4 ms·

Minivans and station wagons are just as good as a Tahoe for transporting a family.

tinfoilhatter 4mo ago
Not if you need to tow a trailer / camper. Maybe there's a reason different kinds of vehicles exist? To fulfill different requirements of their drivers?
- mikepurvis 4mo ago
  But families towed tent trailers back in the 80s behind their sedans and station wagons, too. Maybe there's a bit of circular reasoning going on here where people bought giant vehicles because they liked the aesthetics and internal roominess, and then the prevalence of giant vehicles opened up the market for larger and heavier towables— rigid body RVs, seadoos, a trailer full of gas dirt bikes, whatever it is. I also feel like in past times, it was much more common to see a two car household with two very different cars, with one being a hatchback or sedan for getting the family around down and doing grocery runs, and the other a truck or van for those occasional "hauling" requirements. Nowadays I feel like many times it's two big SUVs, just tuned to his and her brand tastes rather than two shared vehicles for different usages. I'd be interested to know if the stats on multi-car households would bear this out.
  - budsniffer952 4mo ago
    >But families towed tent trailers back in the 80s behind their sedans and station wagons, too. Are we concerned about safety, or are we not? Because towing a 2000+ lb trailer behind a sedan is kind of dangerous.
    - oblio 4mo ago
      LOL. Americans have lost the plot. They've used SpaceX to leave reality. The typical Dutch trailer is pulled by stuff like Volvo S60 and smaller, and it weighs around 3000lbs in freedumb units. They generally migrate about 1000km - 1500km to the South of France and then back North to the Netherlands.
    - ErroneousBosh 4mo ago
      It always amazes me when I see USians banging on about needing a 7.5 tonne truck to pull a tiny little camping trailer that you'd stick on the back of a Ford Focus anywhere in Europe.
      - alamortsubite 4mo ago
        Yes but Americans commonly tow massive fifth wheels at over 120 kph (regardless of tire rating and including up and down steep grades, transmission and brakes be damned) because why wouldn't you, and the sum total of the training they receive for operating such rigs in this manner is a rubber stamp at the DMV.
        ErroneousBosh 4mo ago
        Some of the "fifth wheel" setups they have in the US are terrifying too. Over here a "fifth wheel" coupling is a massive horseshoe-shaped plate that sits on the back of an artic tractor and is rated for some unholy loading and drawbar pull. Over there it looks very much like a standard 50mm towball welded to the end of a metre or so of scaff tube sticking up from the floor of a pickup. I used to do auto electrics for a guy who imported American cars to the UK and I was always amazed at just how janky the towing setups often were. It's no wonder people think they need a huge heavy truck when the towball is just bolted to thin sheet metal.
        alamortsubite 4mo ago
        I don't know why you were down-voted, but I agree. It's also alarming how often you see people towing trailers that aren't even close to being level here. It almost seems like SOP.
        ErroneousBosh 4mo ago
        See I don't mind "not level" so much, for myself. If I'm towing a trailer and it's not level it's because it's probably for a small car so it's probably in the sub-500kg range and its axles are lower than my towball even with the air suspension down as low as it will go. The weight balance can be all to hell, it won't matter - it's not going to be long enough or heavy enough to push a two tonne Range Rover around. Anything that's an appreciable fraction of my wheelbase between the hitch and axle, and over a tonne? Yeah I'll take a little care over getting that set up. I tow 3500kg on a braked twin-axle trailer fairly often. You'd notice it was there, especially braking for a junction at the bottom of a hill, but with the weight a little forward and maybe 50-70kg on the hitch the major sign that anything is there is the trailer light telltale blinking when you indicate ;-)
    - olyjohn 4mo ago
      Based on what?
  - somerandomqaguy 4mo ago
    I think you're romanticizing that era a bit. The most commonly sold CUV's today are smaller length and width wise then station wagons or sedans way back when. The Crown Victoria was considered a regular sized sedan for it's day and it's as long as a crew cab F150. The land yachts easily match the footprint of the super cab F150 with shorter beds today, they just seem smaller because they're lower.
    - Marsymars 4mo ago
      > The Crown Victoria was considered a regular sized sedan for it's day [...] Are you sure about that? In North America, other than the Crown Vic in its heyday, Ford also had the Escort, the Festiva, the Tempo and the Taurus for sedans, all of which were smaller than the Crown Vic, which was the largest car they sold.
      - somerandomqaguy 4mo ago
        As far as I was aware the others didn't sell in any close to the same numbers. The Crown Vic and it's Panther platform siblings were the basis for taxis and police cars across the US and Canada for a long time, and they could be had second hand for for a few months pay cheque back in the day.
        Marsymars 4mo ago
        > As far as I was aware the others didn't sell in any close to the same numbers. Per wiki, Crown Vic sales peaked at 114k in 1999. In the same year, the Taurus sold 368k and the Escort sold 260k. (The Tempo was discontinued by then, but was typically moving 200k+ per year.)
        somerandomqaguy 4mo ago
        Hmm, curious, I remember seeing way more Crown Vics and other Panther platform vehicles from the 90's onward then Tauruses, even into the late 2000's. Wonder if it was just a regional thing where I lived...
- zardo 4mo ago
  But that does get to the point. Maybe differentkinds of vehicles need different kinds of qualification testing. Would you trust your 16yo that just passed their driver's test in a sedan to tow a boat through town with an F250?
