this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2026
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I mean this clearly shows how rectangular cars were back then, which is not great for collisions. They should at least stay round.
Also i read a discussion recently about how EVs are heavier due to their battery (and that's supposedly bad for pedestrians when they get into a crash with the car), and i immediately had to think of how enormously overweight SUV vehicles are today, and people don't complain enough about how enormously overweight SUVs are. In fact some people praise it and say that the heavy mass is good for the car-driver of the SUV because when they get into a crash, they'll take less damage (while everyone around them takes more, btw).
Really shows how arguments are twisted and turned around when it's the oil lobby that stands to profit from it.
In the case of SUVs, it's not primarily the oil lobby, it's car manufacturers. Put simply, they get to charge way more than the extra materials costs, for a "premium" vehicle. They're making bank out of this shit.
Yeah, "cost plus" pricing strategy (link) means that you make a fixed percentage of profit. When you sell a vehicle for $200, you make $20 in profit (at a 10% markup rate); But if you sell a $400 vehicle, you can make $40 in profit. It's crazy to me that they're not just selling the same $200 vehicle for $220 to make $40 profit ($180 manufacturing cost), but that's apparently the world we live in: People accept that companies can make more profit on higher-cost items.
It's worse than that actually.
It's not the same markup rate for a higher priced product. It's a higher markup rate. Crossovers in particular aren't much bigger than sedans and wagons. It's only actual SUVs with off-road equipment (lockable diffs, 2 speed transfer case, etc) that cost significantly more to manufacture than regular cars.