High and Mighty: On or Off-Track?
Is a new book by an SUV critic in the right or are
automakers? by Joseph Szczesny 9/11/2002
Related Articles: "High and Mighty": Worth A Read
(9/11/2002) High and Mighty: Just That (9/11/2002)
A new book by the former New York Times Detroit bureau chief
says insurance companies have shied away from charging
higher premiums on sport-utility vehicles, and have instead
forced drivers of other vehicles to pay more.
High and Mighty SUVs: The Worlds Most Dangerous Vehicles
And How They Got That Way is the new book about the rise of
the SUV culture. Written by Keith Bradsher, who spent half a
decade in Detroit as The New York Times bureau chief, the
book also implicates Detroit's top car guy Bob Lutz as a
leader in the movement to make SUVs bigger and bolder and,
Bradsher argues, more deadly.
In an unfortunately timed parallel, Bradsher asserts that
SUVs, despite all the safety equipment available, now
contribute to more than 3000 needless highway deaths
annually - a toll greater than the terrorist strike on the
World Trade Center. "SUVs represent the biggest menace to
public safety and the environment that the auto industry has
produced since the bad old days of the 1960s," observes
Bradsher in the books final chapter.
Naderism at bay
The book is not an exposi in the manner of Ralph Nader's
Unsafe At Any Speed, which in the early 1960s tore into and
ultimately sank the Chevrolet Corvair and made Nader
famous. High and Mighty is more of a survey of how SUVs got
to be so large and so important, not only to Detroit
carmakers but also to carmakers as diverse as Toyota and
Mercedes-Benz. But when Bradsher stops to dig, the results
are interesting and likely to spark controversy once High
And Mighty reaches bookstores this month.
Lutz, Bradsher recounts, played a vital role in the creation
of the Explorer during the relatively brief period when he
served as the head of Ford Motor Co.'s light-truck
operations in the mid-1980s. At the time Ford was looking
for a vehicle to compete directly and on the cheap with
American Motors Jeep Cherokee, which was just beginning a
long and successful production run. Lutz started the
Explorer project, put a rising young engineer in charge of
it and protected it from being killed by other Ford
executives. By the time he left for another job at Chrysler,
Ford's board of directors had already given the project the
green light.
When Lutz took over the truck assignment it was considered a
backwater. It had only 400 engineers who were intimately
familiar with the day-to-day lives of the ranchers and
farmers and contractors who actually bought Ford trucks. In
contrast, some 12,000 engineers were then assigned to Ford's
automotive group, Bradsher notes.
"Lutz insisted on ever more powerful engines mounted in
ever-taller SUVs and pickup trucks with ever more menacing
front ends," he notes in a key chapter that explores the
psychology behind SUVs. "'Get them up in the air and make
them husky,'" Bradsher quotes Lutz. The philosophy rings
true even today at GM, where Vice Chairman Lutz ordered
bigger tires for the Hummer H2 just last year.
Kings of the road
The Explorer and other SUVs launched in the
1990s, however, would not have become kings of the road had
it not been for the now half-forgotten battle over fuel
economy fought in 1990. The Bryan Bill, named for the Nevada
Democrat who drafted the legislation, would have forced a
dramatic increase in fuel economy, the book argues. A
majority of senators favored the bill but it died for a lack
of a single vote required to break the filibuster initiated
by Don Riegle, then one of Michigan's two senators. A change
in the tax code that slapped a luxury tax on automobiles but
not SUVs also helped, Bradsher notes.
Bradsher says even major environmental groups basically
slept while the SUV sales grew steadily during the 1990s,
never offering a serious critique of the trucks.
Consequently, they lost out on stopping some serious damage
to the environment.
Once the Bryan bill died, efforts to raise fuel-economy
standards on light-duty trucks and sport-utility vehicles
faded and the Big Three's marketing apparatus kicked into
high gear to sell SUVs, Bradsher observers.
Fantasies in sheetmetal
The marketing campaigns were built on a shrewd reading of
the fantasies and fears of the target audience of Baby
Boomers, who never ever drive off-road. Ad campaigns with
sweeping views of mountains switched into high gear and SUV
sales exploded, earning GM, Ford and Chrysler huge profits.
Bradsher goes through the controversy over SUV rollovers and
comes down firmly on the side of those who maintain SUVs are
not as safe as automobiles. The idea that SUVs are safer
than cars is myth, Bradsher says; SUVs are clearly more
prone to rollover than cars. Rollover accidents involving
vehicles like the Jeep CJ and small SUVs made in Japan such
as the Suzuki Samurai have been a center of controversy
since the 1980s.
Less well understood by the public is the propensity of
vehicles such as a Ford Explorer to flip over after striking
a guardrail. In addition, SUVs are more likely to tip over
if they strike a soft shoulder or have a blowout - the kind
of problems cars can weather with relative ease, Bradsher
states. In addition, SUVs are generally harder to control
than other vehicles.
High and Mighty also takes the reader through the ins and
outs of the Ford-Firestone tire debacle, Detroit's handling
of the press and Detroit's "Green Prince," Bill Ford.
One of the most intriguing chapters of the book, though,
involves the insurance companies. Insurance companies know
SUVs are more expensive to fix and cause more damage in
crashes than other vehicles, Bradsher intimates. But
insurers have been willing to overlook the problem because
SUVs are driven by some of their best customers -
prosperous, middle-aged consumers who rarely place claims.
Instead underwriters transfer part of the risks to other
drivers, who are now paying more for their own insurance to
pay for the damage and injuries caused by SUVs.
"The affluence of SUV owners and their political clout form
a powerful combination that has made insurers loathe to
raise rates," Bradsher states in the book that is bound to
draw a big reaction from Detroit when it hits shelves next
week.
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