high and mighty the dangerous rise of the suv

recently, although it's supposed to be about cars Marvelouslytold How [the auto market] came undone is Keith Bradsher's men-acing story, and I think he has it cold." —The New York Times

"Bradsher has a wide range of contacts in the business a ground giving weight to what easily could have become a polemic Hegives a comprehensive account of how lobbying by car companies, cardealers and the autoworkers' union blocked attempts to impose envi-

back-ronmental and safety regulations on SUVs." —The Economist

"An intelligent reader will conclude from this meticulous and soberinvestigation that the makers of these behemoths have exploited alucrative market of self-regarding urban and suburban consumers whocare not a whit that by driving such menacing and wasteful machinesthey are committing a horrendously antisocial act."

—The Atlantic Monthly

"Detroit's top auto executives, plus legions of Explorer, Grand kee, Durango, Navigator, and Tahoe owners, will be squirming—and

Chero-probably fuming—over publication [of] High and Mighty."

—Detroit Free Press

"Thoroughly researched, superbly readable A tribute to what onehard-nosed investigative reporter can pull off, regardless of auto-

industry promotion of an alternate reality." —Philadelphia Inquirer

"Damned if Bradsher doesn't make a point In fact a fusillade ofpoints, wounding enough to get his book banned in Michigan It isn't

so much that the average SUVis underengineered, inept, unsafe, luting, fuel-guzzling and sociopathically aggressive as that it's soknowingly, cynically, avoidably so [A] sobering, infuriating, neces-

pol-sary book." —The New York Times Book Review

"Dazzling Bradsher writes with knowledge and confidence Hisbook is a masterpiece of its kind, splendidly combining reporting,analysis and indignation It belongs on the same shelf as Ralph Nader's

Unsafe at Any Speed and Ida Tarbell's The History of Standard Oil,

chroni-cles of the dangerous interaction of corporate perfidy and regulatory

breakdown High and Mighty tells us more than we may care to know

about how government malfunctions, and about the more disturbingaspects of the American cult of driving— Bradsher's terrific book pro-vides incredible and ominous detail on the risks that SUVs and pickupspose to other drivers, and the extent to which automakers knew the

dangers and covered them up." —The New Republic

recently, although it's supposed to be about cars Marvelouslytold How [the auto market] came undone is Keith Bradsher's men-

acing story, and I think he has it cold." —The New York Times

"It's the juicy background stories that make this an interesting

book— It's a good read that is packed with valuable information, andanyone who thinks they need an SUV—no matter what the reason—

would benefit from reading it." —Motor Age

"Superb for many reasons, but above all because it studies the rise ofthe SUVfrom inside the auto-industrial complex itself Fascinatinghistorical material is presented with narrative panache Everyengaged citizen of our perishable republic ought to read this book."

—Newsday

"Not since Ralph Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed has there been such a

critical look at the U.S auto industry, or one that is more timely."

—Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"An expose in the best tradition Keith Bradsher takes a phenomenon

we all think we're familiar with—and then explains its hidden historyand startling consequences in eye-opening ways Anyone who has anSUV in the family or who faces SUVs on the road will want to know

what's in this book." —James Fallows

"Reveals not just the get-the-profits-up-at-any-cost excesses of theauto industry, but the craven behavior of Washington that surrendersits regulatory oversight, the true safety menace these truck pose, andeven the cowardly silence of environmentalists Who speaks for con-sumers? This eloquent, painstakingly reported book does It is a shout

that must be heard." —Ken Auletta

"Bradsher tells the gripping, sordid story of the domestic auto try's callousness, cover-up, deception, and greed— A siren call tomotorists to protect their families, pocketbooks, and environment, and

indus-buy all-around better cars." —Ralph Nader

Published in the United States by PublicAffairs™,

a member of the Perseus Books Group.

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews For information, address PublicAffairs, 250 West 57 th Street, Suite 1321, New York NY 10107 PublicAffairs books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases

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11 Cambridge Center, Cambridge MA 02142, call (617) 252-5298, or email

1 Sport utility vehicles—Crashworthiness 2 Consumer protection.

3 Automobile industry and trade—United States I Title.

TL230.5.S66 B73 2002

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1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Acknowledgments ix Introduction xiii

P A R T ONE

THE BIRTH OF THE SUV

1 Early Rumblings 3

2 Reviving a Corpse 18

3 Creating the Ford Explorer 43

4 Paving the Road to Ever Bigger SUVs 61

5 The SUV Economy 81

6 Reptile Dreams 93

PART TWO

THE D A R K SIDE OF THE SUV

7 The Myth of Four-Wheel-Drive Safety 127

8 Rollovers 149

9 Kill Rates 166

10 The SUV Insurance Subsidy 207

11 Trouble for Cities 221

12 Global Warming, Gasoline Mileage,

and a Gentlemen's Agreement 238

13 Seducing the Press 271

14 The Green Prince 282

15 The Ford Explorer-Firestone Tire Debacle 303

PART T H R E E

T H E F U T U R E O F T H E S U V

16 The Next Drivers of SUVs 341

17 Crossover Utilities 352

18 The Schwarzenegger Dividend 360

19 The Triumph of SUVs 382

20 Finding a Way Out 413

Epilogue 427 Myths and Realities about SUVs 443 The Family Tree of Automobiles 451 How to Improve Safety in Buying or Driving an SUV 459 Notes 461 Index 475

A senior editor of business news at The New York Times, Glenn

Kra-mon, called me from New York in February 1997 with an ing question As the newspaper's Detroit bureau chief, I had beenwriting articles for more than a year that mentioned how affluentfamilies were flocking to SUVs, and how the huge profits on thesevehicles were bringing renewed prosperity to Detroit But Kramonwanted to know about something that had little to do with busi-ness: What happened when SUVs hit cars It turned out to be a bigproblem that regulators and automakers were almost completelyignoring

intrigu-With constant encouragement from Kramon, I wrote regularlyabout the problems of SUVs for the next four and a half years Inbetween, I did the meat and potatoes of auto industry reporting:writing about the management power struggles, marketing wars,quarterly earnings and monthly sales figures of the nation's biggestindustry The criticisms of SUVs infuriated auto executives, whodenounced me in speeches and in interviews with other reporters

But The New York Times consistently supported my coverage despite

the criticism Because the bulk of my articles had nothing to do withSUVs and a lot to do with subjects near to every auto executive'sheart, like who would be the next CEO of Ford or General Motors,the industry's leaders had to keep talking to me, and they did