  - bombcar 4mo ago
    Fun fact - in most states a 12 or 13 year old can operate many tens of thousands of pounds of agricultural equipment “incidentally over a highway” or similar - which can be multiple miles between farm plots. Me? I commute in a New Holland CR11.
    - Poacher5 4mo ago
      Same's true in the UK, but honestly they're some of the best drivers out there 'cause they've been hustling in farm equipment since they were tall enough to reach the pedals. I've seen farmers get picked up from my old local by their kids in a tractor before when they were too drunk to drive home.
- NDlurker 4mo ago
  I see lifted trucks and massive SUVs in neighborhoods and grocery stores. I very rarely see them using their towing capacity.
  - dd8601fn 4mo ago
    Well you mostly wouldn’t at the grocery store. I see plenty of people towing their toys on highways in the midwest, all summer long. Boats, campers, etc.
- forgetfreeman 4mo ago
  You're going to have a hard time hiding the entire SUV and Light Duty truck market behind an airstream, especially considering neither have transmissions capable of hauling one. Statistically almost nobody tows anything. Of those that do the vast majority tow stuff that comfortably falls within the pulling capacity of a Subaru Outback (or a VW Golf hatchback if you're really feeling rude). Nobody's trying to take anyone's dually away, just reign in the excesses of the auto industry that were mainstreamed by a combination of emissions laws carveouts and aggressive marketing. Hell if this went through we all might start seeing approximately affordable vehicles on the market again and I feel like that would be a welcome change.
  - cyberlurker 4mo ago
    Those cars already exist. They are made in China and banned for sale in the US.
    - forgetfreeman 4mo ago
      Oh don't I know it. I'm currently in the midst of a full blown temper tantrum over the Toyota Hilux being unavailable on the US market. I need an actual real truck for actual real truck shit and there's literally nothing on the market that's serviceable.
      - sokoloff 4mo ago
        You can import a 25+ year old vehicle (so up to the mid-6th generation Hilux) for street usage in the US.
        forgetfreeman 4mo ago
        Yeah and that's the other horn of the dilemma facing would-be truck owners right now. If I don't want to take on a 2nd mortgage payment for a vehicle that can only barely perform the tasks required of it (and that poorly) my other option is to adopt all of the maintenance overhead and attendant reliability nightmares and problems with the parts aftermarket usually reserved for classic car projects. It's to the point now that if Edison Motors ever really gets their shit together I'm probably going to just break down and hybrid-swap a 70's era F150 and call it good but in the mean time I still need a work vehicle.
- hn_acc1 4mo ago
  Then they can get a license for that class of vehicle and add "towing up to NNNN lbs" option.. Anything over 500 or 1000 lbs towed, for example, IMHO, should require a license. Obviously not for a hitch-based bicycle carrier - I think most people can manage to use those reasonably safely.
- creaturemachine 4mo ago
  You should leave the continent and gain some context. Every summer the whole of Europe is full of campers towed by humble family sedans and wagons. Not just cheesy tent pop-ups, full-on campers with a family's worth of bikes hanging off the back. But the ads on TV said you'd be a lesser man without a truck, so I guess we can't blame you.
  - tinfoilhatter 4mo ago
    I don't own a truck, but by all means please continue being an asshole. You're doing a wonderful job of it!
- only-one1701 4mo ago
  There might be a requirement for these drivers but it’s uh…nontechnical, so to speak
- kube-system 4mo ago
  Was there something that happened that changed the needs of US families after 2009? Because the trend in TFA only happened in the US, and only after 2009.
  - disgruntledphd2 4mo ago
    > Because the trend in TFA only happened in the US, and only after 2009. Fuel emissions standards changes, maybe? I vaguely remember that the monster trucks were the result of some efficiency changes introduced by Obama.
- muti 4mo ago
  If the thing you are towing is so heavy you need a truck to tow it, maybe there should be stricter licensing requirements.
nradov 4mo ago
Sure, until you need to tow a trailer weighing more than about 1500 lbs or drive on a dirt road where the minivan bottoms out. You might not need those capabilities but a lot of families do that stuff every week.
- coryrc 4mo ago
  You can drive those off-road away from where people live, or you can get properly trained and insured for driving such a dangerous vehicle where people outside vehicles will be present.
  - nradov 4mo ago
    Is that a joke? A Tahoe isn't hard to drive. Every regular auto insurer will write policies for them.
    - coryrc 4mo ago
      They aren't hard to drive on the freeway. They are hard to drive without running over people in neighborhoods. The leading cause of death in children 0-14 is automobiles. https://www.kidsandcars.org/frontovers/media-resources https://www.kidsandcars.org/frontovers/media-resources
      - s1artibartfast 4mo ago
        It seems you already got your wish. Almost every driver is, as you say, "properly insured" It is easy enough to avoid kids that death is is rare, and the insurance cost is quite low - even with astronomical insurance payouts for accidental child death.
        coryrc 4mo ago
        Automobiles are literally the number one killer of children 0-14 in the USA.
forgetfreeman 4mo ago
Better, actually. Visibility is way better in either of those than a giant-ass SUV.
- forgetfreeman 4mo ago
  For the downvoters I lost a whole-ass F150 AND THE UTILITY TRAILER IT WAS TOWING behind the goddamn A-pillar on my wife's Sorento. This kind of shit wasn't possible in any of her prior station wagons or in any of the vans I've ever driven. Y'all need to quit playing.

