but they’re incredible tools for hard-working folks who need them.
there’s not a single hard-working person that can afford trucks like these.
I legitimately hate pickup trucks and everyone who drives them
I’d make an exception for old-school trucks, or people who actually use them to haul stuff.
But these fancy tech suites are for rich people that want to pretend to be poor, because…cowboys or some shit.
rich people that want to pretend to be poor
“social camouflage”
In addition to their imposing size and protective shells, SUVs also offer a useful aspect of social camouflage, enabling the well-to-do to ‘pass’ as regular working folk in urban settings. For example, an MTV executive who travels to ‘fringe neighborhoods’ in search of new talent admits that ‘he feels less conspicuous in a Jeep than in a Mercedes’ (Kuntz,1985: 266). In Hollywood, the early 1990s trend toward ‘downscale’ vehicles is reflected in the popularity of SUVs. Some entertainment executives cite the personal hazard of driving luxury cars, especially flashy sports cars, in ‘crime-vulnerable Los Angeles’ as an explanation for Hollywood’s attraction to Range Rovers with headlight ‘rhino-guards’
https://mypages.unh.edu/sites/default/files/jlauer/files/lauer_2005_driven_to_extremes.pdf (page 12)
Come to think of it, this kind of thinking can come in handy if we’re doing any organizing out in rural America, assuming one is not rural.
As a leftist growing up in the middle of nowhere in a red state, I’ll admit that I almost felt ashamed of being…a rural American and I stopped doing the shit that I really liked growing up doing. I don’t dislike the US because I have a strange aversion to cowboys and peach cobblers, I just want the US to stop blowing up brown kids with my healthcare money and to be nicer to the rainbow people and women. No matter what the Bible says. I tend to get along with people better if I just embrace what I do growing up instead of trying to LARP as a Californian as I did growing up.
I drive a pickup truck because I have a side job where I install low voltage in new builds because my employer doesnt pay me enough so I have to work two jobs. Do you hate me?
That’s like the average cost any new vehicle in the US. Even a used one from like 5 years back sells for more than 10k above what they would usually be.
American car companies will eventually offer lines of monster trucks and SUVs that are effectively APC-sized vehicles for civilians.
the United States is in some ways becoming a medieval society, in which people live and work in the modern equivalent of castles – gated communities, apartment buildings with doormen and office buildings with guards – and try to shield themselves while traveling between them. They do this by riding in sport utility vehicles, which look armored, and by trying to appear as intimidating as possible to potential attackers.
Bradsher, 2000: 5
Modeled on the US Army jeep and the British Land Rover, the SUV is self-consciously styled as a modified military vehicle. In some cases, the name of the SUV itself evokes conquest and imperialism: Trooper, Blazer, Pathfinder, Range Rover, 4Runner (gun-runner?), Bravada. During the early 1980s, car makers realized that these rugged, boxy vehicles could be sold in even greater numbers by simply upgrading the upholstery and adding air-conditioning, radios, and power features. The interiors required updating but the basic aesthetic of the vehicles remained a key selling point.
‘While every passenger car in the world pays homage to aerodynamics, utes continue to be as square-cut and straightforward as building blocks. SUV owners like them that way’ ( Popular Mechanics,1988: 94, italics in original).
The SUV’s association with American military might is duly noted by Hal Sperlick, president of Chrysler, who said of the jeep, ‘It’s awesome. I mean, Jeep won the war. It’s like Ike. It’s America’ (Hoyt, 1987: 83).
This barebones aesthetic that lends the SUV its utilitarian aura did become more streamlined and curvaceous by the 1990s. However, even sleek SUVs retained their four-wheel-drive capabilities and could be outfitted with tubular steel grates and permanent roof racks that, though mostly unnecessary, suggest military-grade protection and versatility. As Rapaille notes, the interiors of new SUVs may exude luxury and comfort – feminine warmth and procreation – but the exteriors remain masculine, intimidating, and warlike (Bradsher, 2002). The headline of an ad for the Mitsubishi Montero essentially confirms this: ‘The ideal vehicle for “type A” personalities. Aggressive on the outside, uncompromising on the inside’ (New Yorker, 31 October 1994).
Commenting on the SUV phenomenon in 1987, one observer writes: Four-by-fours suggest rangeland or combat. Mothers wheeling into the school parking lot in their four-by-fours resemble a flanking maneuver by Rommel’s Afrika Korps . . . many four-by-fours seem to have been designed for two or three close friends, their rifles, and a medium-sized dog. (Maynard, 1987: 16)
Despite its image as a macho, masculine vehicle, growing numbers of women began to opt for SUVs over cars or minivans for similar reasons as men – their ruggedness and brawn rather than their practicality. A Vogue article notes that the new SUVs recall the jeep as a ‘lively, even poignant reminder of war’s elemental state’ (Thomas, 1989: 248). By 1989 women already represented one-third of the primary drivers of SUVs (Bagot,1989). As a female SUV driver, quoted in Time, explains: ‘For years men drove around in big cars and trucks and looked down at women, at their legs. Now I think a lot of women are enjoying riding around and looking down on the little men’ (Greenwald, 1994: 57).
Worth a read if your not familiar with this work from 2005. I recall reading this in my nascent ‘liberaltarian’ days when I was first examining America’s car culture and SUV obsession. It was a pretty good bridge into Critical Theory that ultimately brought me to real Marxism and the rest.
https://mypages.unh.edu/sites/default/files/jlauer/files/lauer_2005_driven_to_extremes.pdf
:astronaut-2: :astronaut-1:
As an embodiment of physical safety and privileged social space, the Hummer certainly stands alone. However, its relationship to public perception of crime and social danger is uncertain. The Hummer belongs to a second generation of SUVs, one that emerged during the mid-to-late 1990s and distinguished by increasingly exaggerated dimensions and aggressive styling, as exemplified by the Cadillac Escalade and Dodge Durango, both introduced in 1998. But even more, as a vehicle whose fuel economy is less than 10 miles per gallon (23.5 liters/100 km), the Hummer conflates rationalized risk management with conspicuous consumption. Unlike the first generation, which drew upon the diminutive, Spartan jeep and notions of practicality, the Hummer and its near relatives are decidedly oversized, over-equipped, and impractical. The Hummer itself has become the military model for the second generation of SUVs. Such outsized late-1990s models convey a cavalier egotism that is less indicative of heightened risk consciousness than of overt class consciousness. The Hummer demands to be noticed and admired as an exclusionary status symbol. The protective features of second generation SUVs seem gratuitously aesthetic in comparison to earlier models; like Renaissance codpieces, their progressive ostentation has effaced their utilitarian origins.
One recent Hummer commercial, consisting of a kaleidoscopic montage of the vehicle’s chrome rims, headlights, grille, and tires, concludes with the flippant tagline, ‘Acces- sorize.’ Gone are the associations with working-class authenticity or rural gentility. The Hummer is marketed as high-end automotive jewelry, reflecting the way in which risk management is commodified and placed within a hierarchy of competitive consumption.
