luxury trucks, suvs, crossovers and the death of the sedan

and a dolly cart is a truck

The idea of owning a truck or SUV when the vast vast vast majority of my trips are taking a kid to school or getting groceries is weird to me, but I am not in the business of judging other ilxors for their choices.

― jenny from the blockchain (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, March 8, 2022 2:24 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I was def influenced by the time it took me six hours in my non-AWD sedan to get home from work in a snowstorm, albeit that was a pretty unusual storm. Generally speaking streets around me are pretty steep (and my driveway is sloped), and it's been helpful to have the AWD in snow. Renting cars around me is expensive and inconvenient, and I've made a fair amount of use of the cargo space in buying used furniture, home depot trips, taking my kids to ride bikes (although could just get a bike rack) etc. Mileage is only a couple MPG below an accord, so it seemed like nbd. I could definitely live fine without it, but the pluses seemed to outweigh the minuses.

I bought an entire disassembled used 16' trampoline and was able to fit all the parts into the CR-V.

the best car I ever drove in the snow was a Chevy Prizm with FWD

video of man alive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePAd4kmwMMk

The idea of owning a truck or SUV when the vast vast vast majority of my trips are taking a kid to school or getting groceries is weird to me, but I am not in the business of judging other ilxors for their choices.

― jenny from the blockchain (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, March 8, 2022 2:24 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

fwiw we got a SUV precisely because 90% of our trips involve moving two kids around, sidewalks here are 10" above the street, and my back is shot.

come off it. if it can carry a queen mattress it's a truck.

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Tuesday, March 8, 2022 2:16 PM (seventeen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

caek gets to take your us citizenship lagoon, sorry this is ilx law

― class project pat (m bison), Tuesday, March 8, 2022 3:35 PM (twenty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

smh effete urban wine sippers who dont even know what a truck is trying to take my citizenship i guess is this america now

i dont even own a wine

i have wine by the stove for red sauce

it's two buck chuck ($3 because i don't live in real america unlike lag00n)

we dont even have that store

*donald glover's "this is america" plays but he's at a trader joe's*

speaking of vans, i've been enjoying this incredible nerd's playlist about converting a ford transit to a camper

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWlfOav4jlvgX7qMTEJfdFWF7sgds3kit

Countdown to when the MAGA Chud Convoy (chudvoy?) takes on unibody construction as anti-American. "Body-on-frame was good enough for the covered wagons our ancestors used and it's good enough for our trucks now!"

landrover fans have been grieving about unibody construction for 5 years now

Yeah like I said I am not tryna be Judgy McJudgerson here, but only you can know whether you're being honest about how often you need to transport a queen-sized mattress.

I own a queen-sized mattress that has been moved precisely once in 15 years, fwiw

Six years since the last time I had to move a queen-sized mattress.

My max load is a couple of guitars, a bass head/cab, pedals/cables, and us with all of our stuff to go on the road for a week. All of that fits amazingly well in a 9 year old Charger - put the rear seats down and you've almost got a small pickup bed hidden inside a sedan.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3665046

Since 1977, U.S. states have passed laws steadily raising the age for which a child must ride in a car safety seat. These laws significantly raise the cost of having a third child, as many regular-sized cars cannot fit three child seats in the back. Using census data and state-year variation in laws, we estimate that when women have two children of ages requiring mandated car seats, they have a lower annual probability of giving birth by 0.73 percentage points. Consistent with a causal channel, this effect is limited to third child births, is concentrated in households with access to a car, and is larger when a male is present (when both front seats are likely to be occupied). We estimate that these laws prevented only 57 car crash fatalities of children nationwide in 2017. Simultaneously, they led to a permanent reduction of approximately 8,000 births in the same year, and 145,000 fewer births since 1980, with 90% of this decline being since 2000.

thats wild

broke: give women access to contraceptives and education to lower birth rate
merica: GOOD LUCK TRANSPORTING YOUR CHILDREN "MOM"

Yeah I was on the oebdient/careful end of the spectrum but the idea of 12-year-old humans still in car seats is just, um, wow

that is some wild freakanomics shit there re: birth rates

Yeah I was on the oebdient/careful end of the spectrum but the idea of 12-year-old humans still in car seats is just, um, wow

― jenny from the blockchain (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, March 9, 2022 4:38 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

IMO there's a tradeoff between the very minimal additional amount of safety you get vs not humiliating your child.

What’s it got to do with 12 year olds? Unless you have two kids more than five years apart, you need two car seats, which means the back row is unusable for anything else, and lowering the back row to use the trunk takes like 20 minutes of in installation and installation. This is why parents get 3 row cars and suvs with extravagant cargo space.

the minivan is back again awooooo

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/03/vw-unveils-adorable-electric-id-buzz-us-sales-begin-2024/

it's sort of cute, but weirdly commercial looking, like a commuter van

feel like making a mini van is kind of disrespectful to their #vanlife roots, it is cute tho

maybe theyll make a full size one with a pop top and so forth

yeah it looks like a sienna with a cute front, rather than a combi. tbh i'm fine with that.

this is the short wheel base version. the 3 passenger row one is coming later.

if the long one is more full sized will be cool to have it electric cause the battery cld lower the center of gravity which is always an issue w vans

guessing its gonna be a long mini van tho

we need to get back to this

Now live at BaT Auctions: 1960 Volkswagen Double Cab Type 2 Transporter. https://t.co/NdOW70fKWG pic.twitter.com/bIZIrH2qYm

— Bring a Trailer (@Bringatrailer) March 10, 2022

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2022/03/17/study-megacar-drivers-up-to-4x-more-likely-to-hit-walkers-while-turning/

finally know what kind of car i want pic.twitter.com/3BPHwrHPGI

— justin jacoby smith (@hoosteen) April 8, 2022

Needs flame decals

I discovered my neighbourhood was developed in the 1840s so decided to add an 1840 section to my ‘cars are getting bigger’ drawing.

All the same scale. pic.twitter.com/fhg2oDgDc3

— Michael (@baoigheallain) March 11, 2022

In the land of the free, why can’t we have mini-pickup trucks like the Taliban and ISIS?

kind of a silly piece considering compact or at least smaller pickups are trending hard right now, i understand they might not be small enough for that guy but i feel like it wouldve been worth exploring that on the heals of the maverick doing so well that there are strong rumors that the toyota stout and the subaru baja are making a comeback, gotta think chevy will make one too, the light truck is back baby

its a ridiculous vehicle category imho, but if people want a pickup shaped car they should be able to have it

it's a good headline though.

i mean we all want to be like isis but its just not always realistic

My new car

in case anyone is looking for a JDM dragon hearse https://t.co/LZK9EQe7b5

— marginal idea (@marginalidea) July 9, 2023

saloons still live

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a31069594/station-wagons-disguised-suvs/ (2000)

i didnt know about that jaguar, pretty sick

wish audi wld bring the s4 wagon over

the new mazda cx-90 could probably qualify as a station wagon disguised as an suv

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cvw_oMsAsaE/

hyundai finally coming into its own design-wise, for better or for worse

i like what theyre doing generally, now if they could just make their cars harder for children to steal