Pooh Bear wrote:
Hardly a *Sports* Utility Vehicle though ?

SUVs are sons of the minivans. The car manufacturers realised that minivans
had a certain image that prevented market penetration in the younger crowds.
So they rebadged the minivan into "SUV", making it look sportier and marketing
it as something cool that lets you do cool things.

There is little need for "SUV", it is all artifically induced demand though marketing.

You may recall the initial SUVs marketing themselves as accessive off road
vehicles that didn't need a ladder to climb into. This effectively made those
vehicles unusable off road and relinquished them as urban status symbols.

The biggest irony I have seen is the owner of a Subaru Outback being told his
car couldn't make it through an australian outback road because it wasn't a
car capable of traveling outback roads due to it lacking clearance under the
car. Yet, in the USA, that car was marketed exactly as that, making it look
like buyers of that car would automatically become as cool as crocodile dundee
and able to ride across australia's true outback roads.

4wd isn't all that is needed to make a TRUE off road vehicle. You want oil
based air filters, snorkel for carbutaror intake, high clearance, special
gearing, ability to block differential on all wheels etc.

Most of the "SUV" urban vehicles lack those features.

Toyota and Landrover make the real "outback" vehicles. I think Jeep makes
rugged vehicles too but they aren't exported much.

Hummer is a very good example of urban vehicles. They are used by the military
in offroad situations, but prior to their being marketed as a status symbol
for urban environments, they had not made any inroads in the "offroad"
civilian applications.