Sport Utility Vehicles: Friend or Foe.
Drive down any street in America today, and one will find themselves surrounded by giants, commonly known as sport utility vehicles. A sport utility vehicle is traditionally a vehicle with four-wheel drive, an enclosed rear cargo area, high ground clearance, a pick-up truck underbody, and is usually designed for suburban use (Bradsher 4). Despite the growing popularity of these vehicles and the belief that bigger is safer, sport utility vehicles are very dangerous to their occupants and other people on the road. .
Sport utility vehicles have been around since 1935, the first being the Chevrolet Suburban. The Suburban is the oldest nameplate still in production today (Bradsher 4). The 1935 Suburban started out as just a minor project, just a variation of the Chevrolet pick-up truck. It had a long, elegant passenger compartment with three windows on each side and two on the back door. Until the 1960s, it had only one door on each side, which made it very awkward to reach the passenger compartment, so the early Suburbans were used primarily as delivery trucks and hearses (Bradsher 4). The Suburban never really caught on as a family car until the 1980s (Bradsher 4).
Now sport utility vehicles are among the most popular vehicles on the road. One in every four new vehicles sold is a sport utility vehicle (Yates 76). They are extremely .
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profitable, too. Manufacturers make anywhere between a $5,000-$15,000 profit on each sport utility vehicle sold, so they are not going anywhere soon (Yates 76).
There are two types of sport utility vehicles construction. Traditional sport utility vehicles are built on what is called body-on-frame construction. This is where the body of the sport utility vehicle is built separately from the wheels, chassis, and the rest of the underbody (Bradsher 436). The other form of construction is a relatively new one, first introduced in 1996.
