MinisterofDOOM wrote:I definitely agree about not making so many car models if they're all basically the same. I also find it very stupid when manufacturers share components between different types. Example: Toyota Highlander. Based on a CAMRY! W! T! F! And the most frightening thing there is that Toyota's not the only one doing this. The Pathfinder and Trailblazer are the only truck based midsize SUVs left. Why in the blazes would anyone buy a four wheel drive vehicle based on a CAR!? I have big issues with the way the automotive market works lately. That's one of the main reasons my two favorite car manufacturers are who they are; because Nissan and Cadillac tend to avoid doing crap like that. Cadillac makes a car-based SUV, but it's meant more as a station wagon.
How many SUV owners take their SUV's offroading? I mean 100% going down some rocky path offroading, not driving down a gravel road. I think you will find it's something like maybe 10%. Now take the small percentage of 4x4 owners that actually use the 4x4 capability of the car to do the same thing. What you end up with is a very small minority of owners that actually use the SUV as a 4x4 off road vehicle. So now it should be more than obvious why Nissan and a number of other companies use a unibody chassis to build their 4x4 small SUV's.
The automotive market never favors the enthusiast... it favors the daily person driving their 2.5 kids to soccer practice that likes to be totally oblivious that anything is around them. So cars will continue to have more and more focus on that individuals wants... some of which are obvious. Like more space, more seats, more power, more driving assist features, more airbags than a mini truck show, and other crap that basically adds up to the 4-ton tank that guzzles gas faster than a Top Fuel funny car and can take out about 50 other cars when the driver decides to do something apart from driving.
MinisterofDOOM wrote:Oh, and that brings up another cross-vehicle-type bit of idiocy that drives me nuts: Subaru. They pass off their WAGONS as SUVs. Structurally, the Forester is no more of an SUV than an AWD G35, but somehow it's still classified as an SUV. It's NOT. It's a damn station wagon. But for some reason that's a bad word now...Congrats to Dodge for making their mainstay vehicle a stationwagon and not trying to disguise it as an "SUV."
You should take a few classes on market analysis and advertising. It's all in how you word things. All an SUV is, is a large truck based station wagon. Someone came up with the idea of the name "SUV" back in the day and it stuck.
If you look at Subaru's nomenclature in Japan you'll find a different story. Wagon's are popular to some extent, and the coined term SUV is not commonplace because the Japanese don't need quasi-Sherman tanks for daily drivers