It’s no secret that cars have gotten a lot bigger over the last few years, which in no small part is due to the fact that SUVs are now the most sought-after vehicle body type around the world.
SUVs are the largest type of passenger vehicle you can buy, and it is for this very reason that they have become so popular for the majority of today’s motorists, with markets like the United States now reporting that 80% of new car sales are for SUVs or light commercial pickup trucks (locally known as bakkies).
In previous decades sedans and hatchbacks were the go-to body shapes for the vast majority of vehicles that made it onto showrooms, but as tastes changed, so too has the industry, which has led to a dramatic increase in the production of these larger cars.
How SUVs became so popular
The push towards SUVs originated in the United States following the 1973 oil crisis when many Western nations experienced shortages in imported fuel.
To counteract the impacts of the oil shortage, and to ensure that the country would not be as reliant on foreign oil in the future, the US government started to impose requirements on new cars to make them more fuel efficient, according to Vox.
In 1975, the average American car had a consumption of just 6.0 kilometres per litre (16.7l/100km), which automakers were forced to reduce to around 11.7km per litre (8.5l/100km) by 1985.
In other words, car companies had to find a way to make their cars twice as fuel-efficient in just 10 years.
Crucially, these regulations were made for passenger cars like hatchbacks, estates, and sedans, but light commercial vehicles such as pickup trucks were exempt because, at the time, they represented a fraction of the cars on the road and were predominantly used as work tools.
This created an unintended incentive for carmakers to make passenger cars based on a light commercial platform as they would still not be subject to the strict new emission deadlines, and so the SUV was born.
One of the earliest examples of SUVs include the Chevrolet Blazer, which used the same ladder-frame design as the Chevrolet S-10 truck, and this is a philosophy that can still be seen today with models like the Ford Everest, which is built on the same platform as the Ford Ranger bakkie.
However, SUVs do not always have a ladder-frame design and can instead use a unibody construction like passenger cars, which has given way to the increasingly popular crossover sub-category in recent years.
Crossovers use the same general body shape as SUVs but are typically smaller in size as many are based on hatchbacks rather than bakkies, such as the Ford Puma which is based on the now-discontinued Fiesta.
The car’s body style is not the only reason cars have gotten bigger though, as lawmakers in various countries have started to impose even tighter emission regulations on new vehicles since the 2010s.
In the USA, cars now have different emission requirements based on the size of their width and wheelbase length – which sets their carbon footprint allowance. Again, this has created an incentive for cars to get bigger, as larger models are given more leniency with regard to emissions.
This is part of the reason why most cars, not just bakkies and SUVs, have gotten bigger with each new generation, but it’s not the only one, as consumers have also played their fair share in the transition to larger cars.
The main reason for this is safety, as there is a common belief among road users that bigger cars are safer, which is true to an extent as SUV drivers are 50% more likely to survive an accident than a sedan, according to Michelin.
The caveat here is that the larger of the two cars generally comes out better in a collision, and this has led to a cycle where motorists buy SUVs because every car on the road is bigger than theirs – something that is perpetuated as SUVs continue to grow as the most popular type of vehicle on the road.
Beyond that, SUVs also promise a number of other benefits as hinted by their name – short for Sport Utility Vehicles.
SUVs, in theory, offer the best of both worlds as they provide the utility of a bakkie while delivering performance and comfort more on par with a sedan, which is why models like the BMW X3 have begun to eclipse the 3 Series in popularity over the last decade.
In a global economy where the cost of living is growing at a dramatic pace and where many households may have to downscale from two cars to just one, it’s an appealing sales pitch to have a car that can function as your day-to-day commuter while still being able to use it for the family holiday, and so these large passenger cars have become the choice for the majority of motorists, not just in South Africa or the USA, but around the world.
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