Lorraine Complains: The vehicles we buy today are just too big

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Andrew J. Hawkins, a journalist at The Verge (an American technology news website), drove a Cadillac Escalade for a day.

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While he’s a transportation reporter and not a regular vehicle reviewer, that was kinda the point of the exercise, to get impressions from someone outside the industry. He titled the piece “Driving the 2021 Cadillac Escalade was one of the most stressful experiences of my life.”

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Lorraine Complains: The vehicles we buy today are just too big Back to video

His qualms were, largely, that the thing was simply much too big. The sheer bulk of the SUV made for massive blind spots. Parking in his own driveway proved challenging. And the Escalade’s width left him “in a cold sweat while driving on narrow, two-lane suburban roads.”

While the piece had some of us nodding our heads in agreement, the blowback was swift and often ferocious from other quarters. Did he write it intending to draw the clicks and the ire of truck-owners and some of his industry colleagues?

Hardly matters. He was right.

My inbox has been assaulted in recent weeks with manufacturers touting the newest pieces of artillery they’re bringing to the battlefield. Sorry, to our roads. But I could be forgiven for making that mistake.

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Before the article was published, Hawkins posted a picture on Twitter of his kindergartner standing in front of the truck, a single shot that demonstrated one of the biggest problems with the auto industry in North America right now: we are designing, producing, buying, and driving vehicles that are monstrously unsuitable in many of the arenas they are thriving in.

Nearly half of us at this site said the explosion in both sales and size in SUVs was our biggest automotive disappointment in 2019, and things have only gotten worse. It’s been in the making for years; at every successive Detroit auto show, we’d watch sheet after sheet torn off to reveal new trucks and SUVs that weren’t just higher and wider, but more menacing. Don’t believe me? Check out GM’s new Denali concept. It looks ready to storm a terrorist bunker all by itself. 

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I’m not talking about trucks used for heavy-duty work or towing, nor vehicles required for people to do their jobs. It’s not about AWD family-haulers that can get into cottages or ski chalets. We’re locked into a race not just for bigger, but for more intimidating. That’s not an accident.

The Ford F-150 pickup has been the best-selling vehicle (not just truck) in North America for over two decades, though all pickups have participated in and benefited from a growing sector. Much of that early growth was representative of the more rural landscape outside of the major cities frequently accused (often rightfully) of thinking they are the centre of the universe.

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But now? We’re seeing upwards of 75 per cent of new vehicle sales dominated by pickups, SUVs, and CUVs. Many of those crossovers – the RAV4s, the Tuscons, the Escapes –  are basically taller cars, with a higher seating position and more easily accessible cargo space than a sedan’s trunk. Their footprint reflects that, even as manufacturers stretch the spirit of CAFE within an inch of its life.

Manufacturers make the most money on their biggest vehicles. Ford invented the mainstream SUV by tarting up an F-150 with leather and chrome and sat stunned as one of its most workaday vehicles became a perennial hot-seller with a far higher price tag. Everybody else followed suit, and SUVs became more ubiquitous than fruit flies in that bottle of red I left open last night. Our roads were transformed, driving forever changed.

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“We’re giving consumers what they want,” shrug carmakers. OK, guys, but you also have spectacular advertising budgets to tell buyers what them want. Why cram your kids in a boring four-door box when you can haul them around in a “road dominator”? Sure, minivans are the better choice for many families, but the cool factor is — nonexistent. And we all know what happens when everybody has caught up: the field goes bigger. And heavier. And faster. But here we are, at last. We’re at Too Big.

“When you need a suite of high-definition cameras and other expensive sensors to safely drive to the grocery store, there might be something inherently wrong with your design,” says Hawkins. The answer to these behemoths being dangerous on our urban roads is not slapping a band-aid on it; the increased bumper and hood heights of many of these SUVs and pickups mean far deadlier consequences for pedestrians and cyclists.

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We’re locked into a race not just for bigger, but for more intimidating

The occupants have never been safer, a much-touted and valid selling point. I don’t want drivers and passengers to be hurt. But we should also want pedestrians and cyclists not to be killed. Manufacturers are trying to solve problems they themselves created.

Hawkins cited an experiment by a local TV station. “ The Escalade had the largest front blind spot of 10 feet, two inches, with the driver sitting in a natural, relaxed position,” he writes. “It took 13 children seated in a line in front of the Escalade before the driver could see the tops of their heads.” If you’ve driven any of the heavyweights in this segment, you know this is common.

I don’t care how many cameras and sensors a vehicle has: if they’re the only thing predicting a collision because the driver literally can’t see, we are going the wrong way. I won’t even get into blowing snowstorms and all those sensors.

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If I have something like a Navigator or an F-250 as a press car for the week, it takes up over half my driveway, and two spots in a parking lot . Very family-room-ish on longer trips, but they also use three times the fuel my hatchback does. “ They move through traffic with the indifference of basking sharks disrupting sardine shoals,” says a writer friend. It’s one thing to be up so high you feel disconnected to the road and those around you; it’s another when you stop caring because you’re invincible. 

I know I’ll be flayed for my opinion anyway, so when it comes to explaining the rationale for all this excess, I’ll plunk all my chips onto the “toxic masculinity” square, because I have nothing to lose. 

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