By necessity, I found myself behind the wheel of a rented 2005 Jeep Liberty, with Sirius Radio and all the bells and whistles. Wow. It feels good to be a little higher than most of the other vehicles, and driving an SUV gives you the invincible big car feeling that inspires old men to buy Cadillacs and other land yachts when they retire. I consoled myself that the Jeep Liberty was not really all that big and that the gas mileage was not too atrocious. Besides, nobody I knew would see me and think I was one of those socially irresponsible SUV driving, gas guzzling, warmongering, selfish bast**ds. It felt good to drive that Jeep, but it also went against my values of simplicity and rejection of ostentatious display. I am not an SUV person. I don't want a McMansion or a snout house, and I will never join any kind of country club. I am a pick-up truck person (or would be if my wife would let me have one).
But I find myself trying to rationalize getting a smallish SUV. After all, some very nice people have them. My friend Bob, one of the best people on earth, drives an Envoy, a monstrous vehicle that can handle his dogs and his wife's scooter in comfort as they travel to and from their place in the Poconos and home in Yonkers. I can see where an SUV would be just the thing for a busy family on the go, a great combination of passenger and cargo capacity. Of course, my wife and I have no kids, just two big dogs, so we would not ned an Escalade or a Navigator or anything so completely without redeeming qualities. We do a lot of gardening and could use cargo space, and the dogs do get squished up in the car. Maybe a smallish Jeep or something wouldn't be so bad. The Mrs could drive it to the station so there would be less of an issue about gas mileage.
Also, there is a lot of snow where we live, and a heavier vehicle with 4 wheel drive would really come in handy. The Mrs ended up in a snow bank last winter, and I was stranded on a couple of occasions by bad roads. A good husband would have a 4 wheel drive vehicle, wouldn't he?
Besides, the a**wipes who give SUVs a bad name are nowadays going for the really big ones, like Hummers and such, or for extended cab full size pick-up trucks. Very few people would see us in our smallish, sensible SUV and think we were a**wipes.
Besides, maybe I have been too judgmental. It may have been wrong to use gigantic SUV driving (and vanity plates) as a shortcut for weeding out people I do not want to know. They might have quintuplets or a wheelchair or something. Maybe they feel inadequate in other areas, and the big vehicle is all that stands between them and suicide. Maybe, they cut back in other areas (like crazy recycling or something) so as to mitigate the damage to the environment. And maybe their oil and gas come from Texas or Mexico so there is no issue of supporting terrorists. Who am I to judge?
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