Americans 'keep on truckin' In SUVs

DETROIT, Jan 26, 2003; Tom Brown writing for Reuters filed this feature news story.

"Keep on truckin, that advice, straight from Detroit and the 1970s hit by the late Motown singer Eddie Kendricks, sums up the way many Americans feel about the recent attacks on sport utility vehicles.

In a land where bigger is usually perceived as better, Americans love SUVs and their high-perch "command" seating. They're not going to give them up, and there's no sign that environmentalists and anti-SUV activists will succeed in driving the gas-guzzlers into the junkyard of history anytime soon.

In fact, thanks to a White House plan to provide more generous tax breaks for certain businesses that buy the biggest SUVs or pickup trucks, the sales of oversized vehicles with low gas mileage may even get a big boost in the near term.

Recent television ads from a Hollywood group led by nationally syndicated columnist and author Arianna Huffington, are pitching alleged links between Mideast oil profits and terrorism, trying to make owning an SUV sound tantamount to bankrolling Osama bin Laden.

A coalition of religious groups, including dozens of evangelical Christian organizations, sponsored another TV ad campaign late last year seeking to portray SUV owners as outcasts by asking "What Would Jesus Drive?"

The top U.S. auto safety regulator joined the fray this month by warning automakers that SUVs, which statistics show may be prone to roll over, may soon come under strict government controls.

But traditional SUVs gained a larger piece of the U.S. vehicle market last year, and light trucks -- a category that includes pickups and minivans as well as SUVs -- account for more than half of the market overall.

Industry experts, meanwhile, say the anti-SUV crusade has failed to resonate with consumers, even as another U.S.-led war with Iraq looks set to push oil prices higher and add to the debate over America's seemingly insatiable appetite for crude.

"I like everything about it, the size, everything," said Detroit-based disc jockey Rocky Allen, as he climbed into the driver's seat of his Chevrolet Suburban SUV in the "oversized" section of an office parking lot last Friday.

"I'll be happy to drive an electric car when Arianna Huffington stops flying private jets and uses solar heat in her 5,000-square-foot home," Allen said, taking a shot at the political commentator and her so-called Detroit Project activist group.

That defiant reaction, to what many regard as "over-the-top" campaigns targeting SUVs since the late 1990s, is good news for Detroit automakers, since the vehicles are among their most profitable products.

Foreign automakers have also been muscling in on the full-size SUV segment, as part of their relentless assault on the U.S. market. But one of the hottest sellers in the segment since last year has been the massive, military-inspired Hummer H2, which dwarfs even Allen's lumbering Suburban. Both vehicles are made by General Motors Corp.<GM.N>, the world's largest automaker.

'ME, MYSELF AND I'

George Pipas, head of sales and North American market analysis for Ford Motor Co. <F.N>, says most SUV owners are aware of safety and fuel economy concerns about the vehicles.

But he said market research showed that consumers who own or intend to buy SUVs also tend to put their personal likes and comfort above issues such as vehicle stability and fuel consumption, and the recent flood of editorial commentary about the SUV backlash.

"They (consumers) are not going to respond to media reports, or campaigns like that; they seldom do," Pipas told Reuters. "They respond to what they want. It's their own pocketbook, and their own stomach. It's me, myself and I.

"I haven't seen anything in actual vehicle purchases that would suggest any of this is having an impact," he added.

Sean Kane of Strategic Safety, an Arlington, Virginia-based, automotive safety research firm, said consumers would probably steer away from SUVs in droves if they were better educated about their instability. But he said they are not well educated, and the government was partly to blame for that.

"There's this illusion that, if they (SUVs) were as bad as they're painted to be, that somehow or other the government would have taken action and they wouldn't be allowed on the road or something would have had to change," Kane said.

"Unfortunately that's just not the case," he added.

'NOT WASTEFUL'

One factor may be the education of baby boomers, who started the U.S. craze for SUVs more than a decade ago.

But Art Spinella, a veteran auto industry analyst and president of Bandon, Oregon-based, CNW Marketing Research Inc., agreed with Ford's Pipas that SUV buyers tend to put their likes and personal interests above what others might perceive as the greater good.

Whoever said that baby boomers aren't self-absorbed.

"For all intents and purposes, they don't accept the notion that sport utilities are wasteful," Spinella said of the average SUV buyer. "They think that sport utilities use a disproportionate amount of gas but -- and there is the but -- they think it's justified in their own case."

He added that his own research, including a survey based on comments from thousands of consumers polled last week, showed that ads such as those from Huffington's group did nothing to affect SUV buying plans.

"People who buy them love them. People who buy them are sticking to the sport utility segment like crazy," Spinella said.