Australians are driving bigger, heavier, dirtier cars and it’s alarming both climate and road safety experts.
A decade ago, sedans and hatchbacks were the most popular cars in Australia. Today, Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs) and American-style utes dominate new car sales and advertising.
This, or something similar, is what many people think. I wonder how many days in a year these vehicles are actually seeing that intended use, though. So many people seem to buy these large, inefficient vehicles with the intent of using them off-road and/or on family holidays, but what they actually end up using them for 99.9% of the time is just daily suburban commutes. It makes zero sense.
I literally see everyday these idiots with their giant “trucks” pulling their caravans up the east coast. The funny part is they can’t even seem to tow them with any degree of confidence or at a suitable speed most of the time. I then see someone in a more humble vehicle that is towing a similar caravan with speed and confidence. It is more a mental issue of size,size,size makes me better.
Saw an ad on Facebook for a ranger the other day, 2 years old 21k km, description read never been off-road, mainly used to go from home to the office. Was selling to upgrade to the new model.
Also I don’t believe these fancier utes are very suitable for actual work, to much precious body work and paint around the bed of the truck. We have some single cab utes at work, and what gets put on the tray I wouldn’t want to be doing on anything I cared about the looks of. Also the height to get to some of the trays is ridiculous.
I can’t speak for others, but I definitely do use mine for off-roading as much as I can.
Is it as much as I’d like? No - I have to earn the money to afford the hobby. But it’s absolutely worth it, especially when I get to show my daughter some of the awesome things we have to offer.
The reality is that we’re a rough, tough country, and getting to see lots of it requires special vehicles.
The reason this seems so recent is because, previously, 4WD vehicles were either purpose-built, or expensive if they were tricked out to be daily drivers. That made them uncomfortable or expensive.
With the death of our local car market, it’s opened up a much wider, cheaper, more refined set of offerings, so more people can afford to get into the hobby.
How often is “as much as you can”, honestly? We don’t care that it’s your hobby. Pick a different hobby or move to a rural area. Big cars kill people at far higher rates.
Please, watch this video, it summarises nicely the argument against bigger and bigger vehicles and likely addresses most of the excuses you’ll come up with:
https://youtu.be/jN7mSXMruEo
It’s about the US, but a lot of it is applicable to Australia also.
They don’t need to pick a different hobby, they can just hire an off-road vehicle instead. There is no reason for people to be buying vehicles for extremely niche, rare use cases when they can just hire an equivalent for a few weeks.
Money saved on the cost of the vehicle, gas and taxes should more than offset the cost of rental once or twice a year. If it doesn’t, tax more.
I suppose the problem is going off road you’re likely to scratch the paint or bend something that shouldn’t be bent which might be costly
I’m sure if they’re renting offroaders they’re aware of that. I did that in Iceland and everything was covered and the vehicle was bent and scratched already when I got it.