The backing of The New York Times was also invaluable to me in

tapping into the knowledge of mid-level auto engineers The paper sent me to many auto engineering conferences, where I wasusually the only reporter in attendance I found the engineersspoke with remarkable candor, as engineers usually do In one of

news-my favorite "Dilbert" cartoons, a customer refuses to listen to amarketing employee of the company and demands to speak to anengineer, saying that engineers always speak the truth In the car-toon, the engineer bluntly tells the customer that the productdoesn't work In real life, engineers say that SUVs are poor substi-tutes for cars when it comes to meeting the needs of most families.This book is essentially a biography of the sport utility vehicle.Rather than quote outside critics, I have tried to quote the autoindustry's own executives, the men and women who havedesigned, built and marketed SUVs despite their reservations aboutthe vehicle's practicality and safety Some of the quotes were gath-

ered during interviews for The Times Others were gathered during a book leave that The Times generously granted me for this project, a

leave of absence that allowed me to explore the history and lems of SUVs in much greater depth, gathering a lot of new infor-mation A few quotes and statistics in this book come from booksand articles by other writers, and these sources are identified in theendnotes

prob-Rising executives in the auto industry commonly change jobsevery year or two whereas the interviews used in this book span aperiod of six years Unless otherwise specified, all quotes in thisbook are attributed to officials using the titles they held at the timethey made the comments

My literary agent, Freya Manston, helped me craft the initialstructure of my manuscript The painstaking work of my editor,Paul Golob of PublicAffairs, greatly improved the book.

I very much appreciate the support and advice I have received

from The Times and especially from Glenn Kramon over the last six

years But this book is solely my project and all of the opinionsexpressed here are my own

Sport utility vehicles have taken over America's roads during thelast decade, and are on their way to taking over the world's roads.The four-wheel-drive vehicles offer a romantic vision of outdooradventure to deskbound baby boomers The larger models providelots of room for families and their gear Their size gives them animage of safety The popularity of SUVs has revived the economy ofthe upper Midwest and has helped power the American economysince the early 1990s.

Yet the proliferation of SUVs has created huge problems Theirsafe image is an illusion They roll over too easily, killing and injur-ing occupants at an alarming rate, and they are dangerous to otherroad users, inflicting catastrophic damage to cars that they hit andposing a lethal threat to pedestrians Their "green" image is also amirage, because they contribute far more than cars to smog andglobal warming Their gas-guzzling designs increase Americandependence on imported oil at a time when anti-American senti-ment is prevalent in the Middle East

The success of SUVs comes partly from extremely cynical designand marketing decisions by automakers and partly from poorlydrafted government regulations The manufacturers' marketresearchers have decided that millions of baby boomers want anadventurous image and care almost nothing about putting others atrisk to achieve it, so they have told auto engineers to design vehiclesaccordingly The result has been unusually tall, menacing vehicleslike the Dodge Durango, with its grille resembling a jungle cat'steeth and its flared fenders that look like bulging muscles in a savagejaw.

Automakers are able to produce behemoths that guzzle gas,spew pollution and endanger their occupants and other motoristsbecause of loopholes in government regulations When the UnitedStates imposed safety, environmental and tax rules on automobiles

in the 1970s, much tougher standards were set for cars than forpickup trucks, vans and the off-road vehicles that have sinceevolved into sport utility vehicles Many of these loopholes stillexist, and have spread to other countries that have copied Ameri-can regulations The result has been a public policy disaster, withautomakers given an enormous and unintended incentive to shiftproduction away from cars and toward less safe, less efficient, morepolluting SUVs

No automotive safety issue has ever captured the nation's tion with such intensity as the many rollover crashes of FordExplorer sport utility vehicles equipped with Firestone tires thatfailed Ford and Firestone have been rightly condemned for cuttingcorners in the design and manufacturing of the Explorer and thetires, and for doing little for several years as some of their employ-ees learned of problems with the tires

atten-Yet terrible as the tire-related crashes have been, killing as many

as 300 people worldwide over the last decade, they are just a tinypart of the safety and environmental problems associated withsport utility vehicles These problems are already needlessly killingthousands of Americans each year Hundreds of people are also

dying unnecessarily in other countries that are starting to use largenumbers of SUVs.

The height and width of the typical SUVmake it hard for cardrivers behind it to see the road ahead, increasing the chance thatthey will be unable to avoid a crash, especially a multi-vehiclepileup The stiff, truck-like underbody of an SUV does little toabsorb the force of collisions with trees and other roadsideobjects Its size increases traffic congestion, because car driverstend to give sport utility vehicles a lot of room, so fewer vehiclescan get through each green light at an intersection Most of thenation's roadside guardrails were built for low-riding cars, andmay flip an SUV on impact instead of deflecting it safely back intoits lane of traffic The trucklike brakes and suspensions of SUVsmean that their stopping distances are longer than for a familycar, making it less likely that an SUV driver will be able to stopbefore hitting a car And when SUVs do hit pedestrians, theystrike them high on the body, inflicting worse injuries than cars,which have low bumpers that flip pedestrians onto the relativelysoft hood

For all their deadliness to other motorists, SUVs are no saferthan cars for their own occupants Indeed, they are less safe Theoccupant death rate per million SUVs is actually 6 percent higherthan the occupant death rate per million cars The biggest SUVs,which pose the greatest hazards to other motorists, have an 8 per-cent higher death rate for their occupants than minivans and thelarger midsize cars like the Ford Taurus and Pontiac Grand Prix.1How is this possible? SUV occupants simply die differently, beingmuch more likely than car occupants to die in rollovers, as well asbeing much more likely to send other drivers to the grave

SUV occupants also face a higher risk of paralysis While nonational studies have been done, statewide studies in Arkansas andUtah have found that rollovers account for nearly half of all cases

of paralysis Put another way, rollovers cause almost as many lyzing spinal injuries as all illnesses, falls and every other form of

para-traffic accident combined—even though rollovers make up lessthan 1 percent of all crashes.

