[sheik yerbouty]

Only the Excursion. It was rotundly redundant.

[WKB]

If Ford was making a profit from these do you really think they would stop making them?

[mo]

I'm sure its possible to demonstrate that the greatest environmental hazard in California is the state and Federal government.....

[uncbob]

Excursion sales were down over 30% to years in a roll
It was a FLOP

[doodad]

I honestly think the real reason that the excursion died is that while it pulled the boat great on the wekends, during the week the wife couldn't park the thing. There are lots of them here in Atlanta, and they are almost all driven by women who have a hard time seeing in the beast.

[11th Earl of Mar]

You can take my SUV's when you pry them from my cold dead fingers.

[The Raven]

Ford Motor Co. let it slip July 31 that the Excursion — at 19 feet and 3.5 tons the biggest SUV ever — would likely be cancelled after the 2003 model year. It lasted just four years.

To be replaced by a newer model — at 23 feet and 6.2 tons and a two-driver cab

[ReadMyMind]

SUV's are fun to drive. Trundling through the backwoods of the UP in a beat-up old Isuzu Trooper is a blast. Driving them in the snow in a Minnesota winter is great. Running over Yugos and Escorts and Honda Civics is like hitting a speed bump.

The only serious threat to the existence of the SUV as a class of vehicle is the cost of gasoline and the generally low milage of these vehicles. If gas prices were to go above $5 / gallon in 2003, people would abandon SUV's in a big hurry. Note that I'm not predicting gas price increases, I am merely putting forth an extreme example of the kind of thing that would cause Americans to do away with SUV's.

P.S. $3 to $5 / gallon is not an unheard of price range for gasoline in Europe. At least, not that last time I checked.

[marron]

People like large vehicles simply because they can fit their whole family in it. The need to haul passengers has never gone away, and will not go away.

Whatever the MPG cost of a large vehicle, it is less than that of two cars making the same trip.

And, it is an MPG cost the owner has decided he is prepared to pay.

Burning more fuel does not make us "dependent" on foreign sources of oil. Those foreign sources of oil are all, without exception, dependent on the oil business. They cannot afford to "not" sell their oil. Any barrel of oil not sold by one country is immediately made up by one of their competitors, so to cut production is to give up market share. And the oil business will only become more competitive over the next couple of years, as Central Asian oil, and Siberian oil, and Iraqi oil are rapidly finding their way to market.

Oil may one day become hard to find. That day is not now. The only oil shortages we have seen so far have been self-inflicted. There is a shortage of refinery capacity, but it is impossible, impossible, to build a new refinery in the US. So if a refinery is down for maintenance, you see an immediate, but temporary, spike in the price of gas.

Likewise it is difficult to get permission to build pipelines in the US, so if there is a problem, there is no alternate path and the price of natural gas spikes upward. Temporarily.

These problems, the lack of refining and pipeline capacity, are going to get worse as long as we keep electing morons to office, and as long as the government continues to treat the energy business as an adversary.

But your Suburban has nothing to do with that.

[RandallFlagg]

Heh! I wonder if Red Davis is gonna try and get Arnold Schwarzenegger to give up his hummer...

[Wyatt's Torch]

Hard to believe this cam from the Washington Times. I thought they were a free market outfit? Anyway, the Excursion failed because it was a poor design and not appealing to many SUV drivers. Environmentalism didn't kill it. Poor design did.

[Gatún(CraigIsaMangoTreeLawyer)]

"Life is just one damn thing after another!"...Mark Twain

[6ppc]

Ford Valdez...LOL!

I'd love to own one, but it really is too big for my needs.

[Richard Kimball]

The war against SUV's is only the latest example of watermelons forcing their idiocy on everyone else and claiming it as "being responsible."

First of all, protesting against a body style is ridiculous. My Chevy Astro Mini-van is built on the same drive train and frame as the Chevy Blazer, an SUV. However, no one is protesting mini-vans. Second, a smaller car is fine if you don't have kids, never take more than one or two people with you, and do most of your driving in town. If you frequently have to transport 5 people, it doesn't make much sense to take two vehicles that get 28 miles to the gallon instead of one that gets 20.

Of course, most people that own SUV's are families with children, and we all know that to a liberal, raising children is the least responsible thing you can do. Far more humane to kill them in the womb.

[mhking]

It was a little hard to tow that gas station behind the Excursion - it took up too much space on the roads...[g]

As for the remainder of Urban Assault Vehicles, Davis can have my Grand Cherokee when he pries the steering wheel out of my cold, dead hands...

[Koblenz]

Many people here have commented that the Excursion is being discontinued thanks to market forces, and not to environmentalists per se. Perhaps environmentalists encouraged people not to buy it, but that is their right to do so.

The whole gas guzzling argument doesn't hold any water with me. If I buy gas, I should be able to burn it in whatever vehicle I want. I know it's a finite resource, but I paid for it. It's mine.

The emissions argument has some merit: perhaps a tax on emissions would be useful to encourage people to pollute less. But SUVs aren't necessarily the culprit: an SUV may emit more pollutants per mile, but if an SUV is driven less, it doesn't make any difference. In other words, don't look at pollution per mile, look at total pollution. A pollution tax would therefore have to account for miles driven and amount of pollutants per mile.

Safety. Basically, my opinion here is that if you are going to drive a larger vehicle, you have to bear more responsibility. You will likely have to pay more insurance. And if you are a careless driver and get in a wreck, you'll have to pay more for the other guy's car.