There are so many weird connections between what happened in 2008-09 and today. For one, that period, the greatest recession since 1929, was supposed to be the end of SUVs. HBO even did a documentary on it called The Last Truck: The Closing of a GM Plant.
The documentary lamented, through a clip of a news broadcast, “the plant turns out four different models of SUVs, something Americans are just not buying now.”
That announcement came June 3, 2008, as the price of oil was skyrocketing towards $147/bbl. for West Texas Intermediate. Gasoline prices were sky high, and remarkably, almost exactly the same price they are in Western Canada right now, despite oil prices currently being US$68/bbl. for WTI. Also, the plant closure announcement came before the recession hit that September.
That July, I bought a used SUV made at that plant, a fully loaded 2004 Buick Rainier. I got it cheap, because no one wanted SUVs, remember?
Step forward to April 25, and Ford, the one North American auto maker that did not take a massive bailout from the U.S. and Canadian governments, announced it is all but getting out of cars. Except for the Mustang and Focus Active, you will not be able to buy a Ford car in North America. What will they sell? Trucks and SUVs (which essentially include crossovers).
Over my 27 years of driving, my wife and I have owned almost every type of consumer vehicle. The long list includes an 1981 Dodge Omni (subcompact), ’67 Buick LeSabre (full-size, a.k.a. barge), ’87 Plymouth Horizon (subcompact), ’98 Chev (Geo) Metro (sub-subcompact), ’82 Ford Econoline E-250 (full-size van), ’98 Chev Cavalier (compact), ’68 Buick LeSabre (barge Mk II), 2004 Buick Rainer (mid-size SUV), ’09 F-150 Supercrew (full-size pickup) and ’11 Ford Expedition (full-size SUV).
Do you know what we discovered through all this? An SUV and a full-size pickup, for us at least, are the perfect combination of two vehicles to own, if you can afford it.
During the post 2009 recession years, the American Congress brought in stringent rules for improved fuel efficiency. Some people might have thought this was the end of the sport utility vehicle and trucks. How wrong they were.
Those tremendous gains in fuel efficiency made it more possible to operate larger, heavier, more capable vehicles at fuel efficiencies and horsepower that could only be dreamed of before.
For instance, my ’11 Expedition has a 5.4 litre V-8, which gets 310 horsepower, and weighs 6,132 pounds. It has a six-speed transmission.
If I were to buy a totally new model, the 2018 Expedition, it would come with a much smaller 3.5 litre V-6 turbo engine, coupled to a 10-speed automatic transmission. It would weight 5,793 pounds, a 339-pound reduction. And the new engine would generate a whopping 375 horsepower, with an engine that’s 35 per cent smaller.
When I was a kid, horsepower numbering 300 was something you saw in Corvettes, not SUVs.
Ford now makes their flagship F-150 with an aluminum body, dropping several hundred pounds. The engine actually shuts off when you stop and restarts when you take your foot off the brake. And it comes with a base 2.7-litre engine that generates 325 horsepower, and 10-speed transmission. That’s more horsepower than the base ’93 Corvette, with an engine not much bigger than the 2.2 litre that could barely get my ’81 Omni to passing speed.
It’s these innovations that have made trucks and SUVs all the rage now. From my lengthy list of vehicles before, I’ve found there are few ways a car is superior to an SUV. They are cheaper, easier to park and they get better fuel economy. That fuel economy margin is a price worth paying to have four-wheel drive.
SUVs, and trucks, are almost universally equipped with some form of four-wheel drive, which, given this is Canada, is infinitely better than pretty much any car. And their additional clearance is useful not only in the countryside, but in cities like Regina and Saskatoon, where residential streets get precious little snow clearing. Of all the vehicles I’ve had, the Rainer, with air shocks, had the best ride.
The Last Truck lamented the loss of manufacturing jobs in America, but it also gave the example of the SUV as a dead end. Things have sure changed since then. That plant reopened in 2015, and now makes windshields, employing a similar number of people. And the SUV and truck are here to stay.
— Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at brian.zinchuk@sasktel.net.