Worst of all, we have only seen the beginnings of the SUV lem, which is certain to become much bigger and much deadlier inthe years to come The safety hazards of SUVs have been mitigateduntil now because they have mainly attracted the safest drivers inAmerica The principal buyers of SUVs in the 1990s and early2000s have been baby boomers in their 40s, with some sales topeople in their 30s and 50s These affluent first owners of SUVstend to be the most cautious drivers on the road, because they aremostly middle-aged people who have plenty of driving experienceand still have acute vision, hearing and mental faculties Half ofthem also have families, so they are much less likely to be out driv-ing in the wee hours of the morning, when crash rates soar

prob-There are 20 million SUVs on the nation's roads and more thanhalf of them are less than five years old Three-quarters of the full-size SUVs, the largest models, are also under five years old Asaffluent, cautious-driving baby boomers begin to sell their SUVs orturn them in at the end of leases, the used-vehicle market will beflooded with these vehicles Falling prices will make them moreattractive to younger drivers and drivers with poor safety records—including drunk drivers The only thing more frightening for trafficsafety experts than a bad driver behind the wheel of a new SUV is abad driver behind the wheel of an old SUVwith failing brakes andother maintenance problems

Traditional SUVs, which use the same underbodies as pickuptrucks, have climbed from 1.78 percent of new vehicles sold in

1982 to 6.7 percent in 1991 and 16.1 percent in 1997, and havesince leveled off at about 17 percent The change has been evenswifter at the luxury end of the auto market, with SUVs rising fromless than one-twentieth of the market in 1990 to half the luxurymarket by 1996 But SUVs still make up only 10 percent of thevehicles currently registered in the United States Most of the auto-mobiles built in the 1980s are still on the road, and these are

mostly cars, so this has been holding down the percentage of allvehicles on the road that are SUVs As older model years of vehiclesare scrapped, however, they are being replaced with new modelyears in which a much larger proportion of the vehicles are SUVs.This will eventually make SUVs nearly twice as common as theyare now.

SUVs are a problem not just for traffic safety but for the ronment Because of their poor gas mileage, they emit a lot of car-bon dioxide, a gas linked to global warming A midsize SUV putsout roughly 50 percent more carbon dioxide per mile than the typi-cal car, while a full-size SUVmay emit twice as much The SierraClub likes to point out that driving a full-size SUVfor a year instead

envi-of a midsize car burns as much extra energy as leaving a tor door open for six years SUVs also spew up to 5.5 times as muchsmog-causing gases per mile as cars

refrigera-Automakers made surprising progress in the 1980s and 1990s inimproving the fuel economy of cars, but these gains are being slowlyerased by the rise of SUVs Chrysler boasts that its full-size Concordesedan now has better acceleration and exactly the same interiorroom as a 1978 Chrysler New Yorker luxury sedan, but gets nearlythe same gas mileage as a 1978 Dodge Omni subcompact, 23 milesper gallon Yet sales of the Concorde and other large cars haveeroded, displaced by big SUVs like Chrysler's Dodge Durango—which get the same mileage as the 1978 New Yorker, about 14 miles

to the gallon

How many people is the SUV boom already killing? My bestestimate is that the replacement of cars with SUVs is currentlycausing close to 3,000 needless deaths a year in the United States—

as many people annually as died in the terrorist attacks at theWorld Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001 Roughly1,000 extra deaths occur each year in SUVs that roll over, com-pared to the expected rollover death rate if these motorists hadbeen driving cars About 1,000 more people die each year in carshit by SUVs than would occur if the cars had been hit by other cars

And up to 1,000 additional people succumb each year to tory problems because of the extra smog caused by SUVs.2

respira-This conservative estimate excludes a lot of problems that arehard to calculate, like SUVs' harm to pedestrians, or their contribu-tion to global warming It also excludes the growing problems over-seas, where SUVsales are also starting to rise, especially in Europe,South America and Australia

SUVs are the world's most dangerous vehicles because they sent a new model of personal transportation that is inherently lesssafe for road users and more harmful to the environment than cars.SUVs also threaten to displace cars because of a phenomenonknown as "network externalities."

repre-This economic concept holds that if enough people start using acertain product, everybody else will start buying the same productjust for the advantages of being able to work with people whoalready have the product Consumers will do this even if the prod-uct chosen is technologically inferior to the alternatives

The best example of network externalities lies in the computerindustry Once enough people started using Microsoft DOS, andlater Microsoft Windows, then practically everybody had to use it,even though Apple arguably had a much better product in its Mac-intoshes

Another good example of network externalities lies in VHSvideo recorders They represent a less sophisticated technologythan the Beta machines with which they initially competed Butonce enough people owned VHS video recorders, most movierentals became available in a VHS format and then everybody had

to buy VHS machines

SUVs are inferior to cars in safety, pollution, comfort and drivingperformance Yet their sales have benefited from network external-ities It is becoming harder and harder to see down the road whilesitting in a car, because of the impossibility of seeing through the

tall SUVs, minivans and pickups ahead in traffic At night, the glarefrom SUV headlights is blinding for car drivers Backing a car out of

a parking place between two taller vehicles has become an exercise

in hope that no one is about to come barreling by The sheer sizeand menacing appearance of SUVs inevitably make car owners feelless safe The result has been a highway arms race

If nothing is done to check this trend, automakers willgraduallymake more and more people feel as though cars are obsolete Thesale of SUVs is creating strong demand for yet more SUVs, as FordExplorers and Toyota Sequoias displace Ford Tauruses and ToyotaCamrys in garage after garage Advertising reinforces this trend.The auto industry completely dwarfs every other industry in adver-tising, accounting for one in every seven dollars of advertising inthe United States and bankrolling the nation's media to a remark-able extent, especially the television and magazine industries Theauto industry outspends on advertising the next three largestindustries combined: financial services, telecommunications(including local, long-distance and cell phone service) and nationalrestaurant chains A big chunk of the automakers' ad money hasgone toward ads that subtly or blatantly undermine people's confi-dence in cars

Picking the most offensive SUV ad is hard, because there are somany candidates My favorite is the nearly full-page newspaper adthat Cadillac ran for its huge Escalade in early 1999 The Escaladewas photographed from a point about five feet in front and abouttwo feet off the ground, so that the vehicle's huge grille looms overthe viewer The windshield above is entirely black, giving no hint

of who inside is bearing down on the viewer Trees are a blur ofmotion around the sides of the vehicle but the SUV itself is in per-fect focus as it hurtles forward It looks just like what you might see

in the last second of your life as you looked out the side window ofyour car and suddenly realized that a big SUVhad failed to stop for

a red light

The text of the ad is even more frightening "YIELD," it

com-mands at the top, in inch-high, underlined letters In half-inch ters under the Escalade is another warning, delivered in parenthe-ses: "(Please Move Immediately To The Right)" The large type textbelow continues in the same tone: "You might as well give in now.Because this is the new Cadillac Escalade The one luxury SUV sopowerfully built and intelligently equipped, it's designed to be,well, irresistible With the standard go-everywhere support of theOnStar system, Escalade brings you virtually unlimited personalconcierge services, emergency assistance and directions, right atyour fingertips And no other SUV in the world can make thatclaim So tell the other luxury SUVs to yield the right of way.Because Escalade is coming through."

let-Underneath was the Escalade slogan, in white lettering against asolid black box "Escalade: It'sGood To Be The Cadillac."

