What Is The Future of Big V8's/V10's]Vehicles?

Such as: SUV's, Pick up trucks etc.

Why, converting them to motorcycles, of course.

they will never go away?

Why would they?

The long-term trend in gas prices is up up up and $4 gas is already killing SUV & truck sales. Resale prices are dropping like a stone and many dealers will not even accept them as trades, as no one is buying them. The automakers are drastically cutting back on how many they make and within a few years very few people will still be driving them just to get around.

The ones actually designed and used to do work will still be useful, but it's going to get more and more expensive to operate them.

Yeah, I definitely feel bad for anyone who's going to try and sell/trade an SUV in the immediate and foreseeable future. Best of luck with that.

By the way: gas at the station across the street here in the LA area is just on the verge of hitting the $5 mark. It's $4.75 (85 octane), $4.85 (87 octane), and $4.95 (92 octane) at the moment. I imagine premium will be over $5 before summer's end, easily.

Yeah, you silly guys in the midwest kvetching about paying 4 bucks for gaso... here in SoCal -- surrounded by refineries and near a major port of entry for raw materials -- the price of gasoline can get up to $5, no prob.

But, you know, there's no speculation or windfall profit-taking involved... hunh unh.

Run 'em on hydrogen made by energy generated from ocean currents. Simple.

Steve

Know what's awesome? Ford's genius marketing strategy is to allow dealers to receive 10 Focuses after they order 25 F-150's.

The sooner we get all those monsters off the road the happier I will be. Those soccer moms driving those huge SUVs get half the mileage I do, yet go twice as slow. Plus I'm scared to death about what might happen if one were to hit me. I don't know why people get huge trucks to cart 2 people around...

And I know I sound like a fanatical hippie. I'm not. I live in rural Alabama. However it's still way unnecessary and annoying.

I'm letting my F-150 go....trying to get a 4 cyl.....

Simple, huh? Well, just tap on into that and patent it, and watch the millions come in. After all, it's so simple...

My brother sells Toyotas for a living in northern California.

His dealership has 55 trucks and over 30 SUVs in stock gathering dust, generating interest income for the bank that owns them.

He had a pretty good May selling every hybrid, Corolla, and Yaris that they could get, all in advance, all at full price.

Back in 2000, I needed a new car. At the time gas was around $1.50 a gallon. I told my wife my primary consideration was MPG because "you'll see, we'll hit European gas prices soon." So I got a second-hand VW diesel that gets 45 MPG.

I've never regretted it, even though diesel is now more expensive than regular. when you figure out the cost per mile it's costing me about 10 cents as opposed to an SUV's 30 cents per mile.

People point to European gas prices as an example of costs gone wild, but tend to forget that part of the deal is an excellent public transportation system. I don't bother to rent a car anymore in Europe, I can get everywhere I need to go via public transportation (and a little walking, of course).

For a number of years in what seems like the recent past, the tax code was jiggered to enable mfrs. to sell more luxury SUVs and 3 ton trucks

http://www.bankrate.com/brm/itax/biz_tips/20030403a1.asp

NY Times review of HIGH AND MIGHTY

S.U.V.'s: The World's Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way

Draw your own conclusions. In my opinion, corporate greed brings on bad public policy.

And our powerful nation failed.....They fight each other like kids at election time, you smoked "mary Jane", you stole Mrs. Doubtfire's cake when you were 7 yrs. old, you saw my sister naked you peep!! :blah::blah:.......And here we are! with a deficient transportation system.......AND THEY WANT ME TO VOTE FOR THEM??? PHOOOii!! ooooppssss! wrong forum :lol:

Five cents on the dollar.

I'll probably lose what debateable respect I have in this small community, but actually, I've been thinking it might be a good time to buy one of those unloadable gas-hogs.

We've been operating with one vehicle between my wife and myself for a couple of years now. We have a valid need for a backup vehicle, and a truck would be most handy in particular. It would get driven only 2,000-3,000 miles a year at the most, so if gas costs $4 a gallon and the thing averages only 10mpg that would be 200-300 gallons per year, which would come to $800 - $1,200 per year for gas.

Compared to buying something that averaged 30mpg, the gas cost would drop to approx $267-$400 per year. So the max extra gas cost driving the guzzler would be $1,200-$400=$800.

If I can save $10,000 on the cost of the vehicle it would take 12.5 years for the extra gas expense to eat that up - mostly in inflated future dollars. And of course I wouldn't keep the thing that long, probably 5 years absolute max ownership time.

If gas goes up to $6, the figures obviously change - the 12.5 years would drop to 8.33 years. Still a good deal, and if the guzzler got 12mpg average, or if the savings on the purchase was $12,000, the figures would look that much better.

There's more than one way to cut back on gas usage - ours is to simply drive as little as possible. I would have no conscience qualms following the above scenario.

But of course, feel free to convince me otherwise....

nat whilk ii

you are wrong...really!!!:lol::lol:

Actually that's the situation with my wife - she owns an SUV because of practical reasons (e.g., hauling hay for horses, building materials, ability to hook up a horse trailer, four-wheel drive and weight in the snow, etc.). But she drives it rarely, we use my Bug for the "town runs," groceries, etc. In our case, we compared the cost of renting a large vehicle for when a large vehical was needed vs. cost of car ownership and gas, and the SUV came out ahead.

You guys have complaints? In the Netherlands one liter of gas (octane 95) costs

That is what I did. Its very easy to negotiate a good price on a used luxury car with a {censored}ty gas milage. They'll almost do the negotiation for you to get rid of the car...

Its been a while since I could fill up the tank for $100, but I dont drive much, so I havent visited a gas station in a month. I mostly drive to and from work on rainy days (I like walking to work - about 20min walk).

I have a 1200miles road trip comming up, and with 10mpg its still cheaper to use my car than to rent a car with better mpg.

Despite the shrinking exploration and production capacity, and despite the greenhouse impact, we humans have a limited memory.

Remember how we swore we wouldn't forget the lessons of Vietnam? Well we did.

In the early 1980's the conventional wisdom was that big 3 had too much in the way of large and heavy cars to be efficient in the market. However, 8 years later that wisdom was forgotten with the rise of minivans and SUV's. The big 3 did a better job of marketing the larger cars than the importers did.

Now, this is a bad time to own/sell SUV's.

I figure in several years, big cars will be back for yet another orgy fueled by smelly dead plants.

Jerry

Easy explanation.

California law mandates stricter environmental standards for gasoline. It's more expensive to make California gas to meet these rules, so you have to pay more to get it. Simple trade off.

Plus any gas pumped into Calif. from other states is more expensive b/c they have to scrub the pipeline clean before they can pump the Cali-grade gas through.