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• Sunday, January 4, 2009 08:38 PM

  Wow! How did we ever survive before SUVs?

  I mean, my mom and aunts (one of whom had 6 kids) and dozens-thousands-millions of people seemed to manage just fine for the first 4/5ths of the 20th century without SUVs.

  We had dogs, horses (so had to pick up hay and grain bags) and even friends ; my dad hauled boats, trailers and various building materials with the station wagon; we put chains on the tires for winter and rolled down the windows in summer (no AC).

  I agree, if you live in a rural area or have a rural lifestyle, ONE truck or SUV is completely understandable and could even be argued essential.

  But in suburbia? Please.

  Or maybe you're one of those rare two parent families that only has one car (in the US; in Australia where I live now, there are many, MANY families that own only one car, including mine). If so, perhaps that makes up for the unmitigated solipsism of buying an SUV at this juncture in the planet's survival.

  When I got my license I dreamed of a 1968 Camaro. Several years later, fate intervened and I got my dream car. I spent 1000s of hours and even more $$ restoring, re-painting, refitting, tuning, etc, that huge heavy chunk of Detroit steel, and I loved every minute of it. This was the 80s, however, and I often felt torn between my environmental activism (yes, Virginia, the 80s hosted an ENORMOUS environmental push) and my gas guzzler (it got 22 MPG on the highway as well, however. I thought that was just awful!), and when I smashed it in a rainstorm, rather than restore/rebuild it, I bought a Volkswagon.

  Even though my passion for muscle cars has never completely waned, I have put it (as well as my love of tuna and other problematic/endangered food sources) firmly behind me and am trying to move on to a new ethic.

  I find the sort of rich liberalism you exemplify to be, frankly, the biggest barrier to that new ethic.

  And on a completely tangential but equally frustrating (to me) note, when did 30 MPG become HIGH mileage?

  I remember in the 70s there was a VW Rabbit that got up to 80 MPG on the highway. There were LOTS of cars that got between 40 and 50 MPG.

  When/why/how did we come to accept such low standards?

  —Morgaine16 Read Morgaine16's other letters
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