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Gold/Mining/Energy : Big Dog's Boom Boom Room -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: profile_14 who wrote (33333)	7/4/2004 9:56:44 AM
From: quehubo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 206100

<<The SUVs are driven by moms, mostly, and they are the upscale models of all types -- not for necessity but for status and looks.>> I dont really care if everyone wants to drive an SUV. I do wish gasoline costs reflected their true cost, which would include the military cost of keeping the Persian Gulf protected. These costs are being financed today and our kids will pay. When gasoline prices are high enough people will use their SUV when they need it, otherwise they may decide to use the other car with 50-100% better efficiency.

To: profile_14 who wrote (33333)	7/4/2004 1:23:44 PM
From: Night Trader	Respond to of 206100

There was an excellent New Yorker piece on SUVS a few months ago that's archived here: gladwell.com Extract: Bradsher brilliantly captures the mixture of bafflement and contempt that many auto executives feel toward the customers who buy their S.U.V.s. Fred J. Schaafsma, a top engineer for General Motors, says, "Sport-utility owners tend to be more like 'I wonder how people view me,' and are more willing to trade off flexibility or functionality to get that." According to Bradsher, internal industry market research concluded that S.U.V.s tend to be bought by people who are insecure, vain, self-centered, and self-absorbed, who are frequently nervous about their marriages, and who lack confidence in their driving skills. Ford's S.U.V. designers took their cues from seeing "fashionably dressed women wearing hiking boots or even work boots while walking through expensive malls." Toyota's top marketing executive in the United States, Bradsher writes, loves to tell the story of how at a focus group in Los Angeles "an elegant woman in the group said that she needed her full-sized Lexus LX 470 to drive up over the curb and onto lawns to park at large parties in Beverly Hills." One of Ford's senior marketing executives was even blunter: "The only time those S.U.V.s are going to be off-road is when they miss the driveway at 3 a.m."