Road infrastructure has gotten steadily worse everywhere, which probably has something to do with it. I drove a low car in Atlanta and it was bad. Constantly cringing with scrapes and bumps just driving around doing normal things.
There's also an arms race factor. People feel like they need a truck to keep safer from all the bigger trucks.
And eventually car companies just stopped selling anything else. Ford doesn't make a regular car except for the Mustang.
True but there is also a real safety difference driving a small sedan when everyone else in your town drives brodozers. Doesn't matter how good your airbags are when a lifted F350 runs right over you :agony-yehaw:
There’s also an arms race factor. People feel like they need a truck to keep safer from all the bigger trucks.
The two things that made me switch from a sedan was being blinded by headlights of all the taller vehicles and moving to a more rural location where the weather was a bit worse and road maintenance was laughable
I don't have 30k to throw at a car, but if I did I'd want a normal sized car. I know it's because taxes and american derangement and everything but at the end of the day my analysis is just: "That's dumb, why'd they do that?"
SUVs are categorized as light trucks, and are thus exempted from efficiency regulations (big cars are allowed to pollute more), and they're taxed less when the lease is written off as a business expense because of a holdover law that was supposed to only apply to farm equipment (Hummer Loophole).
They're also higher profit margin because manufacturers charge a premium to be higher up, and 3row SUVs became popular as a rejection of Soccer mom minivans even though those use the space they take up a lot better and can actually seat adults in the back.
Soccer mom minivans
What a marketing coup this was, associating a certain type of Big Car with females and making them icky but another slightly worse in all respects type of Big Car with manliness.
The weird thing is it's a marketing thing that's been around so long that The Simpsons made fun of it with the Canyonero
I'd have thought it'd go full circle by now and sporty stationwagons would come into style and you'd be made fun of for driving a soccer mom SUV, I think the tax thing holds those back from getting popular. But instead they now have performance trims of SUVs which doesn't make any sense because high centre of gravity.
Fun fact: lots of minivans just used the undercarriage + more of the same manufacturer's trucks and added the minivan top.
The Iraq War brought the cost of acquiring shale oil into the realm of being profitable, bringing gas prices back down. Everytime that happens, like even for a few months, there's a jump in SUV sales. Because people have the mories of goldfish and are incredibly vulnerable to propaganda.
Also, the combination of cortisol and adrenaline makes it harder for us to break free of habits. Luckily none of us live in a world in which we're constantly stressed and fearful.
I remember a time when everyone hated SUVs, McDonalds, and Bill Gates, now they're all liberal darlings. Well maybe not so much SUVs, but chuds still love 'em.
Well maybe not so much SUVs
Ask liberals how they feel about the Subaru Outback.
I think chuds double downed on cars = freedom, specifically american freedom and thus bigger is better hence we're getting trucks that are over 7 feet tall.
I called my dad a dipshit for buying a new monster pickup truck. Doing my part.
It's a vehicular arms race. As more people continue to get larger vehicles to not be crushed like a tin can if they get into an accident, it spurs on other drivers to continue getting larger vehicles so they feel safe.
It's funny, because a lot of these bigger cars are actually far more dangerous in an accident. Whether it's roll risk, fire risk, or simply bad interior engineering...
Selfishness and self-aggrandizement are the two principal values of American culture, and they're best embodied by "look at me in my big truck that is expensive and bigger than yours"
Americans have an attention span and an ability to retain and recall memories that is literally shorter than that of the average goldfish. It can be jogged, but there's also the social embarrassment that occurs from having opinions different from the crowd, so people will actively repress those sorts of memories.
VROOM DOOM :technical: VROOM DOOM :stalin-stressed: VROOM DOOM :technical: VROOM DOOM :stalin-stressed: VROOM DOOM :technical: VROOM DOOM :stalin-stressed: VROOM DOOM :technical: VROOM DOOM :stalin-stressed: VROOM DOOM :technical: VROOM DOOM :stalin-stressed:
