(Eyes glazed over) safer and better visibility.
Dacia makes a large seven-seat crossover that weighs 1205kg and has a three-pot one-litre engine. The Mk4 MX-5 weighs virtually the same as the Mk1 did 35 years ago. The i3 weighed between 1200kg and 1350kg, and that's an EV.
SUVs have become overweight and bloated, they may survive but they need to lose weight and mass and become smaller, think Skoda Yeti. They will be legislated away, the same way diesel has been and the same way higher polluting petrol cars are being taxed off the roads. You want to drive a car that's too big for the roads and weighs more than, say, 1500kg? You can pay for it in higher tax.
"A man of little significance"
This keeps happening, and these calling cards left, near my friends house:
I don’t like most SUVs but mainly on an aesthetic. But that’s not exclusive to SUVs. There are shed-loads of bland generic cars at the moment.
I don’t like that combustion engine SUVs are probably not as eco as we should be making new cars - and I don’t think the current format for electric vehicles is the solution - but I keep my neck wound in as I drive a Beemer with a massive engine and an old mental turbo’d Impreza
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Last edited by notenoughwrists; 8th March 2024 at 12:57.
The same rules apply for SUVs and performance cars so I don't see the difference. If a car is more polluting, it will be taxed more. More performance is no better a justification for more pollution than weight, so why should taxation specifically account for weight? Pollution is pollution regardless.
And not all SUVs are heavier, we're picking up a Skoda Karoq with a 1 litre engine at the weekend. It is comparable to the equivalent Skoda Octavia Estate in terms of weight, performance and space.
Years ago I was tasked with planning to plan the relining of all the forecourt parking lines, first plan was binned by the GM for not enough spaces, I told him I’d need to to make the spaces smaller to fit more in, his answer, make them just big enough to get our second largest vehicle in, and only just big enough to open one door, done. The big stuff didnt sell in enough numbers to get worried about, popular stuff sells and makes our profit, I got quite a few extra spaces in, if folk couldn’t get their big car? in the used the retail park and walked across the road!
Or better still hatchback. Sad to see Ford end production of the Fiesta in favor of a larger/taller model (Puma). The vast majority of journeys are local and many drivers appear to have given up trying to fit in the parking spaces at supermarkets.
Mrs H drives an SUV - claims it is so she can see through the rear and front windscreen of the vehicle in front, but we both know its an image thing really. I'll keep on in my Mini thanks.
I’ve just ordered a new electric car - ideally I’d have had an estate, but other than a really horrible MG there are no EV estates. I’ve ended up with a 2wd Nissan Ariya which is, I guess, an SUV. I could have got a Tesla Y but I despise Musk, so that was never an option.
The Ariya is 2100kg, the Mercedes it replaces is 1800kg. More, but hardly life-changingly so. The Nissan is 4” taller than the Merc, a boon to my knackered left hip.
There are larger hills to die on.
One of the guys at works just got a Puma, that was just ease of access as he was struggling to get into his focus and looked at loads of options. The mini SUV seems to have become the norm for older folk now.
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For most people, a car is a tool. So it's no surprise that people will tend to move towards a car that is more comfortable to use day-in day-out.
In the same way that if you had a choice between two knives but you found the handle awkward on one and not the other - you would prefer the one you can use comfortably.