LogFAQs > #972583209

SinisterSlay posted...

But no one makes full size cars anymore. Just SUVs. Even compacts are going away. Every time i get in one of those SUVs, i can't believe how tight and poorly laid out they feel. With terrible trunk space and very few seats, and usually terrible safety and terrible anti roll. I don't get why everyone fell for these scams.

It's mostly just a matter of car manufacturers pushing them and phasing out alternatives. When the CAFE emissions regulations were brought in, car companies in the US successfully lobbied to have "light trucks" exempted from some or all of those regulations, claiming that they were impossible to meet without compromising those vehicles' abilities to handle heavy cargo or off-roading. Those same manufacturers then started trying to sell pickups, SUVs, and crossovers (all of which fall under the "light truck" exemption) over minivans, station wagons, and small cars, since between the former generally having higher sale prices and the fact that they didn't have to spend as much money trying to meet more stringent emissions standards, car companies made more money on those. That marketing hinged pretty heavily on fearmongering, making cars that deliberately look imposing (high hoods in particular) to convey the idea that you can't be safe unless you're in an SUV or truck that's just as big and aggressive as what other people are driving (never mind their actual safety ratings, though such ratings are deeply flawed because they only look at collisions between similarly-sized vehicles), and as these oversized (but not actually useful for cargo) vehicles have proliferated, people have understandably become more and more uncomfortable driving small cars next to them.

It's a terrible mess that has significant impacts on safety, fuel economy, and infrastructure costs, all stemming back to car companies being greedy, the government failing to stop them from acting on that greed, and paranoid suburbanites buying into propaganda telling them they need one of these vehicles to protect their families. This video goes into more details on the history and effects of these trends, and is well worth a watch if you're interested:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo&vl=en-CA