Not if you need to tow a trailer / camper. Maybe there's a reason different kinds of vehicles exist? To fulfill different requirements of their drivers?

mikepurvis 4mo ago
But families towed tent trailers back in the 80s behind their sedans and station wagons, too. Maybe there's a bit of circular reasoning going on here where people bought giant vehicles because they liked the aesthetics and internal roominess, and then the prevalence of giant vehicles opened up the market for larger and heavier towables— rigid body RVs, seadoos, a trailer full of gas dirt bikes, whatever it is. I also feel like in past times, it was much more common to see a two car household with two very different cars, with one being a hatchback or sedan for getting the family around down and doing grocery runs, and the other a truck or van for those occasional "hauling" requirements. Nowadays I feel like many times it's two big SUVs, just tuned to his and her brand tastes rather than two shared vehicles for different usages. I'd be interested to know if the stats on multi-car households would bear this out.
- budsniffer952 4mo ago
  >But families towed tent trailers back in the 80s behind their sedans and station wagons, too. Are we concerned about safety, or are we not? Because towing a 2000+ lb trailer behind a sedan is kind of dangerous.
  - oblio 4mo ago
    LOL. Americans have lost the plot. They've used SpaceX to leave reality. The typical Dutch trailer is pulled by stuff like Volvo S60 and smaller, and it weighs around 3000lbs in freedumb units. They generally migrate about 1000km - 1500km to the South of France and then back North to the Netherlands.
  - ErroneousBosh 4mo ago
    It always amazes me when I see USians banging on about needing a 7.5 tonne truck to pull a tiny little camping trailer that you'd stick on the back of a Ford Focus anywhere in Europe.
    - alamortsubite 4mo ago
      Yes but Americans commonly tow massive fifth wheels at over 120 kph (regardless of tire rating and including up and down steep grades, transmission and brakes be damned) because why wouldn't you, and the sum total of the training they receive for operating such rigs in this manner is a rubber stamp at the DMV.
      - ErroneousBosh 4mo ago
        Some of the "fifth wheel" setups they have in the US are terrifying too. Over here a "fifth wheel" coupling is a massive horseshoe-shaped plate that sits on the back of an artic tractor and is rated for some unholy loading and drawbar pull. Over there it looks very much like a standard 50mm towball welded to the end of a metre or so of scaff tube sticking up from the floor of a pickup. I used to do auto electrics for a guy who imported American cars to the UK and I was always amazed at just how janky the towing setups often were. It's no wonder people think they need a huge heavy truck when the towball is just bolted to thin sheet metal.
        alamortsubite 4mo ago
        I don't know why you were down-voted, but I agree. It's also alarming how often you see people towing trailers that aren't even close to being level here. It almost seems like SOP.
        ErroneousBosh 4mo ago
        See I don't mind "not level" so much, for myself. If I'm towing a trailer and it's not level it's because it's probably for a small car so it's probably in the sub-500kg range and its axles are lower than my towball even with the air suspension down as low as it will go. The weight balance can be all to hell, it won't matter - it's not going to be long enough or heavy enough to push a two tonne Range Rover around. Anything that's an appreciable fraction of my wheelbase between the hitch and axle, and over a tonne? Yeah I'll take a little care over getting that set up. I tow 3500kg on a braked twin-axle trailer fairly often. You'd notice it was there, especially braking for a junction at the bottom of a hill, but with the weight a little forward and maybe 50-70kg on the hitch the major sign that anything is there is the trailer light telltale blinking when you indicate ;-)
  - olyjohn 4mo ago
    Based on what?
- somerandomqaguy 4mo ago
  I think you're romanticizing that era a bit. The most commonly sold CUV's today are smaller length and width wise then station wagons or sedans way back when. The Crown Victoria was considered a regular sized sedan for it's day and it's as long as a crew cab F150. The land yachts easily match the footprint of the super cab F150 with shorter beds today, they just seem smaller because they're lower.
  - Marsymars 4mo ago
    > The Crown Victoria was considered a regular sized sedan for it's day [...] Are you sure about that? In North America, other than the Crown Vic in its heyday, Ford also had the Escort, the Festiva, the Tempo and the Taurus for sedans, all of which were smaller than the Crown Vic, which was the largest car they sold.
    - somerandomqaguy 4mo ago
      As far as I was aware the others didn't sell in any close to the same numbers. The Crown Vic and it's Panther platform siblings were the basis for taxis and police cars across the US and Canada for a long time, and they could be had second hand for for a few months pay cheque back in the day.
