4 ms·
The thing is that people act like the crossover form factor is new. It isn't. Take a look at the cars of the 1920s. Big tall two-box thing. Small box at the fro
by hugh4 11y ago
The thing is that people act like the crossover form factor is new. It isn't. Take a look at the cars of the 1920s. Big tall two-box thing. Small box at the front for engine, big box at the back for passengers and cargo. You step up to get into it.
- InclinedPlane 11y agoWhether 5-door, hatchback, cross-over, SUV, what-have-you, it's all just filling in space between the sedan and a van/truck. If you brought someone to 2015 from 1955 via a time machine nobody would step up to a cross-over or an SUV and be agog at how utterly different and incomprehensible a vehicle it is. It's just variations on a century old theme. Big, station-wagon-y cars with extra height, that's what we've got in various different iterations. But the station-wagon is still "uncool" so we invent special names for such things, but really they are the same damned thing.
- jonnathanson 11y agoThe station wagon and the minivan are uncool. The SUV is guilt-inducing and retrograde. Hence, the "crossover," which is basically a tall station wagon, a short minivan, or a low SUV, depending on your perspective. In all of these cases it also skirts the marketing risks now apparently associated with using words like "station wagon," "SUV," or "minivan." Sooner or later "crossover" will sound lame (kinda always has, but I digress). They'll call it something new.
- kbenson 11y agoYou can pry my minivan steering wheel from my cold, dead hands. I'm firmly of the belief that most people that denigrate the minivan haven't driven even a moderately good modern one for any significant length of time.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jonnathanson 11y agoI'm not casting any personal aspersions on the minivan. I actually respect the minivan. I'm just saying that the term/class "minivan" no longer seems cool, and car makers seem to be distancing themselves from it to varying degrees, replacing it with terms/classes like "crossover."
- tadfisher 11y agoThe minivan killed the station-wagon; the crossover then ate the minivan. It is all just a different skin around the on-road people-carrier function, but the crossover market is one that has explicitly traded function (interior and cargo space) for form (sporty SUV look, high seating). Some "crossovers" these days are literally sedans on jacked-up suspension with plastic body cladding. The Subaru Outback (Legacy), Subaru Crosstrek XV (Impreza), and Mazda CX-3 (Mazda2) come to mind. The latter two are especially egregious, as the "compact crossover" market does no thing well: there's no additional cargo/people capacity, worse handling manners, no safety improvement from more mass, and no additional off-road capability over the (often cheaper) compact sedan or hatchback these vehicles are based on. And that's the point this article is really making: we're collectively punishing real innovation by buying into the marketing-hyped version of reality that "bigger is better" and "crossovers are for families", and we're not holding anyone accountable for these claims.
- cbd1984 11y agoEvery type of vehicle has an archetype. It's different for different people, based on generation and social class and so on, but for a number of people, their archetype of the station wagon is the Wagon Queen Family Truckster, from National Lampoon's Vacation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Lampoon's_Vacation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Lampoon's_Vacation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FamilyTruckster.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FamilyTruckster.jpg It has the distinct handicaps of being Real American Steel, trimmed to the gills and loaded within an inch of its life, not to mention the wonderful color scheme. My point is, it would take an act of some minor deity to unseat that mental image.