After paying $75 to fill his black Dodge Ram pickup truck for the third time in a week, Douglas Chrystall couldn’t take it anymore. Feeling pinched at the pump, and guilty as well, Chrystall, a 39-year-old father from Wellesley, is putting ads online to sell the truck, and the family’s other gas-guzzler, a Jeep Grand Cherokee. He knows it will be tough to unload them because he is one of a growing number of consumers downsizing to smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. Americans are turning away from the boxy, four-wheel-drive vehicles that have for years dominated the nation’s highways. Sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks – symbols of Americans’ obsession with horsepower, size, and status – are falling out of favor as consumers rich and poor encounter sticker shock at the pump, paying upward of $80 to fill gas tanks. “The SUV craze was a bubble and now it is bursting,” said George Hoffer, an economics professor at Virginia Commonwealth University whose research focuses on the automotive industry. “It’s an irrational vehicle. It’ll never come back.”
With stocks of unwanted new SUVs and pickups piling up at dealerships across the country, automakers are offering unprecedented promotions. Incentives for large SUVs, including cash rebates, topped $4,000 in March, or more than double those offered in March 2002, according to Edmunds.com, which monitors the motor industry.
I think I’ll hang on to mine at least until the election. Besides, I may need it for shelter, until then I’ll be riding a different Hog.
It took me a long time to understand the popularity of these “trucks.” To me it’s not a TRUCK if it can’t haul at least 15 or 20 sheets of 4′ x 8′ plywood or drywall, and I mean lying flat in the bed with the tailgate closed, not leaning up on the wheel well and sticking out the back. Some of these things have beds that are not even four feet LONG! They look like toys! My parents’ station wagon could haul more groceries than one of these “trucks.” The only reason to have one is to be able to say “I drive a truck.” Like that makes me the Marlboro Man or something.
And make no mistake: we will never see $2 gas again. It is as gone as the dodo. We’ll be lucky if it doesn’t hit $20 in the next 5-10 years.
I have a medium sized Peugeot Diesel car, it’s not huge but will sit four adults comfortably and still has a decent sized boot. I get an average of 68mpg, I just don’t know why people have to drive SUV’s (excluding for business reasons).
HA HA Sucker. Deal with it. If you can pay 600 a month for a pickup truck so that your wife can put groceries in the payload then you can afford these gas prices. I guess the new term is “Car Poor” Instead of “House Poor”
Here in the banana republic of Canada gas is $1.30 a litre or about $85 to fill an Explorer. The stupid thing here is the higher gas price is mostly taxes. Believe it or not only about 2% of the “road tax” actually is spent on road repair and improvements. That’s why Canadians traveling across Canada go down to the northern states to travel east or west. The Trans Canada Highway 1 is only two lanes across western Ontario.
Time to get rid of the gas hog? I started buying gas friendly cars in 1975. I still have my CVCC Civic 5 speed that get 44mpg and drive it to work on rainy days. The rest of the time it’s scooter time. I love screaming at the pump as it takes my $8.00 each weekly fillup.
You know I really mis the geo metro. I had one of those cars years ago, and loved the little thing, Chevy needs to start selling them again. 50 mpg, with a very basic engine was nice.
That being said, if someone wants to buy a large vehicle, I don’t really have a problem with it. But, I think it should be a law, that if you complain about filling up said large vehicle at the gas station, then the other people their should be able to beat you over the head with a tire iron. I mean what did you expect? That gas prices were going to stay at $2 a gal. forever?
I’ll add in one factor for people who think the prices are going to keep going up. You may be right that they’ll go up for awhile, but the price is basically a war premium. Oil right now is double its historical price. A barrel of oil hovers around 1/15 the price of an ounce of gold for decades. That comes out right now to about $60 a barrel.
That doesn’t mean gas prices will drop in half, since part of the runup has to do with refining capacity and the different blends used in America.
#32 – I just don’t know why people have to drive SUV’s (excluding for business reasons).
They don’t have to unless its just to keep their cocks hard.
(excluding for business reasons, of course)
I wish this trent would hit here in the Houston area. Still tons of “soccer moms” driving Hummers or Navigators and the like and leaving the car on while they wait for 45 minutes for school to be out so they can pick up their one kid and take the two of them to the grocery store.
I wish this trend would hit here in the Houston area. Still tons of “soccer moms” driving Hummers or Navigators and the like and leaving the car on while they wait for 45 minutes for school to be out so they can pick up their one kid and take the two of them to the grocery store.