      - Marsymars 4mo ago
        > As far as I was aware the others didn't sell in any close to the same numbers. Per wiki, Crown Vic sales peaked at 114k in 1999. In the same year, the Taurus sold 368k and the Escort sold 260k. (The Tempo was discontinued by then, but was typically moving 200k+ per year.)
        somerandomqaguy 4mo ago
        Hmm, curious, I remember seeing way more Crown Vics and other Panther platform vehicles from the 90's onward then Tauruses, even into the late 2000's. Wonder if it was just a regional thing where I lived...
zardo 4mo ago
But that does get to the point. Maybe differentkinds of vehicles need different kinds of qualification testing. Would you trust your 16yo that just passed their driver's test in a sedan to tow a boat through town with an F250?
- bombcar 4mo ago
  Fun fact - in most states a 12 or 13 year old can operate many tens of thousands of pounds of agricultural equipment “incidentally over a highway” or similar - which can be multiple miles between farm plots. Me? I commute in a New Holland CR11.
  - Poacher5 4mo ago
    Same's true in the UK, but honestly they're some of the best drivers out there 'cause they've been hustling in farm equipment since they were tall enough to reach the pedals. I've seen farmers get picked up from my old local by their kids in a tractor before when they were too drunk to drive home.
NDlurker 4mo ago
I see lifted trucks and massive SUVs in neighborhoods and grocery stores. I very rarely see them using their towing capacity.
- dd8601fn 4mo ago
  Well you mostly wouldn’t at the grocery store. I see plenty of people towing their toys on highways in the midwest, all summer long. Boats, campers, etc.
forgetfreeman 4mo ago
You're going to have a hard time hiding the entire SUV and Light Duty truck market behind an airstream, especially considering neither have transmissions capable of hauling one. Statistically almost nobody tows anything. Of those that do the vast majority tow stuff that comfortably falls within the pulling capacity of a Subaru Outback (or a VW Golf hatchback if you're really feeling rude). Nobody's trying to take anyone's dually away, just reign in the excesses of the auto industry that were mainstreamed by a combination of emissions laws carveouts and aggressive marketing. Hell if this went through we all might start seeing approximately affordable vehicles on the market again and I feel like that would be a welcome change.
- cyberlurker 4mo ago
  Those cars already exist. They are made in China and banned for sale in the US.
  - forgetfreeman 4mo ago
    Oh don't I know it. I'm currently in the midst of a full blown temper tantrum over the Toyota Hilux being unavailable on the US market. I need an actual real truck for actual real truck shit and there's literally nothing on the market that's serviceable.
    - sokoloff 4mo ago
      You can import a 25+ year old vehicle (so up to the mid-6th generation Hilux) for street usage in the US.
      - forgetfreeman 4mo ago
        Yeah and that's the other horn of the dilemma facing would-be truck owners right now. If I don't want to take on a 2nd mortgage payment for a vehicle that can only barely perform the tasks required of it (and that poorly) my other option is to adopt all of the maintenance overhead and attendant reliability nightmares and problems with the parts aftermarket usually reserved for classic car projects. It's to the point now that if Edison Motors ever really gets their shit together I'm probably going to just break down and hybrid-swap a 70's era F150 and call it good but in the mean time I still need a work vehicle.
hn_acc1 4mo ago
Then they can get a license for that class of vehicle and add "towing up to NNNN lbs" option.. Anything over 500 or 1000 lbs towed, for example, IMHO, should require a license. Obviously not for a hitch-based bicycle carrier - I think most people can manage to use those reasonably safely.
creaturemachine 4mo ago
You should leave the continent and gain some context. Every summer the whole of Europe is full of campers towed by humble family sedans and wagons. Not just cheesy tent pop-ups, full-on campers with a family's worth of bikes hanging off the back. But the ads on TV said you'd be a lesser man without a truck, so I guess we can't blame you.
- tinfoilhatter 4mo ago
  I don't own a truck, but by all means please continue being an asshole. You're doing a wonderful job of it!
only-one1701 4mo ago
There might be a requirement for these drivers but it’s uh…nontechnical, so to speak
kube-system 4mo ago
Was there something that happened that changed the needs of US families after 2009? Because the trend in TFA only happened in the US, and only after 2009.
- disgruntledphd2 4mo ago
  > Because the trend in TFA only happened in the US, and only after 2009. Fuel emissions standards changes, maybe? I vaguely remember that the monster trucks were the result of some efficiency changes introduced by Obama.
muti 4mo ago
If the thing you are towing is so heavy you need a truck to tow it, maybe there should be stricter licensing requirements.

