Exactly--completely impractical for a lot of areas of the US. Just drive across Montana and then get back to me. I swear that most people never leave a major c

Exactly--completely impractical for a lot of areas of the US. Just drive across Montana and then get back to me. I swear that most people never leave a major city their wholes lives! Parts of the US are tough on conventional vehicles and what I am seeing is that more and more cars have become a mess of bad engineering compromises due to CAFE standards. Eight and ten speed autos are marvels of engineering, but they aren't as reliable as older, five and six speed boxes. You can barely find a manual anything, which I find repugnant since manual transmissions are the gold standard of reliability. Another matter of concern is that there are almost no SUVs with a V8 for towing and I'm talking gasoline, no diesel here--the only diesels are pickups of various sizes and a few luxury makes. That's it. Every decent V6 (and I6, e.g. BMW) engine is morphing into a 2.0L turbo, which is just shit in comparison. Yes, it saves weight, but the trade off is reliability.