4 x 4 - raison d'etre?

kaya

When the police manage to remove all of the uninsured idiots and others who generally can't drive for toffee from our roads and stop all the old folk from driving after swallowing 30mg of codiene for breakfast I may consider the roads a safe enough place to be in a small car, until then I'll keep my big luxurious 4x4 and drive around knowing they should I have the misfortune to interact with one of the aforementioned muppets there is a good likley hood that myself, my wife and baby will not be the ones visiting the intensive care unit , besides which I don't smoke or drink so I really don't see it as anybody else's business if I choose to spend my hard earned on diesel fuel , there are many other reasons but I don't really fell the need to justify what I do with my money, been driving for 27 years now accident free so I don't see my big vehicle as more of a danger than people who seem to have regular accidents in smaller cars

Strider590

kaya wrote: »

should I have the misfortune to interact with one of the aforementioned muppets there is a good likley hood that myself, my wife and baby will not be the ones visiting the intensive care unit

Actually, 4x4s tend to be much less safer in a crash than an ordinary family saloon. The reason being the high centre of gravity and the tendency for the engine to come in under the dash and take your legs off, rather than forming part of the crumple zones.

For example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOwsqOOsZsU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_86RuYXoJA
http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industry/4x4-safety-under-question

In fact it's the very properties that make a good 4x4, which make them death traps in an accident and if you ain't buying a 4x4 that's good at 4x4 stuff, then what the hell is the point?

Now, if someone has a reasonable argument for big expensive 4x4s being safer, then fair enough.... But come at me with hearsay and urban myth and i'm likely to think "self important fool".
It goes back to people looking for excuses to buy new cars, using urban myth as a reason without actually doing the research.

andydiysaver

motorguy wrote: »

Surely you dont *need* a sports car though? Typically they're harder on fuel, hard suspension, and often driven by idiots and middle aged men with a mid life crisis.



I've never seen a 4x4 that takes up an entire street, nor have i seen one mowing people down with iron bars.

And i might have news for you - obnoxious !!!!!!s tend to drive all sorts of cars.



Nor is the climate here "good" enough for convertibles, but we're the biggest buyers in Europe of them.

Nor are our roads good enough, or clear enough or unrestricted enough to justify sports cars but the UK is a major buyer of those too.



Correct. Few people *need* them but wouldnt life be boring if we only got what we needed?

You dont *need* a sports car, for example?



They a bit en vogue at the minute and have been for a number of years, but as i said in one of my earlier posts, the trend is not towards larger, but smaller, more economical 4x4's and soft roaders, so i'm not seeing this as a world ending problem?



They're big and comfy and usually come with lots of toys. My X5 was genuinely like driving a 5 series, only with much more practicality and a higher driving position, which was great.

So what if they cost more to run. If you can afford it - and i think therein lies the problem for a lot of nay sayers - then who cares?



Sorry, but generally wrong.

There has been a massive move from the likes of 7 series / s class / jaguar xj buyers into 4x4s. They're seen as massively luxurious and more practical than a large exec car. One of the car mags had a "head to head" between the new rangie and the new S class, as they were both seen as competitors in the same market. Of interest the Rangie won.

Yes, some are driven by wannabes, but thats the same for any premium type car.

Sinbad - he's writing paragraphs and all and yet he is quite a fan of the 4 x4 - please tell me, what does this mean?

andydiysaver

motorguy wrote: »

I've never seen a 4x4 that takes up an entire street, nor have i seen one mowing people down with iron bars.

take your average suburban street, parked cars up one or both sides, two way at best, one way at worse, you get one of those things coming down you are at loggerheads, you're either pushed out into the road you came from, if that's a main road that's completely dangerous and unreasonable , but then how to you get a massive 4x4 backwards up the other way, also perhaps onto a main road?


they're not too big for the M1, nobody is saying that, but they are too big for city life in the streets and in the towns. I'm not just on about eyesores here, I'm on about practicalities

motorguy wrote: »

Nor are our roads good enough, or clear enough or unrestricted enough to justify sports cars but the UK is a major buyer of those too.

if you are anywhere near the M1 I'd tend to agree, but with a sports car people tend to talk about the low end acceleration because they know there's no autobahns clear roads or unlimited speeds... point is, if a sports car can never get up to what it's built for, where's the problem to the other road user? if a 4x4 can block up a whole road and is built to smash other road users, ...bigger problem. The only similarity between them is their gas guzzling, but I'd say not only is the sports car less obnoxious, but if you do get one jumped up idiot driving one, it's usually only him/her and the lamp post that gets theirs, not some other road user who was there at the time......

andydiysaver

sinbad182 wrote: »

Wow - what a strange conclusion to arrive at, and what a bizzarely defensive tone to take!

You have an oddly vehement dislike of 4x4s, and felt the need to start a thread filled with mini essays to tell everyone else why they should think this too.