You might be more likely to survive if you were in the Cadillac

in the ad than in whatever lower-riding car it was about to hit Butfew people reading the ad carefully could possibly conclude that "to

be the Cadillac" was "good" in a moral sense Nor is it good forpublic safety and the environment to have even some people "bethe Cadillac" in the sense of this ad

The ad's advice for other drivers to yield is actually pretty goodadvice, however, as the Escalade can be a hard vehicle to controleven for an experienced driver The steering is sluggish, the suspen-sion vague and the brakes not as effective as car brakes I climbed

in one of the early Escalades in early 1999 at Detroit's airport for atest drive, but was so appalled by its unresponsive steering that Idrove straight home I called Cadillac and asked them to pick upthe vehicle and take it away Cadillac has improved the Escaladesomewhat since I first drove it, but it still has the nimbleness andride quality of a pig on stilts

While the Escalade's sheer bulk may provide some protection incollisions with cars, that does not mean it is especially welldesigned for safety in other crashes Regulators give it a so-sothree-star rating (on a scale of one to five) for driver survival in a

frontal crash with another vehicle of the same weight or with asolid object, like a bridge abutment Many large cars and minivansnow carry five-star ratings and the rest typically earn four stars.The regulators also took the extremely rare step of noting thatwhile thigh injuries are not included in calculating survival odds,Escalade drivers are at unusually high risk of a fractured femur in aserious frontal crash.

Cadillac, a division of General Motors, rushed the Escalade ontothe market in 1998, a little over a year after the Lincoln Navigatorwent on sale and was an instant hit To make the Escalade, GMessentially put lots of chrome and optional equipment on a GMCYukon SUV, which in turn is little more than a fancy version of aChevrolet Tahoe SUV The Tahoe, in turn, uses the underbody and

a lot of other parts from the full-size Chevrolet Silverado pickuptruck So Cadillac was essentially taking a $20,000 work truck,tricking it up with lots of chrome, leather seats, and a fancy stereo,and selling it for close to $50,000 This is how automakers haveearned enormous profits on full-sized SUVs GM and Ford havenearly seven times the sales of Microsoft, and each has beenrestored to financial health by SUV profits

GM has been the most aggressive automaker over the last eral years in stepping up sales of large, pickup-based SUVs GMexecutives like to defend their decision to make vehicles like theEscalade by saying that they are simply building what Americanswant As long as gasoline prices remain low, government regula-tions remain tilted against cars, and Americans remain enamored

sev-of big, macho vehicles worthy sev-of the American frontier, executives

at GM and other automakers plan to go on making SUVs

Harry Pearce, the powerful vice chairman of GM, put it best as

he was leaving a press conference in August 2000: "If pigs are bigand popular, I guess we'll make pigs."

THE BIRTH OF THE SUV

E A R L Y R U M B L I N G S

At Henry Ford's mansion outside Detroit, the carved wood bustssupporting the ceiling in the ballroom show the inventor of theModel T and three close friends, all famous: Harvey Firestone,founder of the tire company that bears his name; Thomas Edison,inventor of the lightbulb and phonograph; and John Burroughs,the naturalist The four men loved to go on camping trips in the1920s, accompanied by cooks and other servants in Ford's employ.Driving automobiles specially made in Ford factories, they wouldspend weeks at a time traversing the American West; they calledthemselves the Vagabonds

The mansion, Fairlane, is now a museum, preserved much as itwas in Henry Ford's day, and its large octagonal garage is what youmight expect of an auto baron—or perhaps a railroad magnate,since the garage looks a little like an old railway roundhouse forsteam engines There are huge windows around the circumference,

so that Henry Ford's automobiles can be admired in natural ing There is a turntable in the middle, to make it easier to put eachcar into its space against the walls

light-Next to the door is a 1922 Lincoln camper that was custommade for the Vagabonds' trips The Ford Motor Company put thisvehicle on display at the Detroit auto show in 1997 when itunveiled the Lincoln Navigator full-sized SUV, contending thatHenry Ford had created the first sport utility vehicle But thecamper looks nothing like any SUV today There are no seatsbehind the front row, just a long, enclosed cargo area in the backfor carrying camping gear It is basically a pickup truck with a cov-ered bed.

What is an SUV? There is no official definition—most ment regulations simply have categories for "off-highway vehicles,"which in turn are lumped in with pickup trucks and minivans as

govern-"light trucks." The auto industry has not settled on a definitioneither My definition has five parts An SUV is a vehicle that (1) hasfour-wheel drive available as either standard or optional equip-ment; (2) has an enclosed rear cargo area like a minivan; (3) hashigh ground clearance for off-road travel; (4) uses a pickup-truckunderbody; (5) is designed primarily for urban consumers andmarketed primarily to them, with a cushy suspension and otherfeatures that may even compromise some of its appeal to seriousoff-road drivers In the last few years, automakers have begun tak-ing car designs and making them considerably taller and addingfour-wheel drive, so as to market the result as an SUV These vehi-cles, like the Toyota Highlander, which is derived from the Camrysedan, are often described within the auto industry as crossoverutility vehicles, not SUVs, because they are not based on truckunderbodies I follow this convention in this book

General Motors contends that the Chevrolet Suburban, whichwas introduced in 1935, is the world's oldest sport utility in massproduction The Suburban also happens to be the oldest nameplate

of any car, minivan, SUVor pickup truck in continuous production

in the United States

The early Suburban was a handsome vehicle, a big powerfulautomobile of the sort that Al Capone might have been proud to

drive It had a long hood with a tall grille on the front, and then along, elegant passenger compartment with three windows on eachside and two more in the back door.