#32,
the SUVs are roomier. Perhaps if Nixon hadn’t implemented the original CAFE fuel limits, these people would be driving the big cars that you could buy before. Now the only roomy choices are minivans and SUVs, which get even less mileage.
>>Perhaps if Nixon hadn’t implemented the
>>original CAFE fuel limits, these people
>>would be driving the big cars that you
>>could buy before.
Perhaps if we had a government with even one ball, they’d be taking mass transit or driving the 100mpg cars that everyone said were “right around the corner” during the 1973 fuel embargo. Whatever happened to them? Everybody freaked out when gas went over $1.00/gal, and we were supposed to get incredible gas mileage in just a year or two. I realize that the abuse heaped on people driving “jap cars” and “rice burners” may have slowed things down a little, but jeez. It’s 35 years later.
How about removing all the excessive stop lights small towns buy as status symbols everytime they collect a few bucks more at the parking meters.
The same parking meters that drive people away from the business sections, where they place all those energy wasteful stop lights in order to allow curb side window shopping while waiting for the light to change.
Getting the mass of a vehicle in motion again requires enough energy to propel it three miles down a flat roadway./
And the CEO of GM is STILL THE CEO OF GM (why?), and is losing 2-3 BILLION DOLLARS and DANCING ON THE CRUSHED BODIES OF THE EV1s !!!
Oh quit whining!!! You guys got it easy still…
I spend 52 Euros to fill my Civic’s 40 liter tank. And it is good for 350 Km on highway.
We’ve got one of the most expensive fuels in the world. And we average half to one third the American income for similar jobs.
So there…
#32 – Because they have to get somewhere. Try driving 50 miles with a foot of unplowed snow on the road. (Anyone who says “stay home” can blow me – We’re Americans – we should be controlling the weather, not be controlled by it.)
Soon only the wealthy will be able to drive something worthy of an American. The hybrid Escalade is out but the damn thing costs too much. It is a step in the right direction though.
Oh yeah, I’ve looked at maps of mass transit systems, and they don’t go anywhere worth being.
Actually I would say it’s OK to compromise if a husband and a wife each have a V8 powered realvehicle and each have a commuter shitbox. The one problem there is you have to have a five car garage minimum not counting any cars for the kids….
#45 – Oh quit whining!!! You guys got it easy still…
Whatever… I don’t know which European country you live in, but whichever one it is, we have cornfields that are bigger.
I don’t like it, but car culture is rather rammed down our throats and the only way to get from Where I Am to Where I Have To Go is by long mindnumbing time and gas consuming car.
I’m just saying… Europe and America are outrageously different places and what works for one isn’t necessarily what works for the other.
I spend 52 Euros to fill my Civic’s 40 liter tank. And it is good for 350 Km on highway.
I have no idea how much money that is, what size your tank is, or how far you drove on that… but that you are getting rodgered in the arse isn’t justification for us also to get deep core drilled in the bum too.
We’ve got one of the most expensive fuels in the world.
Oh now… I’ll bet it costs the same, but you are just getting bilked more.
And we average half to one third the American income for similar jobs.
So there…
Yet your rates of poverty, crime, violence, etc., are lower as are your rates for heart attack and diabetes, and your literacy rates are higher and… and… and… and just what the hell are you complaining about?
Nobody kid themselves. The Gov’t is making twice as much off gas as oil companies. If we really did reduce consumption you wouldn’t believe the rush to new taxes to replace the lost revenue. We’re screwed no matter what. We might as well be screwed in nice vehicles.
Hurrah!! The city I’m in just got rated the most expensive gas in the country! 133.9 per L. in Victoria 🙂
#48 – I’ll give you that driving can be mind numbing at times. Say you’re 3 hours into a nice recreational drive and you realize you’ve got 5-8 hours left. That can be mind numbing, but tough it out for a couple more hours and then you hit second wind and it becomes nirvana.
Nothing like hours and hours on an empty freeway to make life worthwhile.
Good grief. I just drove my latest vehicle home last Friday. 50gal fuel tank and maybe 8 miles per gallon
Weighs almost 14,000 pounds and it runs on diesel, vegetable oil, fuel oil, kerosene, used motor oil, gasoline or used hydraulic fluid.
No muffler and turbo powered and it blows black smoke everywhere. Screw Algore.
Navigator? Hummer H2? Tahoe? Escalade? Just toys to me.