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| Cool | 44% | 103 votes | Total: 236 votes | |
| Uncool | 56% | 133 votes |
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Add to FavoritesAlthough there are many people out there who'll buy just about anything in order to impress, most of the times an SUV says a great deal about it's owner.
The young twenty-one year old who just supped up his father's old Suburban or International. He's young, good looking, and in pretty good shape; this will impress most of the under twenty-five crowd (women for most part), and if you have the six-pack body to go with it, this should get you plenty of dates.
Of course for the over forty-crowd, a new Cadillac, Lincoln, Lexus, Infiniti, Rover, Porsche, Audi, etc: should get plenty of attention.
If you drive up in a Land Rover, you pretty much blow everyone out of the water. As most British automobiles are, the Rover is no exception to the rule: gorgeous wood, the best money leather can buy, plus an exuberant looking interior like only the Brits can do!
The Porsche Cayenne is another one. This one tells the world you're more into performance than into looks (as most German cars are vs. British). Of course you can load up a Cayenne, and when it's all said and done: it's $110.000, most Rovers don't even make it to the $100,000 mark, but depending how you load them up; there are a few out there costing over $100,000; cool is the only thing that comes to mind when speaking of this vehicle.
The Cadillac Escalade is another one. Most Escalades don't make it to the $75,000 mark, but again: depending on how you decide to load them up, there are a few out there. The Cayenne and the Rover look better amongst the over forty crow, but if you're in your early thirties; an Escalade should the job more than well.
The Audi is another excellent choice, and for automobile buffs out there; everyone knows nothing handles like an Audi does. So for those of you interested in the Audi version of an SUV (the Q7, of whom both the Cayenne, and the VW Toureg are based on), should do pretty good as well.
Lincoln is another choice. Lincoln's have always looked great, and both: the Navigator, and the MKX are excellent choices.
Lexus also offers SUV's like any other upscale brand does. They offer three choices in SUV: RX, GX, and LX; although the RX is really a cross-over vehicle, it can also function as an SUV pretty well, the RX350 is relatively reasonable, but the RX400H (the hybrid), is well over $50,000.
Last but not least is: Infiniti. Infiniti's are great handling cars, sometimes even outdoing their main rival (only rival, since they are the two most upscale brands from Japan) Lexus in performance and handling. They have many different choices just like Lexus, and any of the above aforementioned.
To rap up this article: I do think SUV's give a pretty good image to their owners, of course there are a few out there that for most part don't. One such example is: the excursion. I don't know who ever thought up of that vehicle, but if they made it any bigger than they did; it would require tracks.
Learn more about this author, John Sarkis.
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Uncool
If you travel to Edinburgh, Scotland, you will see a lot of SUVs, mostly driven by parents on what we call the 'school run'. These vehicles have never been driven on ground more rough than a worn tar macadam surfaced parking lot. Their experience of hill climbing consists of no more than going over speed bumps outside their child's school.
The chances are, they have never even engaged four-wheel drive, ever. Except in maybe in that one-inch of snow we had last winter. So why do these people drive these cars? Well, apparently, they are 'cool' and safer than an ordinary car.
What's cool about driving something with all the subtly of a tank, and which guzzles fuel as if it is going out of fashion. Because of the additional chassis fitted for this off road work, which these cars never do, and of course the extra prop shafts, the SUVs weigh an inordinate amount. The SUV ends up using most of its fuel just to haul its empty carcass about.
As for safety, half the people driving these SUVs are scared of them because of their size. Especially in the streets of Edinburgh, which are not wide, and are normally lined with parked cars, you find that these things take up way too much room. As for parking spaces, some SUVs overhang the official parking spaces, and make it almost impossible for other cars to park in the adjoining spaces.
Sure, you are sitting higher, so your view around you is improved, but your driving something that is way too heavy and big for most roads in Scotland. There are plenty of smaller cars available now, with vastly improved fuel consumption over what an SUV will give you. These cars will also give you that higher driving position and are just as safe.
So why go for the SUV? We must be back to the cool thing again. I must apologise to all SUV owners out there, I didn't realise that a major part of being cool, is to empty the contents of your wallet into your fuel tank and bankrupt yourself just to go to the store and back.
I must at this point admit to something. I do have a confession to make, I owned an SUV for a couple of years, and I loved it. Why did I get rid of it then? Quite simply, I used the four-wheel drive twice in two years. The rest of the time, like the majority of SUV owners, I just carried all that engineering around 'just in case'. I also found it annoying that I was making Shell, BP, etc very, very rich by buying way too much of their product than I really needed to.
As a final note, if you drive a large SUV nowadays, most onlookers will not be looking at you and thinking mmm there goes a cool dude. They are more likely to consider you to be a bit of a waste of space, to put it mildly.
So why don't you admit it, you will never use, nor really need the four wheel drive facility, and lets face it, most of us are not as cool as we think we are. Even when we try really, really hard, or think we're driving the coolest thing on four wheels.
Learn more about this author, Mo Bruce.
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