To make the Suburban, Chevrolet engineers simply used thehood, engine, fenders and underbody of a pickup truck and fash-ioned an attractive passenger compartment to replace the pickuptruck cab and bed No one at GM can identify the father of the Sub-urban Chevrolet officials say that the first Suburban was probably

a minor project, viewed as a variation of an existing pickup truckdesign, and so its development did not merit any mention in thefiles that survive from that era The name "Suburban" was not orig-inal either—another GM division, Cadillac, had sold an expensivelyupholstered, seven-passenger Suburban sedan from 1918 to 1927

A 1936 Chevrolet truck catalog touted a "Carryall Suburban"available as either a passenger vehicle or as a light delivery truck,with side windows filled in behind the front row of seats A photo

of the passenger version showed a fashionably dressed womanstepping out of a Suburban while a liveried chauffeur holds thedoor "Its utility is proved by its wide demand by private estates,country clubs, hotels, bus and transfer companies, airports, as well

as operators who use it for business and pleasure," the catalog said.1But until the 1960s, Chevrolet only sold the Suburban with onedoor on each side, a design that reflected the pickup truck model

on which it was based That made it hard to climb into the rearseats, and limited the demand for it as a family vehicle What keptthe Suburban in production for so many years was the deliverytruck version, which was especially popular in one specialized mar-ket: funeral homes

Undertakers discovered that with all but the front seatsremoved, the back of a Suburban was precisely the right length andheight for carrying the dead, either in bags or in coffins Suburbanswere used as "first-call" vehicles to pick up the dearly departed athomes and hospitals and bring them back for burial preparations,while converted limousines were preferred as hearses for funeral

processions Suburbans were also popular for carrying flowerarrangements and chairs, for bringing back coffins from coffinbuilders and for picking up human remains at airports, because thesturdy metal boxes that the airlines use for shipping corpses areactually bigger and heavier than many caskets.

Funeral home demand for Suburbans has been dwindling sincethe mid-1980s as Suburbans have became chic and the price hassoared But to this day, the height of the Suburban's rear cargofloor partly reflects an early effort by GM engineers to find a com-fortable height for the loading and unloading of the dead, saysJames Hall, a longtime GM engineer who is now at AutoPacific, abig consulting firm

It was not until 1967 that Chevrolet finally got around to ing a four-door Suburban By then the Suburban had become afairly bare-bones workhorse for cost-conscious funeral homes andother businesses rather than a station wagon for families So earlySuburbans were not really the first sport utility vehicles, as theterm is understood today That honor must go instead to a Jeep

offer-The American military began experimenting after World War I withlightweight vehicles that could replace its mules and reconnais-sance motorcycles The Army wanted a lightweight vehicle withfour-wheel drive that could carry men and a heavy machine gun

In 1940, three weeks after Hitler defeated the French and theBritish had to evacuate Dunkirk, the Army got serious and put out

a request for corporate bids to build huge numbers of such a cle A nearly bankrupt company named American Bantam came upwith the design that came closest to meeting the Army's specifica-tions But the Army had little faith in American Bantam's manufac-turing ability and gave large contracts for a Bantam-like design toFord and Willys-Overland as well Willys-Overland improved thedesign with a better engine and ended up producing the bulk of theJeeps made for World War II.2

vehi-Nobody knows for sure where the term "Jeep" came from.Some historians say it honored a character of that name in E C.Segar's Popeye comic strip in the 1930s Other experts suggest that

it was derived from G.P., or general purpose vehicle Other smallmilitary vehicles were briefly known as Jeeps at the beginning ofWorld War II But the Willys model quickly became the only trueJeep The cartoonist Bill Mauldin sketched what may be the mostfamous single drawing of a vehicle, an old soldier from the horse-drawn era ending the suffering of his broken-axle Jeep by shooting

it in the hood.3

Willys registered the Jeep name as a Willys trademark, makingsure that the company would own the brand for the civilian mar-ket after World War II.4 But Willys ran into a problem as the warended With government backing, it had been buying the exteriorsheet metal for its Jeeps from other companies But with the end ofthe war, there was a severe shortage of factories that could stampout big pieces of steel for automobile bodies, and GM, Ford,Chrysler and their affiliated suppliers controlled most of the avail-able factories

Willys's response to this conundrum has haunted the SUV ket ever since Charlie Sorenson, who had become the president ofWillys late in the war, found a former metal-stamping factory forthe washing-machine industry that could stamp out the neededhoods, fenders, roofs, doors and so forth The factory's shortcomingwas that it could only stamp out fairly flat pieces of metal, of thesort that might be used to make the sides of washing-machines.5 Sowhile Willys had made fairly attractive, curvaceous cars in the pre-war years, all it could make after World War II were very boxy,straight-sided Jeeps with parts stamped at the former washing-machine factory

mar-The rest of the auto industry moved into the postwar years with

an emphasis on rounded, even sensuous shapes that were meant toevoke the curves of women's bodies The most famous examples arethe chrome, conelike ends of the bumpers of Cadillacs from 1946 to

1959, which resembled women's breasts But Jeeps would keeptheir very boxy look from their washing-machine factory roots fordecades as successive owners invested little in the brand, until boxi-ness become one of the defining traits of sport utility vehicles.Willys moved quickly into family vehicles after the war It intro-duced the Jeep Station Wagon in 1946, and began offering it withfour-wheel drive in 1949 But while the Jeep Station Wagonlooked like a station wagon in that it had two rows of seats and alarge storage area in the back, it still had only one door on eachside, making access to the back seat difficult Sales of the utilitarian,no-frills vehicle were slow at a time when Americans wanted ele-gance after the deprivations of World War II Willys struggled.Henry J Kaiser, an industrialist who made his fortune buildingdams in the 1930s and ships during World War II, bought Willys-Overland in 1953 and renamed it Willys Motors But he investedfairly little money in new factory equipment or new designs Betterroads, including the start of the interstate highway system in the1950s, reduced the need for four-wheel drive Most people did notsee the need for a Jeep Station Wagon that looked too much like amodified pickup truck from the Depression.

