Let’s go through some basic descriptions of automobile body types, just to make sure we’re all on the same page, shall we?

    station wagon

  • Sedan - Four doors.
  • Coupe - Two doors.
  • Hatchback - Features a rear “hatch” rather than a standard trunk.
  • Compact - A smaller vehicle intended for lower total cost of ownership, improved fuel economy, and ease of use in more crowded areas.
  • Station Wagon - A larger car with two (sometimes three) rows of seats and an extended area in back for cargo.
  • Sports Car - Generally a coupe, built more for speed and fun than utility.
  • Pickup Truck - Smaller than most other trucks but larger than most cars, it generally has two seats and a large open cargo area.
  • Van - A boxy vehicle, like a small bus, usually lacking seats in the back area leaving a lot of room for cargo or hippies.

Somewhere along the line, some of these different types were combined with each other to create new ones. For example, the “minivan” isn’t really smaller than most of the vans that were around in my youth; it’s just that with more seats added, it serves a purpose closer to that of the station wagon. One now gone hybrid involved taking the open cargo area of the pickup truck, sticking it onto the back of the coupe, and voila, the El Camino.

With that gone, they went the other way and built a hybrid of the pickup and the station wagon, giving us the SUV, or sport utility vehicle — the fact that its name is an acronym for a combination of purposes further stresses its hybrid nature.

So if we’re to believe the name, the SUV is for both sport and utility. But it’s not a hybrid of a sports car and a pickup. No, this is a different sort of sport. As we see in just about every advertisement for these monsters, they’re for having fun out in the wilderness, off the road, experiencing nature’s beauty and wonder while tearing it to shreds. Of course, no one really uses them this way. Americans just happen to like big things, but minivans and station wagons, in spite of their size, don’t carry a sufficiently powerful air about them. This is most clearly expressed in a spot for Dodge’s SUV, the “Durango” (not to be confused with the Durango 95, the sports car Alex and his droogs crast to go joyriding in early in A Clockwork Orange, as in “The Durango 95 purred away real horrorshow”). In the ad, a bunch of manly men are pumping away in a gym, making sure to impress one another sufficiently, which is of course what a gym is for, when an announcement comes over the PA system regarding a minivan parked in the wrong place. Of course, no one stops what they’re doing to move the minivan, since that would be an admission of wussiness. Owning up to owning a vehicle like that would certainly destroy any guy’s chance of impressing his fellow heterosexual iron pumping compatriots.

Anyway, so that’s the SUV. Now, what happens when you take the “utility,” that is, the room for cargo out of the SUV? You get what some of the European luxury/performance car companies have given us in recent years. I suppose you could call that just a “sport vehicle,” but that’s not quite right. That’s just too close to the old fashioned sports car, and this is quite different — we’re talking about a four-door hatchback that’s higher off the ground than most cars. So they chose to call it an “SAV,” or sports activity vehicle. I see quite a few of these things, but I don’t hear many people actually call them SAVs. The general consensus seems to be that they’re just smaller SUVs, despite the fact that the name really doesn’t fit.

The latest is the so-called “crossover” vehicle. What’s a crossover? Well, it has some elements of a car — it’s lower to the ground than an SUV or a pickup truck (which means it’s not fit for the SUV’s pretend off-roading activities), but it also has the large cargo area like an SUV. So let’s say the crossover is so named because it’s a combination of a station wagon and an SUV. But wait a moment… an SUV is a cross between a station wagon and a pickup truck. That means that a crossover is 75% station wagon and 25% pickup… but it doesn’t look anything like a pickup, really.

Dodge MagnumThe fact is, it’s not a combination of combinations, nor is it a combination. Not at all. It’s just a station wagon. A station wagon with bigger wheels, but a station wagon nevertheless. Who are they trying to kid with these things? I wonder what the guys in the gym think about them…

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