Do You Remember the SUVasaurus?

by Benjamin Jones on November 20, 2008

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjY5f4zdk-I

Suzuki, the Japanese car company that produced the ubiquitous Geo Metro back in the day, is all about their new “Live Large. Drive Small” campaign. Even though Suzuki makes a small SUV called the Grand Vitara, the company is mostly know internationally for cars like the Swift (Metro in the US) and its Japanese Kei cars.

Now, the real question is whether this gimmick is true to life or just a marketing tactic based on what Suzuki wishes was true. Having been at the LA Auto Show all day, I can tell you first hand that neither on roads nor in the showroom is the SUV dead. While many more of the SUVs featured this time around were hybrids or E85-capable vehicles, there was no shortage of them.

In fact, some of the SUVs the car companies are labeling a “new style” of SUV were on hand and still under-performing as far as fuel economy goes. A friend of mine has the pleasure of test driving a Ford Flex as part of the EcoDrivingUSA program, but was only able to manage 14.1 mpg with it. Not to trash the Flex in particular, but I don’t think we can throw the towel in on the SUV just yet?

What’re your thoughts? Will we ever be free of the SUV or will they just get lower in numbers and greener?

If you liked this post, sign up for out RSS Feed for automatic updates.

Popularity: 1% [?]

{ 2 comments }

1 99metro November 21, 2008 at 10:31 am

Pretty soon the definition of “Green” will be anything that gets above 10 MPG of whatever “eco” fuel is being sold at the time…

Ford has about 15 SUVs in their lineup, GM has about 47, and Chrysler has about 10. I can’t believe that a “green” vehicle gets 14.1 MPG. I wonder what their non-green vehicles get?

They just don’t get it…IMO

2 Neil November 27, 2008 at 1:02 am

My definition of ‘green’ is not needing to employ the term MPG.

Comments on this entry are closed.