I’m on my second Wrangler, and don’t want anything else. When I got it I was trapping feral cats for a living, so I took out the rear seat and made a bedliner for it - I could fit 3 traps side by side or 9 empty traps in it. I use it for moving, hauling cats to the vet, towing the SeaDoo, etc. It’s pretty good on gas, and I love having a ragtop in the spring and fall. It’s too darn hot to take the top down in the summer.
I recently gave a friend of mine an antique 19 foot extension ladder to use in decorating a staircase to the basement of her house. Took the top down, laid the ladder across the rollbars, tied it down, hung a red bandana off the end and off I went. Wish I had taken a picture - I thought my friend was going to die laughing when I pulled up at her house.
I’m on my second Wrangler, and don’t want anything else. When I got it I was trapping feral cats for a living, so I took out the rear seat and made a bedliner for it - I could fit 3 traps side by side or 9 empty traps in it. I use it for moving, hauling cats to the vet, towing the SeaDoo, etc. It’s pretty good on gas, and I love having a ragtop in the spring and fall. It’s too darn hot to take the top down in the summer.
I recently gave a friend of mine an antique 19 foot extension ladder to use in decorating a staircase to the basement of her house. Took the top down, laid the ladder across the rollbars, tied it down, hung a red bandana off the end and off I went. Wish I had taken a picture - I thought my friend was going to die laughing when I pulled up at her house.
First bought an SUV, Jeep Cherokee, when I was moving to Alaska. It was the only way to get into the tidal flats for salmon, up washed out roads to pan for gold and around the state in winter and even tackling the AlCan in December.
I sold it several years ago, bought a little convertible and almost immediately began to suffer for it. Remember pointing and laughing at the guy bringing home oak treeks from the nursery in the back of his top down 560 SL? That was me. Ditto on the family car so loaded to the gills with stuff on trips that the rear view mirror was rendered useless and the gas tank couldn’t be filled to the top lest the tires rub against the wheelwells from all the weight. Living in Grand Junction, we couldn’t see some of the places we’d come to love in Colorado and Utah because we simply couldn’t get to them anymore. We had to buy all our firewood because we couldn’t cut and transport it anymore. Wanna drive somewhere with friends? Better take their SUV.
So I bought a Lexus (gussied Land Cruiser) a couple of years back and love it. From the cabin it’ll still climb right up the steepest cliff and it gets the same bags of cow manure tossed into it as did the Jeep.
Our trick is just to only use what’s appropriate for our needs. Commuting to work, I’m in the two seater. Dinners out with just us three, we’re in my wife’s sedan. And when a bigger, tougher ride is needed then we’ve got that too.
I had a CJ7 for a few years. It was fun pulling doors and soft-top off and go tooling around. Not so much fun when the weather was in the negetive digits. And my dog was scared of the thing. Too noisy I guess.
I rigged up a 12’ long 2x6 with some u-bolts that I can fasten to my roof rack on my Pathfinder. This gives me a good base to strap 20’ sections of pipe (or other long stuff) to.
Otherwise stuff like plywood and sheetrock usually goes right on the roof rack. Though I can squeeze it inside on an angle.
An SUV wouldn’t cut it for me, so I have a pickup, but I get flak about the low mileage/big vehicle things too.
My older truck got worse mileage than most of you folk’s SUVs, but the new one is a diesel and does pretty well.
Do I need such a big thing? Hell, yes I do. I hunt and camp and fish and pull trailers, and do all of that stuff pretty remotely, so I need the ground clearance and the four-wheel drive from spring through about December. I also work in construction and have to drive on job sites, carry my dog around with me every day (in the back so he doesn’t stink up the place) and have my own business that requires hauling tools and supplies around.
I use the hell out of that thing. In a perfect world, I would be able to afford to keep two vehicles and could have a smaller commuter car (although I no longer commute) but I would use it less than a quarter of my driving time, so the net benefit would be kind of low. It’s not like I can drop the kids off at school in the car and go home and get the truck because I need it at work. It would be nice to fit in tight parking spaces though, but at least it’s not a dually. Those are hard to park.
