lenghts. Still this is not something you could put in any car that I know of.
I can’t imagine how I would get along with out an SUV or truck. Even if I didn’t need it for the snow.
What do people do when they need something done?
I’m gonna answer my own question here. Since I have 25 years or so of experieace at it
As a truck owner since 1977, and an SUV/Truck owner since 1993.
…
Make sure they buy the beer. :Dcrumble zone is relative.
And I have to give your a 
for that post.
They hire a plumber. 
One thing that bugs me, and it’s not just SUV’s but also other large autos is driving to close. I drive a 2 seat Geo Metro with a 3 cylinder engine. Unless the person following me has retro rockets or something, I can stop alot better then they can. It’s just simple physics. Less mass is easier to stop. If I should have to stop suddenly (a kid running out in front of me, for example) they are going to hit me.
I’ll tell you what the_duke_69, As long as you keep a safe distance from other drivers, I, as a part time tree hugger, will let the charge of destroying nature drop.
"Checking the stats you’ll find the Suburban is among the lowest in occupant injury per mile. While it is true that you are more likely to be hurt in a single car accident (hitting the bridge abutment or running off the road) in the truckoid than many cars, it seems the typical Suburban owner is less likely to be involved in such an accident. And in the accidents they are more likely to be involved in, they do much better. "
I hear this cited all the time, but one thing I’ve never been clear on is whether this is merely because of the “free rider” problem. So long as there are still far fewer SUV’s than “normal” cars, is this simply a matter of doing better in the crash because you are killing someone else in a comparatively undersized car that you are hitting? Then the question arises, if we all drove SUVs, would it still be safer if it were SUVs colliding with SUVs, or would the huge slabs of metal actually make accidents even more dangerous if they routinely started hitting things their own size.
If they are really safer in general, without relying on everyone else to drive small cars and be the person dying in the accident because of the smaller size, I buy the argument; if they are only safer because in the average accident they are the larger vehicle, then you may be saying, “I’m safe, at the price of greatly increasing the chance of killing the other person.”
I really don’t know the answer to this, but sometimes “They’re safer” seems synonmous with driving 18 wheeler, taking out 8 cars in a jack-knife pile up, and walking away happy because you were safe in the “big vehicle.”
There are some places where we might get to test this theory. Around here (Northern Virginia), Suburbans are almost unknown. It may be simply because they’re just too difficult to park - parking lots in most shopping centers are laid out with smaller vehicles in mind, street parking is limited, older houses tend to have small garages, etc.
However, when I visited some relatives in Texas, out between Dallas and Ft. Worth, I was amazed to see that the Suburban seemed to be the standard issue Mommy-Mobile (here, it’s the minivan). It would be interesting to see accident statistics from a place like that, where the land yacht vs. land yacht collision is more likely.
The other hitch in any accident statistics is the question of who’s driving the cars. I once saw a stat that showed that Chevy Camaros were many times more dangerous than Volvos. But stop and think about it. Who’s driving Camaros? Who’s driving Volvos? Which group is more likely to be speeding, driving late at night (perhaps with a few beers in him), taking corners too fast, etc.? So, is the Volvo a safer car, or is it simply that the Volvo driver is more likely to be a safer driver? Crash testing can give you better answers than accident statistics, in that case.
Stats about the Suburban face some of the same problems. It may be true that it’s less likely to roll over, because it is very wide and heavy. But it’s also true that a Suburban doesn’t have much appeal to a young, single, male driver, a driver who is, statistically, more likely to be involved in accidents (sorry, young, single dudes out there, but the numbers are pretty clear!).
There is a lot of discussion of “need” in this thread, and really, do we “need” most of what we have or want? …And more specifically to cars…
Do all people who drive trucks use them for hauling?
No. (I know, a lot of them do, including myself…but I believe it’s safe to say not all do.)
Do all people who drive sports cars–particularly the very pricey top-end ones–take them on the track to race them at their potential speed?
Um…No. Several drive them at unsafe speeds on the freeway, but no where in the States can you drive a car safely and legally on the road at 100mph, which is nothing for these little speedballs. IMHO, there is zero “need” for, say, a Lamborghini Diablo…except it looks pretty, it is a definite status symbol, and it has the potential to do 200mph. (Gorgeous car though!)
Just a thought.
Yep. . Good response. For myself, I enjoy working on my house. It’s sort of my ‘hobby’. For the most part it is a lot less frustrating than working with sub-contractors.
For this project, I’ll save about $35,000.
[quote]
I drive a 2 seat Geo Metro with a 3 cylinder engine.[/qoute]My wife had one of those when I met her. It was a good little car. But we always joke that I killed the car when I started riding around with her (I weight 200 lbs, it couldn’t take it)
Are the people that drive large vehicles making themselves safer at the expense of the person in the smaller car? I suppose so. In my opinion, buying a big vehicle just to be safer says a lot about your lack of confidence in your own driving ability.
But, what the heck. Whatever floats your boat. Dosn’t bother me either way.
Your right.
But.
I bought my truck when I was in high school (I still have the darn thing). I bought it to haul a dirt bike around.
Then I used it for.
-Many, many camping / 4x4 trips. The longest one was 2 weeks and 1000 miles in Colorado.
-Moved 4 times.
-Moved everyone else 4 times
-Wood (heated with wood for 10 years)
Now it’s my plow truck. It get’s about 3 miles a year put on it.
Just because a truck is used to go to work or the store, does not mean it does not get a LOT of other use.
Look at the earlier mini-vans, and look at the mini-vans today. There’s a world of difference there. Like I posted earlier, my '91 Safari is HUGE. Today’s mini-vans are glorified, hi-tech station wagons. My Safari is close to the size of a Suburban, it’s just a bit shorter. SUVs are very practical, and sometimes i wish we would have bought one last year, instead of the Jetta. It would be nice to have 2 4wd vehicles, we get a lot of snow here. In the last few weeks, we’ve had to leave the Jetta in the garage a few times, there’s no getting in or out of our road until the plows have come by. We have to take the huge van, to get out. My brother and his family have it worse, they really live out in the boonies and have a wicked climb out to the road. They are not status symbol buyers, they look at their needs and buy accordingly. I know for a fact they’d rather have spent the $40,000 on something other than a vehicle.
I had two Chevy Sprints (one, a regular Sprint, and the other a Sprint Metro). I could get four people into each of them with relative comfort. It was as if they were really a tesseract. Or maybe a Tardis. (Cardis? ) They really seemed to have more room on the inside than on the outside. I could get my A-7E Ejection seat in the back, and still close the hatch. Although they were awful on long grades, they were “peppy” around town and could accellerate and decellerate very quickly. They handled fairly well, too. (And having owned Porsches before and after the Sprints, plus three MGBs, I likes me some handling!) When taking them to the local mountains to go skiing, their light weight and front wheel drive allowed me to get to the top without having to install my chains, while other people had to pull over.
But eventually I longed for the power of the Porsche and replaced my last Sprint Metro with a 911. While the 911 was great, it just wasn’t practical for many things and I replaced it in 1999 with a Jeep Cherokee. As I’ve said in this thread, the Cherokee has been very useful. I’ve mentioned the heavy towing and the off-roading. I also towed the Porsche on a very heavy trailer, and towed my '46 Willys CJ2A around as well. I’ve taken it camping. I frequently use it to haul my kayak; something that it handles very well with its long roof, and something that would be slightly more problematic on a sub-compact car.