nradov 4mo ago

Sure, until you need to tow a trailer weighing more than about 1500 lbs or drive on a dirt road where the minivan bottoms out. You might not need those capabilities but a lot of families do that stuff every week.

coryrc 4mo ago
You can drive those off-road away from where people live, or you can get properly trained and insured for driving such a dangerous vehicle where people outside vehicles will be present.
- nradov 4mo ago
  Is that a joke? A Tahoe isn't hard to drive. Every regular auto insurer will write policies for them.
  - coryrc 4mo ago
    They aren't hard to drive on the freeway. They are hard to drive without running over people in neighborhoods. The leading cause of death in children 0-14 is automobiles. https://www.kidsandcars.org/frontovers/media-resources https://www.kidsandcars.org/frontovers/media-resources
    - s1artibartfast 4mo ago
      It seems you already got your wish. Almost every driver is, as you say, "properly insured" It is easy enough to avoid kids that death is is rare, and the insurance cost is quite low - even with astronomical insurance payouts for accidental child death.
      - coryrc 4mo ago
        Automobiles are literally the number one killer of children 0-14 in the USA.

forgetfreeman 4mo ago

Better, actually. Visibility is way better in either of those than a giant-ass SUV.

forgetfreeman 4mo ago
For the downvoters I lost a whole-ass F150 AND THE UTILITY TRAILER IT WAS TOWING behind the goddamn A-pillar on my wife's Sorento. This kind of shit wasn't possible in any of her prior station wagons or in any of the vans I've ever driven. Y'all need to quit playing.