this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
1091 points (92.9% liked)
Technology
59339 readers
5284 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It was all marketing. It always was. They made more money selling pickups and evading CAFE standards. So how do they convince people to buy more pickups? Slap a shell on it. Then pay Hollywood to slander minivans and wagons. When wagons become moderately popular again in the 2000's you just drop the chassis lower and sell the SUV as a wagon. (Looking at you Ford and Dodge)
The SUV production line is the car companies' swiss army knife. They can get 3 out of 4 form factors out of it. That's all it ever was. And the entire off roading community is sitting on the biggest secret that the biggest weapons aren't super special. AWD, a low gear, a moderate lift, and a manual transmission are enough to go most places. Once AWD was commonly available car companies needed something else to sell as off-roading. But the most common utility vehicle in poor infrastructure areas is still the Toyota series 70 after 30 years. But even Toyota doesn't want to sell that in the US, because they can make a higher profit on larger vehicles.