It's just strang behaviour, is all. I'm sure you're very comfortable with your own set up (whatever that may be) and dont have a chip on your shoulder at all - unfortunately, your carry on in this thread says the exact opposite. Probably just an unfortunate coincidence though

I'd hardly call it an essay, if you look back you resorted to personal insults first so of course I defended myself. I find that thick, uneducated people call more than one paragraph an essay because their concentration is poor and they can't be bothered to read what they're wanting to criticize. Is this reply short enough for you or do you want it on a matchbox?

WTFH

andy, not everyone here is a townie or suburbanite.

sinbad182

andydiysaver wrote: »

take your average suburban street, parked cars up one or both sides, two way at best, one way at worse, you get one of those things coming down you are at loggerheads, you're either pushed out into the road you came from, if that's a main road that's completely dangerous and unreasonable , but then how to you get a massive 4x4 backwards up the other way, also perhaps onto a main road?


they're not too big for the M1, nobody is saying that, but they are too big for city life in the streets and in the towns. I'm not just on about eyesores here, I'm on about practicalities

The Range Rover Sport is less than 10cm longer and wider than my Insignia. There'd be no difference meeting that to any other full size car head on in a street - if theres not enough room, theres not enough room. The rest of that waffle is just conjecture based on the fact you dont like 4x4s.

if you are anywhere near the M1 I'd tend to agree, but with a sports car people tend to talk about the low end acceleration because they know there's no autobahns clear roads or unlimited speeds... point is, if a sports car can never get up to what it's built for, where's the problem to the other road user? if a 4x4 can block up a whole road and is built to smash other road users, ...bigger problem. The only similarity between them is their gas guzzling, but I'd say not only is the sports car less obnoxious, but if you do get one jumped up idiot driving one, it's usually only him/her and the lamp post that gets theirs, not some other road user who was there at the time......

'Built to smash road user' :rotfl:

Again, a load of conjecture and personal opinions poorly dressed up as fact.

Go on Andy, what happened to make you so angry - did you catch your wife getting ploughed by an X5 owner or something?!

sinbad182

andydiysaver wrote: »

I'd hardly call it an essay, if you look back you resorted to personal insults first so of course I defended myself. I find that thick, uneducated people call more than one paragraph an essay because their concentration is poor and they can't be bothered to read what they're wanting to criticize. Is this reply short enough for you or do you want it on a matchbox?

You could right it on a matchbox or across the Bayeux Tapestry for all I care - you're still struggling to make a single salient point to back up the irrational and poorly founded views you insisted on starting a thread to tell us about.

andydiysaver

sinbad182 wrote: »

You could right it on a matchbox or across the Bayeux Tapestry for all I care - you're still struggling to make a single salient point to back up the irrational and poorly founded views you insisted on starting a thread to tell us about.

If you look at the responses, a pretty good thread Sinbad, it's got people talking from both sides of the camp. That's the whole point of a discussion. I genuinely wanted to know why people drive these things because I don't understand it, I'll never be a fan of them and I've given my reasons


I've made great points plenty of times, read my original post or get someone to read it to you as it has paragraphs in so is an enormous essay. Plenty on here agree with me, plenty disagree with me. Plenty of the opposing camp also write huge "essays", I bet you feel like you are drowning helplessly in literature and only Dr Seuss and big bird can save you....


You talk about irrational, please tell me what is rational about owing a vehicle built for rough terrain, in the middle of a city?

motorguy

andydiysaver wrote: »

take your average suburban street, parked cars up one or both sides, two way at best, one way at worse, you get one of those things coming down you are at loggerheads, you're either pushed out into the road you came from, if that's a main road that's completely dangerous and unreasonable , but then how to you get a massive 4x4 backwards up the other way, also perhaps onto a main road?

Thats quite a contrived scenario you've got there. As i've said, 4x4s tend to have a smaller footprint than large saloons, and are certainly not the biggest vehicles on our roads.

andydiysaver wrote: »

they're not too big for the M1, nobody is saying that, but they are too big for city life in the streets and in the towns. I'm not just on about eyesores here, I'm on about practicalities

But they're a smaller footprint than large exec cars, but you seem to have a particular beef with 4x4s?

andydiysaver wrote: »

if you are anywhere near the M1 I'd tend to agree, but with a sports car people tend to talk about the low end acceleration because they know there's no autobahns clear roads or unlimited speeds... point is, if a sports car can never get up to what it's built for, where's the problem to the other road user?

But then a sports car capable of say, 150MPH is pointless? You may as well drive a £2,000 fiesta? OR are you saying that the fact that a sports car has the capability to do 150MPH but doesnt is in some way different to a 4x4 that has the capability to go off road but doesnt?

andydiysaver wrote: »

if a 4x4 can block up a whole road and is built to smash other road users, ...bigger problem.

Really? Block up a whole road? Built to smash other road users?

:rotfl:

andydiysaver wrote: »

The only similarity between them is their gas guzzling, but I'd say not only is the sports car less obnoxious, but if you do get one jumped up idiot driving one, it's usually only him/her and the lamp post that gets theirs, not some other road user who was there at the time......

What nonsense - a speeding sports car is more likely to "take out" pedestrians or other drivers if driven by an idiot.