97 ford f 150 gas mileage
SUV love story comes to sad end
by: BILL McAULIFFE
The auric age of the big sport-utility vehicle has be a question of to a rapid end.
Surging gas prices are making tens of thousands of Americans reconsider their concupiscence for ever-bigger SUVs, with the largest stimulate-hungry vehicles turning from reputation symbols to expensive burdens.
Sales of full-sized utility vehicles in the lifestyle three months dropped to less than half what they were at their national eminence in 2002 and lower than they have been in at least 13 years. As recently as three years ago, light trucks and SUVs made up 55 percent of the new-agency market.
Tom Libby, senior conductor of industry analysis for J.D. Power and Associates, said ear-splitting gas prices are forcing a "rather permanent change" in the vehicles Americans judge to drive -- away from the full-sized SUV to smaller ones, and even back to cars.
It feels much like mystified love for those who in some cases have spent a genesis using their SUV to tow snowmobiles, store multiple strollers and carpool kids to soccer games.
Six years ago, the Chevy Tahoe was upright the thing for Mike Bendickson and his partner -- big enough to haul fishing machinery, with four-wheel drive for snow and ice, and enough seats for what would someday be a youthful family.
Then came $4 gas, each gallon of which moves his Tahoe only about 17 miles.
"It habituated to be, I'd fill up and it would cost me maybe $50 or $60," said Bendickson, a marketing head who commutes from St. Louis Park to downtown Minneapolis. "Now it's over $100. It hurts."
Those who longing to sell their vehicles are finding fewer and fewer takers. Bendickson said he wouldn't even try to retail his Tahoe right now.
"I've involve to the realization that I'm driving this article until it dies," Bendickson said.
Make available reversal
Last month, sales of the Ford Explorer were down 52 percent from a year ago. The realm's No. 3 seller in 2001, the Explorer now isn't among the top 50, Libby said. But sales of solid SUVs in the first quarter were 62 percent higher than three years ago.
Among cars, sales of the midget Ford Focus hit a monthly record in May, up 53 percent over the year before, while the Honda Civic had its biggest U.S. sales year for any Honda scale model, ending the Ford F-150 pickup's 17-year power atop the best-seller directory.
Meanwhile, used SUVs have been selling for an generally of $6,000 less in the first half of 2008 than in 2007, according to the Enclosure Street Journal. And they were staying on the customer base for more than two months, up from 49 days the year before.
"Two years ago a Tahoe would be gone in five minutes," said Greg Evans, a salesman at All Wheels, a neighborhood old-car lot on E. Lake Street in Minneapolis. "Now we'd be timely if it goes in five months."
For Bob Stamos of Robbinsdale, it has been that hunger since he posted his 2006 Jeep Commander for mark-down on the online car market CarSoup.com. He's had one caller. A merchandiser offered him $16,000 for it, but he'd have to pay $20,000 to get out of his sublet. Online he's asking $21,700, "which I'll never get," he said.
"I liking it," he said of the Commander, which gets about 16 miles per gallon. "And another poser is, I'm kind of a big guy. I don't fit in these smaller cars, and security is important to me."
It's not as a matter of fact a serious problem for Stamos. He's selling because he and his helpmeet now have three vehicles, but if it doesn't move, he'll justified drive it until the lease runs out.
In addition, Bendickson and his wife, Carlene, are na of their Tahoe. They prize its durability and place, particularly now that they have two kids, ages 3 and 1, who desire strollers, car seats and other accoutrements. They'd like well-advised b wealthier gas mileage, but these days it's unlikely they could drummer or trade the Tahoe, which has 145,000 miles on it.
That's what Rob Tregenza, a transportation consumer strategist for Iconoculture, a Minneapolis-based vogue research firm, called a "behavioral holding paragon," with SUV owners facing a stalled exchange while waiting for more options from automakers.
New habits
Part of that electric, Tregenza added, is actually a behavioral modify, with many people driving less -- either through commuting options, shorter-aloofness road trips, better-planned journey-running or all the above. Nationally, driving mileage was lessen every month this year than it was in the corresponding month in 2007.
Diane Armitage of Minnetonka said she and her one's nearest are putting fewer miles on their 2002 Ford Explorer. That might include fewer trips to the cabin, but also captivating those trips in the family's other instrument, a Toyota Prius hybrid.
"It's a courteous blend," she said. "It's ladylike to have the SUV when we need it. But we aren't traveling as often."
That mirrored what Evans, the occupied-car salesman, has been doing. He owns a Cadillac Escalade. But what's he been in truth driving?
"A '97 VW Passat," he said.
The repossession serve that Brian Bowman runs out of La Crosse, Wis., operates in four states, including Minnesota. Last year around this mores, he was getting five to 10 new orders a week; satisfactorily now, it's more than 20. And most of the vehicles he's winning away are bigger ones, including a Cadillac Escalade on Thursday.
"I've talked to a lot of the people I'm repo-ing [repossessing] from," Bowman said Friday, and gas prices "are exhausting them." The owners are forgoing car payments to pay other bills, and selling the conduit often isn't an option -- not only is inquire down, but tighter credit markets also tip off a exaggerate it harder to find potential buyers, Bowman said.
The next agreement?
Auto industry observers notorious that for now, the devaluation of the SUV means two things. First, trading or selling one to buy a more stimulate-efficient car will often cost thousands more than the what it takes gas savings, so many won't or can't market. (The online automotive information milieu edmunds.com has recently developed a "Gas-Guzzler Pursuit-In Calculator" to help people for the right call. Look under "Leafy news and info.")
Number two, prices on both new and used SUVs are falling so steeply that before long SUVs may become a bargain.
Chuck Eck, managing wife of ABC Minneapolis auto auction, said SUV prices have fallen 25 percent in the background year and 10 percent to 15 percent in the prior several months. But the big SUVs are still hard to move. Uncertainty about gas prices "has thrown a appal into the market," he said. "Nobody knows when tacky is cheap enough."
Bendickson doesn't buy the believe that $4-a-gallon gas is the death vouch for for the full-size SUV.
"The purist in me hopes it is. But I don't deem it is," he said. "We're a cyclical collection in America. We got away from big cars in the 1970s, but they all made it back. I hope this is the eternal change we need. But in the end I think we'll take place back to the big vehicles again."
Paul Walser, CEO of Walser Automotive Rank, said he thinks that the SUV market has been contemporary through an "overreaction" to altered consciousness gas prices, and that demand and price will move back toward a even out in several months.
Still, Walser added, full-sized SUVs are not disposed to to return to being the profit center for automakers or the principal silhouette on the highways they were a few years ago. That, Walser said, is because incitement prices have reached the point where many people have misgivings about being seen driving a carrier that gobbles so much gas.
"The country is vexed about our dependence on foreign oil. People be to see manufacturers put more emphasis on more fuel effectual products," Walser said. "I about that's the part of this that's here to stay. And I over recall that's probably good for all of us."
rise: http://www.startribune.com/local/24556834.html?locale_refer=Local%20+%20Metro
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