I've always thought SUVs became so popular largely because women like them, since they feel safer in them.

And it can't have hurt that a different executive department, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, highlights how unsafe small, fuel-efficient cars are.

Everybody makes fun of the ostentatious tacky tail-finned cars of the 1950s.

I have never heard anyone make fun of tail-finned cars. Is that how you amuse yourselves in South Alabama?

"Unintended consequences strike again."

Indeed. We would have been better off just straight up raising the gas tax.

Personally I get a kick out of high gas mileage.

Indeed. I'd quite like a Ford Expedition which is an 8-seater because then we could fit all the family and perhaps have extra space for luggage, but the mileage is so much worse on those things. Plus, I don't really like the idea of driving trucks. A full size van would be very handy, but again -- mileage.

Big vans and SUVs are perfectly justifiable for big families. Passenger miles per gallon are probably quite high. But I work in a rather ritzy part of town, and have always found it somewhere between amusing and annoying to see a new Suburban or a Tahoe or any one of those monster SUVs tooling around occupied by a lone woman, or perhaps a woman and one child.

Louise, I guess you're familiar with the term "mommy van"? :-)

What a shame about your vacation, Daniel. Teenagers....

And Hummers--actually I was going to add that to this post as the sort of ultimate in ostentation, but was out of time. To my knowledge I have never personally known anyone who owned one, and if I meet someone who did would definitely start off with a negative impression.

To my knowledge I have never personally known anyone who owned one,

I had a landlady who did. She was a local merchant and an agreeable sort with whom to do business. A great deal of snow in our part of the world made a market for vehicles like that.

I was responding to Rob.

I would think a Hummer over the top even for a snowy clime. There are plenty of 4wd vehicles that would do the job. In any case, there's no such excuse in this part of the country. I think the only Hummer I've ever heard explain himself was a guy interviewed in the local paper when they first appeared on the market. He admitted frankly that he just liked the feeling of being the biggest dog on the road.

Several years ago I was driving a 90-year-old neighbor to the store, and we were sitting at a stoplight when a Hummer pulled up alongside us. I said something about how ugly it was and how unnecessary, but my elderly neighbor was in love at first sight, and said, man, he'd love one of those, if only he were younger...

There's just something about big cars for some people. A complicated mystery.

I can't really enter into the mindset that would like to own it drive it all the time.

Maybe you ought to enter into winter in Central New York for five months.

Does a Hummer really provide much of an advantage over ordinary full-size SUVs with 4-wheel-drive? There are people here who actually use their SUVs and pickups off-road for hunting and fishing, but don't think I've ever seen a Hummer that looked like it had been in the woods.

I covet that Studebaker. My father, through the '70s and '80s, bought five or six behemoths dating from the mid-'50s to mid-'60s. He'd see them sitting in somebody's yard out in the country and make an offer. When he died, the family decided to sell them, and I seriously considered buying one. I think there was a Chrysler Imperial among them. But the same consideration stopped me: what's that movie line?...a man's got to know his limitations? You really need to be able to work on cars in a pretty serious way to own an old car. Also I had no place to put it.

Now that the laws in most places (I assume) require that everybody in the car be seat-belted at all times, and children be strapped into car seats, big families have a really hard time. I hate to think what those big vans cost.

Before that, you could just stuff 'em in any old way. I was one of five children and on long trips we used to sleep on the floor, or in the back of a station wagon. I guess the safety improvement is worth it, but I wonder.

Well, I'm quite a bit younger than you, Mac, but I was also stuffed in the back of the station wagon when I was a kid. Apparently when I was a baby my parents just set up a playpen in the back of the van and let me play there!

These days this would probably get you in court with "Children's Aid Services". It would be almost as bad as smoking.

Before that, you could just stuff 'em in any old way. I was one of five children and on long trips we used to sleep on the floor, or in the back of a station wagon. I guess the safety improvement is worth it, but I wonder.

When our fourth child was born we could no longer use a normal car because of these laws. Now even kids up to 7yo are required to sit in child-seats which just means that most families with more than 2 children have to make sure the back seat will accommodate 3 child-seats and have the requisite anchorages etc. Nothing much is geared for big families.

I remember Mum and Dad taking us to the drive-in when we were in primary school and we lay on the station-wagon floor,half-asleep, for the trip home - which admittedly was pretty short.

I do like the modern child-seats for the 0-4 age group because it really is handy being able to tie them down securely! (I mean, for my convenience, above all!)

A friend of mine in his early fifties is one of ten children and I think they somehow just all used to pile in to their large sedan. :o

When I was a baby, I was just plopped into my bassinette which was just plopped onto the back seat.

I cannot forebear to add "Never did me any harm."

Oh yeah, I should have remembered--even when my children were young (early 1980s) we didn't necessarily strap them in. I remember one of them standing between the front passenger seats in our Volkswagen Rabbit. And when we had an old Volkswagen van, wandering around in the back. I'm not sure when we got real consistent about seat belts. In the late '80s, maybe? And I can't remember whether we used a car seat with our youngest.

The video is hilarious, Louise. I missed it on Facebook.

"baby capsules"--heh

That's not surprising.