Two utilitarian alternatives to the Jeep came on the market inEurope and East Asia in the years following World War II LandRover began making four-wheel-drive vehicles for the landed gen-try to tour their muddy fields in Britain In Japan, Toyota beganbuilding Jeeps under contract for the United States Army during theKorean War When the contract expired, Toyota turned this expert-ise to the production of the very similar Land Cruiser, which wassold to police and forestry agencies operating in remote areas withfew paved roads Toyota shipped a single Land Cruiser to the UnitedStates in 1957, sold it easily, and began shipping Land Cruisersregu-larly in 1958 (over the course of many model changes, the LandCruiser has become enormous and no longer looks much like a Jeep

at all) But Toyota and Land Rover remained bit players in theAmerican market for utility vehicles until the 1990s

Jeeps started to face serious competition in 1961, when tional Harvester introduced a small, four-wheel-drive vehicleknown as the Scout, with an open bed like a pickup truck and acanvas top that was notorious for leaks It had a single bench seat

Interna-in the front and a wInterna-indshield that could be folded down if itbecame too spattered with mud to be cleaned.6 International Har-vester never had much success with the Scout and finally aban-doned production of it in 1980 to focus on its core business, theproduction of commercial trucks and farm equipment

Willys Motors was renamed Kaiser Jeep in 1962, the same year

it overhauled the Jeep Station Wagon and renamed it the JeepWagoneer.7 The Wagoneer's passenger compartment was designed

to some extent for family buyers and the vehicle had four-wheeldrive Unlike the Jeep Station Wagon, it was available with fourdoors as well as two Magazine ads highlighted not just the militaryhistory of Jeeps but the availability of pink and white upholstery.8Yet the Wagoneer was a bulky, uncomfortable vehicle, and noamount of colorful upholstery could disguise that it was quite dif-ferent from the station wagons on sale in the early 1960s It wasnot well suited to the needs of family buyers and drew few of them.Kaiser Jeep was only able to sell a few thousand Wagoneers ayear—no more than a full-sized assembly plant of GM, Ford orChrysler could make in a week Stephen A Girard, the president ofthe company from 1954 to 1969, says that the magazine advertise-ments notwithstanding, he had believed the vehicle would appeal

to a limited number of families who really needed four-wheel drivefor activities like hunting and fishing, and the company marketedthe vehicle primarily to these customers Moreover, Kaiser Jeephad factories or distributors in more than two dozen countries—theBrazilian and Argentine markets were the biggest—so it had todesign rugged models that would be used for heavy-duty off-roaddriving every day in those countries Even with the Wagoneer,Girard says, "We were providing four-wheel drive to people whoneeded it."

The Wagoneer nonetheless helped inspire competitors Fordstarted selling fairly large, two-door Broncos in 1965 Chevroletadded a third door to the Suburban in 1967, a rear door on thecurb side that allowed better access to the back seat In 1969,Chevrolet started selling the very large, two-door Chevy Blazer,which was based on a full size pickup-truck underbody But theChevy and Ford offerings were even more trucklike than the Wag-oneer Nobody yet had the imagination to sell big four-wheel-drivevehicles as substitutes for cars.

At Kaiser Jeep, the practical approach reflected the extent towhich engineers dominated the company while marketers took aback seat Henry Kaiser had accumulated a global empire of indus-trial commodities firms before buying Willys-Overland in 1953 Hehad helped to organize the consortiums of construction companiesthat built the Hoover, Grand Coulee and Bonneville dams in the1930s and early 1940s During World War II, he owned seven ship-yards on the West Coast that mastered the task of building freighters

in as little as four and a half days After the war, he expanded idly in steel and aluminum, selling to the colossi of Detroit His onlybig failure before Kaiser Jeep was his attempt to sell a family car, theHenry J, in the late 1940s and early 1950s

rap-What all of Henry Kaiser's successful projects had in common,unlike the Henry J and then the Jeeps, was that they involved sell-ing to only a few buyers Kaiser and his top aides knew how to woostate and federal officials who wanted to build dams They knewhow to talk the purchasing agents of shipping lines and automakersinto buying freighters and steel They knew a lot less about how topromote consumer products to 200 million Americans Girard,himself an expert in building hydroelectric dams, recounted yearslater that he and his top aides at Kaiser Jeep had simply not under-stood the importance of salesmanship "I had been there sinceCoulee, and none of us had any experience in marketing to thewhole country," Girard said The SUVboom would have to waituntil someone came along who could do that

As Kaiser Jeep struggled into the 1960s, a very different disputewas going on among a handful of trade negotiators and farm lobby-ists in Washington, a disagreement that would later have an enor-mous effect on the development of the SUVmarket Because of thedispute, foreign automakers were essentially shut out of the Ameri-can market for pickup trucks until the late 1990s, ensuring thatpickups and their descendants, SUVs, would be the virtually exclu-sive fief of Detroit automakers for more than a quarter of a century.

In turn, this gave Washington a powerful incentive to go easy onSUV regulations even when it got tough on car regulations, as away to mollify Detroit automakers and the powerful United Auto-mobile Workers (UAW) union

Yet the original trade dispute, oddly enough, had nothing soever to do with automobiles It involved, of all things, frozenchickens Between 1957 and 1961, American farmers had quintu-pled their exports of frozen chickens to Western Europe The Euro-pean Economic Community, then just six countries, wasdeveloping a common agricultural policy but finding that chickenfarmers, especially in West Germany, were in danger of going out

what-of business because their costs were too high The Communityresponded by imposing steep import taxes on frozen chickens,which made it too expensive for American farmers to keep sellingthem there

The taxes were a flagrant violation of international free-traderules that the Europeans had pledged to follow The United Statesappealed the European taxes in 1962 to a panel of trade experts inGeneva, as part of an established arbitration process The panelruled in favor of the United States a year later, saying that theUnited States could raise import taxes on a value of imports fromEurope equal to the value of the lost chicken exports, unless theEuropean Community swiftly cancelled its chicken tax

Kennedy Administration trade officials threatened in August

1963 to impose taxes on four imported products: high-pricedbrandy, potato starch, dextrin (a starch derivative used in adhesives

and certain foods) and light trucks The Detroit automakers nated the world market then, especially General Motors, and theUnited States imported very few vehicles But Volkswagen in WestGermany was shipping to the United States a small number ofKombi panel vans and a few pickup trucks The Kombi vans onlyhad side windows for the front seats, and were marketed as deliv-ery vehicles to flower shops, donut stores and other small busi-nesses Since West Germany was the main country responsible forimposing the chicken tax, threatening retribution against Volkswa-gen seemed like a natural choice.

domi-The Europeans remained intransigent in the following months.When Lyndon Johnson took office after the assassination of Presi-dent Kennedy on November 22, 1963, the trade dispute was one ofthe first issues on his desk

Johnson was in frequent contact from the day after the nation with Walter Reuther, the president of the United Automo-bile Workers union, according to secretly recorded tapes that havesince been released by Johnson's presidential library Johnson soonbegan wooing Reuther energetically, for he especially wanted todiscourage Reuther from staging a national strike when the UAW'slabor contracts with the Big Three expired in September 1964, lessthan two months before the presidential elections

assassi-Reuther, in turn, wanted Johnson's help He was concerned thatthe Big Three were ignoring the market for small cars, allowingVolkswagen to sell its Beetle with increasing success Reuther askedJohnson's help in getting the Big Three to build small cars, if neces-sary through a joint venture, which would require a special dispen-sation from antitrust laws Johnson consulted repeatedly with hisattorney general, Robert Kennedy, and his defense secretary,Robert McNamara, who had briefly been the president of the FordMotor Company before joining the Kennedy Administration.Yet at least among the taped conversations, there is no record ofthe light-truck tax being raised, even though it also involved Volk-swagen products When I asked McNamara, the only one of the

group still alive today, he said that the light-truck tax had simplynever been seen as important Nobody seems to have realized atthe time how important a light-truck tax might become Familiesdrove cars, so cars were important; trucks were for a few workmenand farmers.

