Sport Utility Vehicles: Don't shoot the messenger

The people who buy SUVs are the problem, not the industry that makes them, or even the motoring press, argues Sean O'Grady

It wasn't us. Honestly. The Independent did not say that the new Audi Q7 sports utility vehicle is aimed at people who "enjoy nature but are not concerned with the environment". Still less did we approve of the sentiment.

What John Simister wrote in his recent Road Test (14 February) was that Audi itself is aiming the car at such people, and that's what the company told motoring journalists at the recent launch of the new behemoth of an SUV.

It's not our fault that, like that chap in Germany who reared a rabbit that seemed to be about 10 stone and four feet high, the folk at Audi decided to go quite so supersized-large with their 4x4, or were quite so indiscreet about their thinking.

What's more, in answer to the many letters we get criticising some of our coverage, we don't make cars. We just write about them. None of the team on the section runs an SUV. Instead, we run columns lamenting their invasion of narrow urban streets and tight urban lanes. We try to concentrate on telling our readers about the many many ways you can enjoy motoring without costing the earth (in any sense).

We also want to show you the engineering and aesthetic marvels the industry is capable of, the excesses and the real progress being made in such fields as alternative fuels, hybrid and hydrogen technology.

Be fair: in the issue we tested the Audi Q7, we also covered Saab's new "BioPower" that runs on bioethanol, and suggested the green G-Wiz as a possible choice for a reader looking for urban transport. We like cyclists and motorcyclists, and cater for them.

In some ways we'd love to ignore the new SUVs and ban them from our pages. But that isn't the same as banning them from the roads (and sure, there is a case for that). They exist, people want to know about them, people need to know about them - if only so they know what's coming round the corner.

Most of all though, and this is the most uncomfortable thought of all, so many us insist on buying an SUV because "nothing else will do". The lofty driving position, the perceived safety, the interior room, the style and, yes, sometimes the snob factor that comes with suggestions of a gentrified lifestyle all drive people to buy these vehicles in record numbers. We cannot wish away such a large chunk of the car industry. It's silly.

Why so defensive? Because so much of the criticism so dangerously misses the point. Almost every one of us wants to help to save the planet and almost every one of us wants personal transport.

That's the problem, and it will become still more acute as India and China grow more and more motorised. We are not going to wish the car away, no matter how much we would wish to. Nor are we going to bully it away. All the taxes, congestion charges and anti-4x4 pickets haven't made us that much less willing to use our cars.

The enemies of the planet, the hypocrites if you will, are not the oil companies that refine the petrol or the car companies that make the vehicles, or the journalists who write about them or the advertising industry that markets them or the bankers who lend us money to buy them. The people to blame are the people who buy cars in the first place, without whom none of the vast industry would exist. Now you know who to write letters to.