The definition of ‘SUV’ seems to be pretty broad anyway.
I drive a Forester, which Subaru calls an SUV but it’s not the huge gas-guzzler that most people associate with ‘SUV’. Somehow the meaning of SUV has morphed into something more than originally intended. (i.e. ‘More vehicle than you really need, you insensitive arsehole’)
There are a lot of huge gas gulping cars on the road that aren’t SUVs, but their owners seem to escape this ‘do you really need that?’ mentality. My Forester is smaller and gets way better mileage than my previous vehicle, a Buick LeSabre, but I never felt I had to justify why I needed the Buick.
No offence, but this seems as if it’s edging a little close to ‘SUV bashing’ in the sense of having to ‘justify’ usage. I’m not asking for justification, only whether SUV owners use them more-or-less for what they’re good for.
I’ve got a Jeep Liberty and for the past three months, have been stuffing it chock-full of food, tools and supplies for our weekends at Faire. Next week, it will be towing our camper back home. Just not the sort of thing a car’s good for.
After that though, it’s back to driving about 15 miles a week to the train station. Don’t need it for that, obviously, but it’s cheaper to keep using it than to buy a thrifty commute car and double-up on the insurance and DMV fees.
I think the ‘justify’ angle has some merit. Why ask the question otherwise? Did you really expect to hear some ‘no’ answers? You asked about SUVs, not big vehicles in general. Don’t you care if I really used that big-ass LeSabre for what it was good for?
As far as gas usage, my husbands 1989 Chevy V-8 station wagon uses way more gas than my Wrangler - so much so that since the Prius arrived, the station wagon is going to our cabin where it will only be used as needed - mainly to haul concrete for repairing the boat ramp and pulling the pontoon boat out of the water.
I swear when you press the accelerator on that car you can watch the needle on the gas gauge drop, and hear slurping noises.
As **Mr. Goob ** asked, do pickups count? I’ve driven Nissan KingCabs exclusively for the last 30 years. The amount of crap I have to haul on a regular basis makes a pickup a necessity. I also use it for camping, hunting, and general bouncing around the Southwest. It spends about 10% of its miles offroad. But usually it just takes me to and from work. Someday I’ll buy a moped. It’s only 3 miles after all.
My parents own an SUV. They don’t camp, hike, hunt, fish, or go “muddin’” (shudder) They don’t have anything to haul around. They don’t help people move, and they’ve lived in the same house for 23 years. When my father built the house back in the early 80s, he just strapped all the supplies he needed (as he needed them) to the top of his tiny Chevy car.
They have a ten minutes drive to work, on paved, and brand new, roads. Once a week they make the hour long trip to the city for groceries. They don’t need to haul lots of groceries back; it’s just food for the two of them.
Granted, the winters can be rough, however, many vehicles have four wheel drive, not just SUVs. They survived many harsh winters without an SUV, with no problems at all. In all of my 27 years, they’ve never lost control of their vehicle in the winter snow, and up until recently, they only drove sedans and small cars.
Recently, my husband was eyeing the RAV4, which would have been useless for us, living in the city. We haul things occasionally, but it’s* so* occasionally, we can just borrow his father’s old pickup. We don’t camp, hunt, fish, mud, or hike… unless you count the trails in Carkeek Park. (HA!) Hardly offroad.
First off, I’ve got a mini-SUV (A Honda CR-V) so that may not count.
But if it counts, I would say “not really, but it’s very handy for certain things.”
First off, we have a dog who goes along on a lot of local trips. We have valued having the back area as a separate place to keep him and his drool, and SOME of the hair, away from our baby (then toddler, now little boy).
