Before I dive head-first into this rant, I’ll just say that I DO appreciate four wheel drives/SUV’s (or whatever they’re called where you live) when they’re used for the purposes they’re intended for ie. Negotiating difficult terrain and pulling heavy loads. I also enjoy being in a 4WD when it’s going off-road to some place I’d ordinarily never be able to go in my little car.
BUT...
What is the point of having a four-wheel-drive/SUV if you don’t take if off-road? The majority of people in suburbia who have a 4WD would NOT take them off-road. EVER. The only time the wheels of these vehicles would touch a grain of sand would be the sand between the pavers on their driveways.
The soccer mums with whom these vehicles are so heavily favoured can’t even drive them! They use them to purely to pick the kids up from school/soccer practices/Swahili lessons or whatever, thinking they’re “safe” because they’re up higher and can see over the top of other cars.
Well fortunately for the rest of us, these geniuses in their monster trucks aren’t engineers designing technology and structures for us to use, because they obviously don’t understand the basic concept of how having a high centre of gravity (like that of a 4WD) makes for an unstable and ultimately dangerous structure (think ironing boards...)
If you’re not going to ever take your 4WD off-road, why does it need a bull-bar? I’ll tell you why- for nudging kids out of the way that you can’t see below your 6ft high bumper bar!
4WD are now seen as status symbols, indicating you’re doing quite well for yourself if you have one. Well that much is true, you DO have to be cashed up to be able to afford a 4WD in the first place. You DO need to be rich to afford the expensive tyres they need and in order to pay for the fuel these gas-guzzlers use, well you better hope you discover an oil well in your backyard!
How are these vehicles considered environmentally responsible in today’s “carbon-emission-conscious” times? Did we momentarily forget that they exist? Perhaps the people constantly bleating at us about carbon emissions are 4WD owners?
The standard Rav4 is a very popular model of 4WD in Australia. Now I’ve heard that this vehicle was sold as a 4WD never to be used off-road: the standard model of this thing touting itself as an off-road/all terrain/no-rock-is-too-big vehicle came with a warning NOT to use it off-road because the tyres and suspension supplied by the manufacturer were useless once they left the quiet, smooth bitumen of a suburban street. That’s ridiculous! To me, that’s like selling a bungee cord that isn’t strong enough to bungee jump with:
“Yes ma’am, you’ve just purchased a bungee cord.” “No, you can’t use it for bungee-jumping, because it just wasn’t built for that purpose.”
In Melbourne there was a shop that 4WD owners who use their vehicles purely as commuting tanks would take their 4WD to and PAY for someone to sling dirt on their car giving the facade that they once-in-a-while actually used their 4WD for the purpose it was intended.
Lucky for these suckers who can’t even find their own dirt, a vast amount of Australia is in the grips of a severe drought with tough restrictions on the use of water including bans on washing your cars in many areas. These plebs can now breathe a collective sigh of relief because there’s now so much dirt and dust in the air conveniently landing on their non-off-road 4WD that they no longer have to hit pay-dirt (ie. They’re no longer paying for dirt).
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