Annals of Design: Why So Many SUVs & Pickups, and Why So Dumb-Looking?

Remember modern cars?  You know, in that brief period when everything was getting sleeker and closer to the road, when American manufacturers were finally abandoning pushrods for overhead cams, and live rear axles for independent suspension. A time when Ford outsold the competition from Japan, and all other cars too, with the Taurus. And those other cars were getting more aerodynamic and weight-conscious as well, reflecting a seemingly universal concern for fuel efficiency... 

  

In 1993, Ford celebrated its success with their 2nd generation Taurus.  Wonder what the top selling vehicle was that year?  It was Ford's F150 pickup.  The not-so-aero styling was a holdover from the 80s, but popularity of pickups was on the rise, spurred by the success of the compact Japanese imported pickups and also by advertising...

By 1997, when Ford went for the aero look for their new F Series, advertising of pickups and SUVs was in the midst of a boom. Car manufacturers claimed they were just giving customers what they wanted, but between 1990 and 2000, SUV advertising jumped ninefold.  When you spend 1.5 billion bucks telling people what they should want, it's not surprising that hordes of them decide they want that very thing...  

Pickups ads and commercials were mostly aimed at men, but SUV ads aimed appeals to women based on the faulty notion that bigger, heavier vehicles were Inevitably safer. In fact, because of their high center of gravity and slower transitional response, SUVs were involved in more single car accidents during this period than any other types of car. Those ads worked anyway; by 1999 about 40% of SUV sales were to women.  Recent data indicates that pedestrians experience more fatalities in accidents involving SUVs. Then there's the fact that SUVs average 20% higher fuel consumption than cars.  Early in the boom, Nissan advertised its SUVs with the tagline "You may run out of planet."  Well, yeah...

It all seemed to start with the move of urbanites to the suburbs, a trend that was evident when Chevrolet offered its first Carryall Suburban in 1934; the one below is a '37 all-steel model. You may also recall a Plymouth Suburban, a conventional wagon based on a car. The "Suburban" name was trademarked by U.S. Body & Forging of Indiana, a company that built wagon bodies for GM, Chrysler, Nash and Studebaker, all of whom used the name at one time or another.  After the end of World War 2, the steady flow of city dwellers to suburbia became a flood, and truck-based wagons began to sell to customers who didn't own farms, hotels or inns.  (By the way, that's what Chevy called a "diamond crown speedline grille" on that '37.  My dad had a '37 sedan for awhile.)

Well, late in 1962 the Kaiser Jeep people did something original; they combined a new body designed by Brooks Stevens with their new single overhead cam inline six and added four-wheel drive, with options like independent front suspension and even automatic transmission.  We didn't know it then, but we were looking at the first SUV, and by the late 70s this long-serving replacement for the humble Willys Jeep wagon was the car to have among country club types in Denver suburbs.  

Readers of a certain age may remember the comic exaggerations of 60s car ad illustrations, where Wide Track Pontiacs looked a whole lane wide, and front seats looked as wide and flat as Nebraska wheat fields.  Well, have you looked at a Suburban lately?  No wonder it needs a 42 gallon fuel tank and only gets 16 mpg.  Not all SUVs and pickups are huge, but in the first 4 months of 2022 they took almost 73% of the US car market.  Why are they so popular?  Well, the profit incentive behind those commercials is one answer.  According to Automotive News*,  SUVs and crossovers averaged around 50% higher in price than standard cars.  And owing to the way the fuel economy standards are written, vehicles classed as SUVs (including crossovers with unitized bodies like cars, rather than separate truck frames) also get a break on their mileage standards.  And the more SUVs a car maker sells, the lower the bar is for their corporate average mileage.    

The EV tax credits that are part of the Inflation Reduction act also favor SUVs.  If you buy an electric car, you're eligible for a tax credit on purchases up to $55,000. For SUVs, though, you can get a tax credit on vehicles costing up to $80,000.  And of course, a big electric SUV will be using around 20% more energy than an electric car, which may be of concern if that electricity is coming from a coal or gas-fired power plant.  And most big SUVs, like the gas-powered Yukon XL below, seem designed to flaunt the whole idea of consumption, with no recognition that every vehicle, no matter how it's powered, needs to slice through the air...

Stellantis now offers the bloated Jeep Grand Wagoneer L below as competition for the Suburban and Yukon XL. With a 6,700 lb. curb weight (50% more than the original) and on a 130" wheelbase (20" longer than the original), it probably wouldn't exist without those SUV-friendly fuel economy standards.  Fuel consumption is the same as the Suburban, here owing to the use of a 510 hp twin-turbo inline six.

Rivian, which began with an exclusive contract to make electric vans for Amazon, first offered the R1T 4-door electric pickup, and now offers the R1S SUV below in various configurations ranging in price from $78k to $90k.  Styling is not as adventurous as the all-electric premise, except for those cartoonish headlights.  Unlike driving a Grand Wagoneer though, you'll never need to stop at a gas station except to use the bathroom...

In 2015 Ford moved to bodying all its F150s in aluminum to save weight.  Starting in spring of 2022 they offered their all-electric Lightning pickup, and that has an aluminum chassis in addition to the alloy body panels.  Base price was about $23k less than the Rivian truck, and sales were good.  The concern for weight-saving didn't carry across to aerodynamics; the style is standard-issue truck, outlined with some zappy lighting.  Judged against other pickups, though, the Lightning looks like progress.

*Footnote:  

For facts and perspectives, we consulted David Goewey's 1999 article "Careful, You May Run Out of Planet", then "The Real Reason Americans Keep Buying SUVs", by Arian Horbovetz at Streetsblog USA (usa.streetsblog.org) from Nov. 15, 2022, and Elizabeth Kolbert's essay, "Why SUVs Are Still a Huge Environmental Problem", from the March 3, 2023 issue of the New Yorker.  Kolbert points out that France has introduced a purchase tax of ten Euros per kilogram for every vehicle over 4,000 pounds, and Washington, D.C. now has escalating purchase taxes for vehicles over 3,500 pounds.

Photo Credits:  

Top thru 3rd from top:  Ford Motor Company

4th & 5th:  Wikimedia

6th:  Kaiser Jeep Corporation

7th & 8th:  General Motors

9th:  Stellantis N.V.

11th:  Wikimedia

12th:  Ford Motor Company