Its height and traction system have also come in very handy during at least 1 storm each winter since we’ve owned it (we live in Michigan). Our street is low priority for plowing. I’ve had the experience of taking my car out, getting stuck, having to reverse down the block and switch to the SUV. I can get out no problem with it.
Well, I live in New England and I drive a Subaru Outback which is just about the canonical New England winter car. Anything it can’t handle, you don’t want to be driving in. So that functionality is available in something that’s more car-like. The only thing it’s lacking is towing capacity. But realistically, if I need towing and hauling capability, it would make a lot more sense to buy a beater pickup truck as a second vehicle.
Again, I dunno if you’d consider the Outback an SUV. It’s pretty beefy for a small wagon, but I can never find it in a parking lot because it’s eclipsed by the big SUVs.
Other than a handful of days a year, any 4 door sedan would be fine. We do pack it full with 2 kids and a dog for trips to see Grandma. I do love it, but the 14 mpg is tough to take. When the lease is up we may give it back and get an Audi wagon.
I just want to make a factual point that many SUVs–particularly those that are essentially converted trucks–aren’t all that beneficial on rain- and ice-slicked pavement. A high clearance 4WD pickup is indispensible when you’re navigating a rutted muddy track, but anyone who has driven one in foul weather conditions on the highway knows that their lack of high speed stability, high center of gravity, and large diameter knobby tires offer only a negative contribution to their handling. And most of the vehicles now being marketed as SUVs have barely more clearance than a sedan; they’re just not intended for off-road driving, nor are some especially-well suited to foul weather driving.
Back in the mid-Seventies when both Subaru and AMC came out with on-the-fly 4WD and full-time on-demand AWD respectively, these vehicles became very popular in the Rockies, especially Colorado, not only because they performed better in snow and ice conditions than trucks and the early SUVs of the day (Jeep Wagoneer, Chevy Suburban, Ford Bronco, International Scout) but also had better handling with their four wheel independent suspension and better gas milage.
AMC bought the farm, and the Eagle, never the most reliable vehicle was discontinued, while Subaru languished with its underappreciated AWD system, until they introduced the Outback. Even though they’ve simultaneously tried to brand the Outback and Forester as belonging to the SUV market segment while distinguishing it from an SUV (it’s a "Sport Utility Wagon, or in the case of the Baja, a "Sport Activity Vehicle), it’s really just a new way of marketing that old suburban standard, the station wagon, to people who were looking at minivans and and smaller SUVs. Other manufacturers have followed suit (Audi Offroad, Volve XC-70, the Mercedes ML320 and ML430, the BMW X5 and X3, Honda CRV) by essentially taking a car chassis and raising it up on larger tires. Lumping these in the same category as a massive, truck-based Ford Excursion or a Toyota Land Cruiser is a bit disingenious, though, in both the positives or negatives.
And now, to actually answer the OP’s question; Back when I owned a truck, I did need it for hauling supplies, but hated it for its handling and expense. I get along just fine now with my AWD sedan, in both fair weather and foul. I haul gear and occasionally people without need for any more space or capacity. If I’m going to be driving through a snow storm, I’ll take the Subaru any day. I’ve I’m hauling a 4000lb trailer or regularly hauling building supplies, that 2.5L flat four isn’t going to cut it, and I’d opt for a “real” SUV or full-sized truck. I wouldn’t buy one for show, though, and I certainly wouldn’t–as is in vogue in SunSoCal–buy a full-sized Suburban and then cut the suspension down to three inches of clearance.
I am somewhat tall (6’2") and the only cars I can fit in without my head rubbing the roof (and when the seat is in the proper upright position) are SUV’s, larger trucks and luxury cars. Greenies don’t like any of them.
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Also I am spending about every other night sleeping in it, but that’s my own choice.
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Yes and yes. And because it is a 4 banger, it does not consume much gas.
I travel both active and abandoned logging roads and skidder trails while hauling a canoe/kayak/utility trailer, and I make long (800km) trips on the highway in all seasons, which includes winter storms.
