Buyers keep on truckin'

By ALASTAIR SLOANE motoring editor

Sport utility vehicles, pick-ups, utes, four-wheel-drives ... lump them into one category and they account for a significant chunk of new vehicle sales in New Zealand.

The Toyota Prado has been the most popular passenger 4WD in recent years. Mitsubishi's Pajero is a long-time favourite. The Discovery reinvented Land Rover. The used import market is chock-a-block with 4WDs like the Isuzu Trooper and Nissan Pathfinder.

Ford New Zealand last year launched its F-250/350 trucks, pick-ups as big as Texas. Chrysler is looking at converting to right-hand-drive its Dodge Ram pick-ups for New Zealand around mid-year.

Porsche has its Cayenne on the way, Volkswagen its Touareg. Lexus is bringing in its new RX300. Sales of high-end 4WDs continue to increase.

Porsche chief executive Wendelin Wiedeking says the SUV segment has the greatest potential for growth.

"Thirty per cent of luxury buyers are purchasing SUVs. The SUV segment is changing, transforming, moving from simple to luxurious. The other Porsches are emotional. Now you have the ability to carry five people and all their things."

Buyers in the middle market here have been using their more modest models to do the same thing.

Sales of four-cylinder utes alone - such as the Toyota Hilux, Mazda Bounty, Ford Courier, Mitsubishi Triton, Holden Rodeo - totalled more than 10,000 last year out of nearly 84,000 new vehicles.

There are dozens of derivatives. Four-wheel-drive utes are more popular than two-wheel-drives, double-cabs more popular than single-cabs. This explains their dual work/leisure role.

Eight out of 10 four-cylinder utes are diesel-powered. Sales of petrol models are mostly limited to two-wheel-drives. But Toyota and Mitsubishi have introduced V6 petrol engines to attract niche buyers.

Mazda launched its updated Bounty the other day. There are 18 2WD and 4WD models, including a pillarless door model it calls the Freestyle.

A pick-up isn't just a commercial carry-all any more, it's often a second family vehicle. The Americans, who buy more than one million each year, know that. That's why the launch of the new F-150 Ford at Detroit was something special.

It arrived to the sound of the Motown hit Keep on Truckin', recorded by the late Eddie Kenricks in the 1970s. Now it's being used to rally support against the recent attacks on SUVs, reports Reuters.

In a land where bigger is usually perceived as better, Americans love SUVs and their high-perch "command" seating.

They're not going to give them up, and there's no sign that environmentalists and anti-SUV activists will succeed in driving the gas-guzzlers into the junkyard of history anytime soon.

In fact, thanks to a White House plan to provide more generous tax breaks for certain businesses that buy the biggest SUVs or pickup trucks, the sales of oversized vehicles may even get a boost in the near term.

Recent television ads from a Hollywood group, led by nationally syndicated columnist and author Arianna Huffington, are pitching alleged links between Middle East oil profits and terrorism, trying to make owning an SUV sound tantamount to bankrolling Osama bin Laden.

A coalition of religious groups sponsored a TV campaign last year seeking to portray SUV owners as outcasts by asking "What Would Jesus Drive?"

The top American vehicle safety regulator joined the fray the other day by warning carmakers that SUVs, which statistics show may be prone to rolling, may soon come under strict government controls.

But traditional SUVs gained a larger piece of the American vehicle market last year, and light trucks - a category that includes pickups and minivans as well as SUVs - account for more than half of the market overall.

Industry experts, meanwhile, say the anti-SUV crusade has failed to resonate with consumers, even as another US-led war with Iraq looks set to push oil prices higher and add to the debate over America's seemingly insatiable appetite for crude.

"I like everything about it, the size, everything," said Detroit-based disc jockey Rocky Allen, as he climbed into the driver's seat of his Chevrolet Suburban SUV in the "oversized" section of an office parking lot. "I'll be happy to drive an electric car when Arianna Huffington stops flying private jets and uses solar heat in her 5000-square-foot home," Allen said. Foreign carmakers have also been muscling in on the full-size SUV segment, as part of their relentless assault on the American market. But one of the hottest sellers in the segment since last year has been the boig military-inspired Hummer H2, which dwarfs even Allen's lumbering Suburban. Both vehicles are made by General Motors, the world's largest carmaker.

George Pipas, head of sales and North American market analysis for Ford, says research showed that consumers who own or intend to buy SUVs also tend to put their personal likes and comfort before other issues.

Art Spinella, a veteran car industry analyst, said the average SUV buyer thinks "sport utilities use a disproportionate amount of gas but - and there is the but - they think it's justified in their own case.

"For all intents and purposes, they don't accept the notion that sport utilities are wasteful. People who buy them love them. People who buy them are sticking to the sport utility segment like crazy."