The last time gas prices were going through the roof, or maybe it was the time before last … it’s hard to keep the cycles of petroleum-cost rafter-bashing and basement-busting straight. At the moment they’re giving away a free fill-up with the purchase of any bank or financial institution. But tomorrow the bill for a gallon of regular may require a restructuring of the international debt market. Don’t you dare, however, tell your congressman that you want stable gas prices. If a politician gets to decide what gasoline costs, you know where he’s going to stick that price, anatomically speaking.
As I was saying, the last time gas prices were going through the roof, the London Sunday Times called me and said they were devoting their automotive section to … you got it in one, denouncing cars. Specifically the Times was vilifying large SUVs. Would I care to be the piñata at the party and write something in favor of nonsustainable, resource-sucking, planet-boiling, road-hogging murder wagons?
The whole world is angry at America for driving SUVs. Why do we Americans love these monstrous and threatening devices? Barging through traffic in a sport utility vehicle is hardly sporting. The utility of the things is open to question. And they are vehicles mainly in the sense that the Alaska pipeline is a vehicle for oil—most of this pipeline’s capacity being needed to keep one Cadillac Escalade topped up.
It has to do with sex. We Americans are not as sexually sophisticated as you foreigners. Therefore a lot of the sex we have results in procreation. We need a place to put the kids. Our families are big. The Bush family, for example, is so big that one presidency wasn’t enough for them, let alone one SUV. Dozens of huge, black Chevrolet Suburbans full of Secret Service agents were—until recently—required to escort the Bush family around. During the Bush administration, an American who had a huge, black Chevrolet Suburban of his own could pretend to be a Secret Service agent. He could let those scampish Bush twins, Jen and Barb, know that it was all right with him if they got up to all sorts of high jinks on his watch. Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge. Maybe the Obama administration will offer similar opportunities with Michelle. She’s the bomb.
We have big families, and we’re big people. How big I needn’t tell you who are annually trampled in Trafalgar Square and butted across Hyde Park by herds of Guernseysized American tourists. Michelle Obama, in fact, is considered the Twiggy of America. Even our wispy left-wing intellectual types are … you’ve seen Michael Moore.
We’re big people from a big country. We like our elbow room so well that we carry it around with us. We can’t stand to be squished together as if we were sitting in the backseat of a Nissan Micra or living in England. And in our big country we’re in a big hurry. When we drive an immense Lincoln Navigator we get to where we’re going sooner, or at least the front part of our car does, though it may be a long walk to the bumper. Plus, you know what kind of a mess the kids make on long trips. With rear footwells the size of Loch Lomond, we never clean up the soda cans and candy wrappers. We trade in for a new Navigator at ten thousand miles.
An SUV is very safe in a collision—safe for me, because I drive one. You, who don’t, are crushed like a garden slug. Although, in fairness, SUVs are equipped with features designed to improve survivability for occupants of the other vehicles involved in SUV crashes. High ground clearance gives you—if you jump out of your Opel Astra and throw yourself flat on the pavement—a better than even chance to survive being run over.
There is something of a safety problem with SUVs flipping and landing in ditches on their roofs as a result of encounters with curbs, potholes, or too thickly painted highway center lines. But we Americans don’t mind this, given our national propensity to turn the world upside down. Also, we regard these incidents as an answer to the oft-voiced criticism that SUVs aren’t really used off-road. This is a baseless attack anyway. America is a country with widespread muck and mire, as you may have noticed in our recent presidential election campaign.
Perhaps we SUV owners don’t go into the wilderness very often. But such is the weather in America that the wilderness frequently comes to us. Bushes, trees, surf, sand, and whole chunks of scenery are delivered to our places of residence by hurricane and tornado winds. Our mobile home may blow away but, by gosh, our Dodge Durango is right there in the driveway where we parked it.
America is a practical nation. SUVs provide practical solutions to the problems Americans face. Americans have a lot of baggage—backpacks, fanny packs, laptops, beer coolers, blame for everything that’s wrong in the world. Try armorplating your Mercedes Smart Car.
Americans have cumbersome hobbies. Tie an ultralight aircraft on your Ford Ka’s luggage rack, put a Jet Ski and a dirt bike in the back, and tow a dune buggy. Now you’re ready for a typical American afternoon in the park. We don’t go in for train spotting or darts.
Animals on the road are another consideration. You have cats, dogs, bunny rabbits. We have moose. (And Sarah Palin.) Hit a moose in your VW Polo and the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals will be picketing to save you. (Survive hitting a moose and you run the further risk of Sarah Palin showing up at your house and offering to cook.)
Americans demand convenient parking. Conveniently, SUVs can be parked—squash, crush—anywhere.
SUVs provide America with economic stimulus. Replacing parking meters, fire hydrants, street signs, gates, fences, decorative plantings, HANDICAPPED ONLY markers, bumpers, fenders, hoods, and trunk lids that have been backed into by SUVs is a multibillion-dollar business in the United States, and provides tens of thousands of jobs.
Americans are very competitive. America’s state and local transport authorities make roads longer and wider. America’s automobile companies make cars longer and wider.
And Americans love media attention. Being on television so defines American life that there is now more “reality TV” in America than there is discernible reality. SUVs are easier for television station helicopters to spot during the live televised car chases that all Americans dream of being featured in.
America is also an idealistic nation. Americans drive SUVs for the good of mankind. Think of the vicious wars fought over petroleum resources. SUVs turn oil into dirty air. Nobody fights wars over dirty air. When all the oil is gone the people of the Middle East will be able to go back to being “Sand French.” And the sooner America’s SUVs use up that oil, the sooner global warming can be halted. Meanwhile, melting of the polar ice caps threatens to put Washington, D.C., under ten feet of water. Is that a bad thing? And whether it is or isn’t, you Brit sightseers will be needing an SUV to make your way through the swamped Mall to the submerged Air and Space Museum.
There is, of course, the Freudian aspect of SUVs. Driving an SUV is an affirmation of manhood, an expression of machismo, an undeniably phallic experience. That said, my wife has a much larger SUV than I do. Her GMC Yukon XL was made in America. My Land Rover Discovery was made in Britain. Out of consideration for the amour propre of male writer and male readers alike, perhaps we should drop this subject. (Personally, I think American women like vast SUVs because, standing beside one, they look svelte by comparison. Ouch! No, honey, the Kia doesn’t make your butt look big. Honest.)
Speaking of hurt feelings, you’d be better off in England if you had leviathan SUVs like we do. You could have avoided the entire fox hunting ban kerfuffle. Get a Ford Expedition EL. There’s room in the back for the horses, the riders, the dogs, and the fox. You can slip the whole lot right past the furious people in anoraks.
It’s this kind of preservation of freedom that’s behind America’s passion for SUVs. The real truth is that we need sport utility vehicles to carry our concealed weapons. Sticking them down the waistband of our pants doesn’t work with AK-47s, .50-caliber machine guns, bazookas, and so forth. Why do Americans love these monstrous and threatening devices? Because the whole world is angry at America for driving SUVs—and for a few other things we’ve done lately. We may have to shoot everybody. If anti-Americanism gets any worse, Oprah will be giving away Hummers.