President Johnson finally imposed the threatened taxes in ary 1964, including a 25 percent tax on imported trucks Volkswa-gen promptly stopped shipping Kombi vans and pickups to theUnited States, because the tax made them so expensive that theywere no longer competitive

Janu-Under international trade rules, however, the new tax applied

to imported light trucks from anywhere in the world, not just many And whereas the taxes on brandy, potato starch and dextrinwere later lifted, there has never been a cease-fire in the chickenwar of the early 1960s The light-truck tax persists to this day,although its scope has narrowed somewhat over the years throughvarious court decisions Japanese automakers subsequently tookover a huge chunk of the American car market in the 1970s and1980s But cracking the American truck market would take farlonger, and require the building of factories in the United States toget around the tariffs

Ger-Because of the chicken dispute, light trucks would remain thealmost exclusive turf of Detroit automakers all the way into the late1990s Time and again, government regulators would soften theblow of new rules by applying them first to cars and only later, if atall, to the Detroit-dominated market for light trucks

The first steps on the road to persuading Americans that lighttrucks were viable substitutes for cars were taken on a privateduck-hunting preserve in southern Ontario in the 1960s Located

an hour's drive from downtown Detroit, the preserve offered a tic retreat for the nation's auto barons, and was the property of arising executive at American Motors, Roy D Chapin Jr

rus-Chapin was a second-generation American industrial patrician ofthe sort who ruled Detroit in the middle of the twentieth century.Roy D Chapin Sr was one of the founders of the Hudson Motor CarCompany in 1909 and had been Hudson's president for many yearsand then chairman, before resigning to serve as Commerce Secre-tary in the Hoover Administration His son grew up in one of thelargest and most beautiful mansions in Grosse Pointe, Michigan,and attended Hotchkiss, an elite New England boarding school RoyChapin Sr died suddenly in 1936, while his tall, socially poised sonwas still at Yale When the younger Chapin graduated from Yale ayear later, he immediately became an engineer at his late father'scompany, in which he had inherited a huge block of stock WhenHudson Motor merged with Nash-Kelvinator in 1954 to form theAmerican Motors Corporation, Chapin was invited to join the board

of directors even though he was still a junior executive He began torise swiftly through AMC's management ranks

Chapin moved in an elite circle of wealthy bankers and alists who liked to hunt and fish on remote rivers and ponds inCanada and on Nantucket Island, where the Chapin family had asummer estate Hidden in the woods of Chapin's hunting preserve

industri-in southern Ontario, several hundred yards from the marshy frindustri-inges

of Lake St Clair, was a large, well-furnished cabin with a kitchen,dining room, living room and four small bedrooms for Chapin andhis hunting friends During the autumn hunting season, there wasalways a woman present to cook the ducks and one or two handy-men to help with the expensive shotguns and the black Labradorretriever dogs Roy Chapin's son, William R Chapin, recalls that anaging Jeep was parked outside the cabin, and was used to reach out-lying duck blinds

A frequent guest was Chapin's close friend Stephen Girard, whoworked at Kaiser Jeep's administrative headquarters in Toledo,Ohio, next to the sprawling Jeep factory there Whenever Girardhad meetings in the autumn in Detroit, 40 miles northeast ofToledo, he would call Chapin and arrange to spend the night at the

cabin before returning to Toledo the following morning The twomen, sometimes joined by a few of Chapin's friends, would stay upmuch of the night talking, then awake before dawn and head forthe duck blinds in the hope of shooting a few teals and mallardsbefore going back to work.

In 1965, the Kaiser family decided to sell the Jeep business, and

it was Girard's job to find a buyer He tried General Motors, Fordand various foreign automakers, especially Renault, which sharedsome factories with Jeep overseas Not one of these companies wasinterested One of the executives who turned him away, Girardrecalls, was Lee lacocca, who was a top Ford executive at the time.Americans wanted cars, not Jeeps, automakers believed then.Worse, the Jeep distribution system was a disaster, with tiny ruraldealerships that had no money for advertising Labor relations atthe Toledo factory were terrible, with periodic strikes and evenvandalism of unsold vehicles The Jeeps themselves used technol-ogy and factory equipment that dated back to the 1940s, becausethe Kaisers had not invested much money Jeep sales had lan-guished through the 1960s, while the rest of the auto industry wasbooming

As it happened, Girard really wanted to sell Kaiser Jeep to hishunting buddy, Roy Chapin, who was AMC's executive vice presi-dent "Roy and I were so close and we got to talking about it, and

he always thought Jeep would make a good combination, and Ihelped him to that idea," recalls Girard "Chapin, he was my bigshot to make a deal."

Chapin was eager His wealthy friends on Nantucket and where drove Jeeps at their hunting clubs and summer homes, andChapin was convinced that the brand could have broader appeal

else-He lobbied AMC's president, Roy Abernethy, to buy Kaiser Jeepand even negotiated a tentative deal with Girard But the deal fellapart when Henry Kaiser demanded a steeper price and Abernethyrefused Nobody else wanted Kaiser Jeep, so Girard had to take itoff the market

But circumstances changed in 1967 Chapin became chairmanand president of American Motors while Henry Kaiser died and hisson, Edgar, inherited the family empire Edgar Kaiser, a friend ofChapin's who had run Kaiser Jeep during the first year after hisfather bought it, wanted to stop building Jeeps, a business that hedeeply disliked because of frequent disputes with local union lead-ers in Toledo He was more interested in various business opportu-nities for the family in Asia, notably mining ventures "He didn'tlike the automotive business, he didn't want to be in it," recallsCarlyn Kaiser Stark, the eldest child of Edgar Kaiser "He gotpushed into it by his father and it was a very unhappy experience."

