Is that really necessary?

By Natalie Miller
210 west Content Editor [send email]

I was driving in my car alone the other day. Actually, when I drive my car, I am almost always alone. I would guess that I have a human companion along with me no more than a dozen times a year. This is great for singing along to the radio and keeping my vehicle in sty-like conditions if I feel like it. The temperature suits me. The collection of “Hello, my name is Natalie” stickers can stay on the dashboard. My emergency snow rations of granola bars and water can remain in the foot space behind the passenger seat. It’s my car and my environment.

Having more than one companion in the car happens less often…maybe 6 times a year, when we go as a group for lunch or to the movies. My sedan, an older model Honda Civic is well-suited to my needs. Actually, I could probably get by with less space. My recycling often piles up and I insist on 3 changes of shoes and myriad extra clothes kept in my trunk, but still it’s enough space.

Which brings me to the topic of the much-hated, but much-driven SUV. S for Sport, U for Utility, V for vehicle – hey, you have to have a vehicle to get around. And vehicles should certainly serve your purpose, and be utilized when necessary. And I can even agree with a sporty design for maximum coolness on the road.

But, what I can’t agree with is the modern manifestation of the SUV. The many variations of the SUV include the Monster SUV, the mini-vanesque SUV, the SUV truck and the not-quite-a-SUV SUV. The thing that fascinates me is not the gas mileage or the cost of these vehicles – it’s how people convince themselves that they NEED one. But for the payments and complaints about gas prices, I cannot see justifying the ownership of one without a huge heaping of imaginative rationalization. People want to believe that they do important, rugged things that warrant ownership of such a vehicle – but do they do them often enough to justify buying one?

It must be the pure power or size of the vehicle that sells it to people. But I ask you: In a culture where people are buying more cars because they are headed in different directions, what sense does it make for one person to drive a giant land barge?

As a woman I worked with pulled in to the parking lot in a Ford Excursion, she dropped her 5 foot, 1 inch frame out of the driver’s side. Her second child is due in a few months, and I said, “how many more are you planning on having, eight?” She seemed mildly taken aback, but responded with this matter of fact answer: “I have a toddler and a golden retriever.” OK, so you need an eight-passenger V8 vehicle for the three of you? There must be something I don’t know about golden retrievers…maybe they expand when moving more than 30 miles per hour.

What drives me to sarcasm in this case is that I hate the name of the vehicle, too. An Excursion is bigger than the enormity of the Ford Expedition, even though an expedition is defined as a lengthy journey, and an excursion is a short trip out. Excursion is the name they should have given the Ford Focus if its purpose were to determine its name….

The thing that kills me is that many sane and reasonable people I know have fallen into this morass of rationalization about how they “need” an SUV. So you commute to work 45 minutes and need to be comfortable? I think a Mercedes would be more practical. So you have a large dog to cart around? How about a station wagon? If it’s a Great Dane or Irish Wolfhound maybe you should get a full-sized van. Wild kids and their friends? How about a minivan? Despite its uncool connotations, it still gets them and their gear in without a massive gas budget increase. Most people I know in their 30s are only have one kid, two at the most. That means if you have a Toyota Camry, you can take your son and three of his friends somewhere reasonably – you don’t need to intimidate old ladies in traffic with your monster tires.

So people are having fewer children and spending more time alone in their cars. Why does this not crush the SUV trend in its tracks?

When we were watching a Toyota SUV commercial together in college, my English major roommate commented that the desire for an SUV with a surfboard on top, as featured in the commercial, was people’s desire for “a return to pastoralism.” Apparently, this is a literary genre about the simple things in life, namely life near a pasture. And I think the solution for people’s understandable need for an unprocessed life is not in their cars that can conquer nature, but a real attempt to get with nature. And it’s not all butterflies and roses, sometimes it’s scary-looking grasshoppers and spiky weeds. But that does not mean people should stop seeking real experiences of daring. But it does mean they’ll have to hop down from the creamy leather driver’s seat of their SUV to do so.

Get real, people. If you spent your money on a kayak and fit a rack to the top of your Prius, you could have some real wilderness experiences, rather than faking it. And much cooler than the ironically named Sequoia, is the hip Mini Cooper. Give some consideration to living more simply, so that others can simply drive.