Allen James Brown writes: We drive a Skoda Fabia, which we love for its agility and economy, and have always liked small cars (“The next pandemic: ultra-massive utes”). We once owned a Mazda 121 “bubble car” and on a road trip managed to squeeze in a tent, two folding chairs, a folding table, a camp stove, two blow-up beds, an esky and all our luggage. The car was a sensation at White Cliffs — no one had ever seen such a tiny vehicle in the outback. It’s nonsense that you need a big car.
Australia must be a land of small dicks. A recent study showed the bigger the car, the smaller the dick. However, I’m not claiming to giantism in that department because of my small car preference.
Tim Stephens writes: Too bloody right. These huge utes are an environmental disaster, a road hazard and a general bloody menace. I’m sure that IQ and vehicle size are negatively correlated, while positively correlated to arrogance and self-importance.
Let’s be smart and introduce a vehicle weight tax/incentive. People who must have a giant tank should pay an ever-increasing tax that’s used to reduce the price of smaller vehicles. Be a good way to help get smaller cars back on the road, save the environment and wipe the smirk off tank-drivers’ faces.
Roger Clifton writes: By buying a bigger car than yours, the Joneses are making sure that their bad driving kills your family rather than theirs. It’s an arms race. If we can regulate firearms on the basis of their firepower, we can surely regulate vehicles on the basis of their momentum.
Alison Rixon writes: Mine is a small fuel-efficient Saab that corners beautifully. It handles well, has lots of safety features and great acceleration with very little turbo lag, despite being built in 2007. So of course they’re not being manufactured anymore. Instead I am surrounded by gas-guzzling, pedestrian-killing, fat-arsed 4WDs (some of which don’t actually have four-wheel drive). They block the view, lumber up hills in the right-hand lane and obviously their male drivers are compensating for something… including poor driving skills.
Kathy Heyne writes: I traded my beloved little Honda Jazz for a Kia Sportage a few years ago because I no longer felt safe in a tiny car. I couldn’t see in traffic or going around corners because of all the big vehicles — especially the utes tradies drive. It was OK for the first year or so, but I’m now noticing the vehicles around me — once again those utes — are so much bigger that visibility is becoming a problem again. I hate it. I drive frail elderly individuals and people with disabilities, and I hate it. I don’t feel safe for any of us.
John Stanley Robert writes: This vicious trend won’t end well. Apart from the increasing death toll on the roads (which cost my daughter her first about-to-be born in a head-on crash with an errant 4WD 10 years ago), the sales promotions of such trucks depend on demonstrations of macho driving — as on beaches (bad for turtles, shore-nesting birds and much more) and on bush 4WD tracks, all very damaging to the environment.
If any further incentive was required to convince someone to take action after your report, it should be remembered that the generous “tradies ute” instant tax write-off was introduced by Abbott PM in his first budget — an initial play to win workers’ loyalty from Labor, and alongside the elimination of the Climate Council’s public-funded predecessor.
Have we learnt anything since?
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Hi Allen James Brown: We also love our Fabia wagon, just as we loved its predecessor, a Lancer wagon. Unfortunately neither of these wagons are available any more, at least in Australia.
I suspect the SUV boom has been partly fuelled by the demise of the humble wagon. Instead we are offered a variety of SUVS, all of which are decidedly dearer, carry around unnecessary technology, and often are lacking in luggage space. And sporty they aren’t.
No doubt a con job by the vehicle makers/importers, one that unfortunately has worked all too well..
it constantly surprises me how little space there is in, in most SUVs – bring back the station wagon!
Get the so-called utes off the road first, Roberto.
There was a two vehicle accident between a ute with a bull bar and a station wagon the other day. I believe it was in Queensland. The Sunshine Coast, from memory.
The ute driver walked away. The 50 year old woman driving the station wagon didn’t. Dead at the scene. Thankfully, the six month old baby in the baby car seat in the back- presumably her grandchild- was fine.
If we lobby the government to stop subsidising tradies bigger, better, monster “utes “through asset write offs every damn year and to put a cap on the size of the vehicles allowed in to the country in the first place, I honestly believe the rest of us will go back to smaller vehicles and be happy to do so. I would. They’re much cheaper to register, maintain and run, but it won’t happen while ever safety’s the reason we’re buying small and medium SUVs in the first place.
I only know a couple of people with great big monster 4WDs and they’re tradies.
Since my original comment is bot stuck, awaiting approval, I’ll paraphrase. There was a two vehicle fatal accident the other day, between a station wagon and a ute with a bull bar and and a smoko esky on the tray. The bloke in the ute walked away. The woman in the station wagon did not. Thankfully the infant in the baby capsule she had in the back is fine.
I have had many ‘perfect vehicles’ over the decades, an FC station wagon in the 70s (slightly higher compression than the stalwart FE, which head I shaved 25mm further), then a 66 Kombi – the last split windscreen and slide windows which I would coax over places I’d not walk in the Himalaya which regularly took me back & forth from A’dam to Manali until the fall of Daoud after king Zahir had happily abdicated to life of wine,women & song in Italy.
I then abjured ICE until a change of life in the 21stC and was blessed with a Mitsubishi Lancer s/w – 5 gears, overdrive, 40mpg.
Since then it has been a struggle to find manual gears and no electronic folderole.
For someone with an NBN a ute is a tax write-off. It also has to have a big enough cab to fit the family in comfort, because that’s what it is really for in the first place. Hence big utes. Blame the tax system. Again.
Much easier to blame ordinary people who have taken notice of who gets to walk away alive and who doesn’t when one of these things hits a vehicle and bought a bigger vehicle accordingly, than go after the real problem, drastic.
I don’t care for the massive big things when they’re parking in the ever-shrinking parking spaces, when they’re destroying our rapidly disappearing wild places, or when they’re taking up more than one car width on a tiny back lane. But I also don’t care for tiny cars as a solution for everyone. As a tall person who’s driven people with limited mobility, tiny cars don’t fit everyone. The problem with Utes and 4WDs is that there are far more than are really justified on the road.
‘Driver safety’ should come first? I’m not sure this headline, or even article, actually captures user comments on the previous piece. The comments are about: 1) safety for other people, including occupants of other vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists; 2) environmental damage; 3) senseless tax incentives.
Everyone (except monster ute owners, apparently) knows about the inverse relationship between ute size and penis size.
Reckon both major parties know about it, hence the tax subsidies to win the tradies vote. Nothing like a publicly funded penis substitute to make the boys feel good about themselves.