In this new, more receptive environment, Chapin and Girardworked out the outlines of a new deal in a series of meetings in late

1969 Chapin flew out to San Francisco to present it to EdgarKaiser over lunch at an inexpensive restaurant where they wereunlikely to be noticed American Motors would buy Kaiser Jeep forjust $10 million plus a bundle of AMC stock and lOUs optimisti-cally valued at another $60 million Without any investmentbankers or lawyers, the two men worked out the deal on a restau-rant place mat, according to Roy Chapin's son, William

"Like a lot of place mats in history, I wish it had been saved," hesaid "It may not have meant much at the time to the people writ-ing on it, but it certainly had some historicsignificance."

Although nobody even dreamed it then, the Kaiser Jeep dealwas the beginning of a huge shift in what people would drive onroads across America and, eventually, around the world AmericanMotors would transform the public perception of Jeeps, executingsuccessfully the strategy of turning Jeeps into family vehicles thatKaiser Jeep had tried but failed to implement After decades on thefringes of the auto industry, the world's most famous brand of off-road vehicles had finally come into the possession of an automakerwith real marketing ability

The fact that American Motors bought Kaiser Jeep instead ofFord or General Motors made antitrust regulators happy But the

purchase would have disturbing consequences for the sport utilityvehicle market that would later develop.

American Motors was the smallest and weakest of the Detroitautomakers While it had a bright sales staff and an extensive net-work of dealers, it lacked the financial and engineering resources ofits rivals American Motors struggled even during the 1960s, agolden age for the American automobile industry When gasolineprices soared, the United States economy stumbled and auto regula-tions became more stringent in the 1970s, American Motors wouldbarely survive It would look to Washington for relief again andagain Too often, that relief would take the form of exempting Jeepsfrom rules aimed at making highways safer, making the air cleanerand making the American economy less dependent on foreign oil

R E V I V I N G A C O R P S E

It was only much later, more than 30 years later, that Gerald ers began comparing himself to Dr Frankenstein, the scientist whobreathed life into a corpse, only to create a monster he could notcontrol.1

Mey-Meyers was the vice president of vehicle development at can Motors when it acquired Kaiser Jeep Late in the autumn of

Ameri-1969, just after the deal was struck with Edgar Kaiser, Roy Chapinasked Meyers to conduct a preliminary evaluation of Jeep's factoryequipment, vehicle designs and marketing operation for the nextmeeting of AMC's board, just a few days away

Meyers was immediately hostile to the idea, sharing the tion of most auto executives that Jeep was a disaster He drove toToledo and was dismayed by the sullen workforce He flew to theJeep factory in South Bend, Indiana, in a little, propeller-drivenCessna that American Motors sometimes chartered and was unim-pressed by the aging factory equipment He already knew that Jeepdealerships were mostly mom-and-pop operations in rural areaswith no money for advertising, and had little use for them Worst

percep-of all, Kaiser Jeep faced huge legal expenses to settle the many suits filed by the families of people killed or paralyzed when theirtippy Jeeps rolled over.

law-Meyers returned to Detroit just before the board meeting andbluntly told Chapin that he would recommend to the directors thatAmerican Motors not buy Jeep As far as Meyers was concerned,Jeep was a corpse, soon to follow Studebaker, Packard and manyother companies that had already entered the graveyard of Ameri-can automakers

But Chapin was not so easily dissuaded He told Meyers of onemore detail he had not mentioned before Meyers recalled, "Roysaid I'd become executive vice president and get to fix Jeep if I sup-ported it I said to myself, 'I'm a vice president, an executive vicepresident is pretty good/ so I supported it."

The directors rubber-stamped Chapin's deal and AmericanMotors formally agreed to buy Kaiser Jeep on December 2, 1969.Despite the cheap price tag, a local magazine columnist dubbed thetransaction "Chapin's folly," and many questioned whether Ameri-can Motors, already struggling for survival, could have spent itsmoney better No one,not even Chapin, realized that Jeep hadbeen one of the best buys in the history of the auto industry

As a newly minted executive vice president, Meyers movedquickly to overhaul American Motors' new Jeep subsidiary Hebegan with the small CJ5, which was the direct descendant of theJeeps of World War II The CJ5 rolled over so easily that it was one

of the deadliest vehicles on the road to drive, according to ance industry statistics When American Motors bought KaiserJeep, the CJ5 was still being sold with military-style canvas seatsand a canvas roof It was marketed to outdoorsmen and peoplewho needed it for work—the last catalog produced by Kaiser Jeep,

insur-in late 1969, showed a photograph of a CJ5 beinsur-ing used to pull thestump of a tree out of the ground

AMC began producing hard metal roofs for the CJ5 To attractaffluent young residents of urban areas, the company replaced the

canvas seats with leather bucket seats from cars, and licensed theright to emboss a distinctive Gucci pattern on the leather AMCreplaced the CJ5's noisy aluminum engine with one of AmericanMotors' heavy, cast-iron engines, which made the vehicle more pow-erful and slightly less prone to tip over AMC also began mountingthe wheels wider, so that the tires actually stuck out slightly fromunder the sides of the vehicle, further improving the vehicle's stabil-ity Roll bars were installed, making rollovers less deadly for the smallminority of occupants who wore seat belts and were not thrownfrom their vehicles during crashes The four-door Jeep Wagoneerwas also made a little fancier to increase its appeal to urban buyers.AMC's marketers looked at what kinds of cars were parked inthe same driveways as Wagoneers They found, as Roy Chapinalready knew, that they were Mercedes, Porsches and other luxurycars that had nothing in common with the blue-collar heritage ofthe Wagoneer AMC executives soon developed a new vision ofwho would buy Jeeps, and why.

The marketers found that there were many Americans living incities who admired the Jeep's military heritage, liked its utilitarianimage and wanted to ape the automotive fashions of the horses andhunting set of Nantucket and other wealthy enclaves These afflu-ent urban customers especially liked the fact that Jeeps had four-wheel drive, which sounded like it could be useful in bad-weatherdriving and gave an air of adventure to the vehicles

AMC promoted the Jeep's four-wheel drive even though itsengineers and executives knew that it had little value for urbanbuyers Four-wheel drive is designed for extracting vehicles fromdeep mud or thick snow But it has little value on paved roads thatare simply wet, or that are plowed of snow before the flakesbecome more than a few inches deep "All of the SUV market waspsychological, there was no actual customer need for four-wheeldrive," said William Chapin, Roy Chapin's son, who rose throughthe ranks to became a senior marketing executive of Jeep whileAMC owned it