High and Mighty: The Dangerous Rise of the SUV | 
 enlarge | Author: Keith Bradsher
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 166905
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 512
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.9 x 1.3
ISBN: 1586482033
Dewey Decimal Number: 629.231
EAN: 9781586482039
ASIN: 1586482033
Publication Date: January 19, 2004
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Product Description
SUVs have taken over America's roads. Ad campaigns promote them as safer and "greener" than ordinary cars and easy to handle in bad weather. But very little about the SUV's image is accurate. They poorly protect occupants and inflict horrific damage in crashes, they guzzle gasoline, and they are hard to control.
Keith Bradsher has been at the forefront in reporting the calamitous safety and environmental record of SUVs, including the notorious Ford-Firestone rollover controversy. In High and Mighty, he traces the checkered history of SUVs, showing how they came to be classified not as passenger cars but as light trucks, which are subject to less strict regulations on safety, gas mileage, and air pollution. He makes a powerful case that these vehicles are even worse than we suspect--for their occupants, for other motorists, for pedestrians and for the planet itself.
In the tradition of Unsafe at Any Speed and Fast Food Nation, Bradsher's book is a damning expose of an industry that puts us all at risk, whether we recognize it or not.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
 Reads Like a Novel With Lots of Facts December 19, 2005
15 out of 15 found this review helpful
This is an excellent book written by a Detroit bureau chief for the New York Times. He worked on and off on the book for almost five years and has produced a compelling and fact filled read of 440 pages plus notes. Excellent job.
I would not call the book "anti-SUV" per se, but rather it is a comprehensive review of the vehicle with some related comments on mini-vans. The facts speak for themselves. An SUV is a passenger vehicle that uses a truck base (motor, frame, suspension) with a special body made from a combination of truck parts and custom parts with luxurious interiors and lots of sound proofing. It costs the same to make as a truck but sells at the price of a luxury car - or higher - and has a marketing prestige value now associated with the vehicle.
The book covers the history of the SUV vehicle type, how the vehicle evolved from the early Ford SUV built by Henry Ford for camping trips at the beginning of the last century, panel delivery vans, the history of the WWII Jeep, the GM Suburban, the Jeep Cherokee, and the Ford Explorer, etc
The author covers the costs to make the vehicle, the taxes on the vehicle, the import barriers on imports, how the unions viewed the vehicle, how the gas consumption CAFE regulations were circumvented, how politicians have supported the vehicle, and how environmental groups have tacitly supported the vehicle, etc. The bottom line is that the basic construction is relatively cheap while the selling price is high. So the SUV's have become the cash cows of the auto industry leading to economic revival at GMC, Ford, and Chrysler with similar revivals of the local economies in Michigan, Detroit, and Ohio. Many auto executive careers have been tied to the SUV success and this is discussed in the book.
From a marketing viewpoint the turning point for the industry was the black 1986 Cherokee Limited with gold exterior trim. That car and the SUV's that followed were big seller in the cities and became a substitute for the luxury car. That vehicle was followed by products from GM and Ford, of ever increasing size and profit including the Lincoln Navigator, Cadillac Escalade, etc. These latter vehicles generate huge profits for the auto makers and have in fact displaced the luxury car and have become very popular in unlikely places such as New York city.
Cars and SUV's are marketed and sold by appealing to emotions not common sense. Despite the truck base technology that gives poor handling compared to a car, and the heavy weight and truck engines that give poor gas economy, the car companies have pushed the SUV in order to capitalize on the simple truck technology for the sake of fat profits. In a free society that makes good business sense. However the down side is that unlike Europe that has managed to keep oil consumption relatively constant over the past decade or so the US has increased its oil consumption by 50% due in part to these high gas consumption vehicles - fed by imports of oil from the unstable Middle East. In addition to the increased fuel consumption, the environment has been burdened with more pollution by less efficient (truck) vehicles that has compounded the insult to the environment. Finally, because of the truck construction such as the weight and the high center of gravity of these vehicles - although seeming to be safer, the SUV has a poorer safety records both for their occupants and for the cars they hit - as recorded by the insurance agencies - than for regular mid sized cars. So based on the record the SUV is more expensive, has poor truck like handling, wastes gas, and is even less safe than a mid sized car. One can draw their own conclusion.
The author does an excellent job summarizing the facts. He describes the auto executives running the companies, the technology, how the CAFE laws were circumvented, safety, etc. It is a compelling read.
Highly recommend 5 Stars.
 Excellent; covers all the aspects of the situation September 15, 2005
18 out of 18 found this review helpful
Bradsher's only arguable flaw in this book is that he was SO exhaustive in his research and documentation. Reading the history of the auto execs who designed and developed early models of SUVs can be a bit dry, but you can't say he didn't do his homework.
The book addresses every angle of the SUV "experience" in our society:
*The legislation loopholes that tacitcly support and subsidize them;
*The marketing campaigns that *imply* safety without promising anything specific (and actionable);
*The design teams that focused on a more "aggressive" image with wasteful, unnecesssary features to sell to fearful, self-indulgent consumers;
*The engineering and crash tests that prove how unsafe they really are;
*And the pollution stats that prove how wasteful and environmentally damaging SUVs have been.
Any one of the chapters on these topics makes for fascinating reading, but I was especially interested in Ch. 6: Reptile Dreams. In this section on marketing, Bradsher discusses how marketing and advertising execs cynically estimated the insecurity and self-doubt of their target audience and made plans to exploit it. He describes how the image of taller, more "powerful" vehicles was used to generate record sales of a vehicle that's provably less safe... all the while getting the suckers--err, *consumers*--to claim that they were buying an SUV for its SAFETY factors. Which is a lie; they buy it largely for status.
The SUV makers and marketers know this, and they exploit it: why else design a vehicle that explicitly says "Buy this so you can look like you don't care about fashion and status"? The so-called legitimate reasons for owning an SUV are diligently picked apart, one by one. No, they're not safer (minivans are). The four-wheel drive isn't useful (that's for offroad driving, which--despite the ads--90% of SUV owners never do). The cargo capacity isn't that great--in fact, many SUV interiors are awkwardly designed and arranged to have LESS carrying capacity than comparable trucks, minivans, and even station wagons.
The bottom line is simple: SUVs are not safer in collisions, rollovers, or impacts. The data proving this is widely available... but SUV owners don't want to hear it. They crave the illusion of power and control; they want to feel intimidating; they want to indulge their selfishness and callous indifference for the sake of pretending they're Powerful Adventurers; and no mere facts are going to get in their way. The owners gleefully fork over huge shovelsful of cash in exchange for pure image--all form and no substance.
And as we should all know in this cynical consumerist society, image beats reality every time.
a must read ! March 31, 2005
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Fantastic book that is well written & balanced. The author doesn't rant in any way , he simply presents the facts as they are.
Please read it & reassess what & why you drive.
Great Stuff August 12, 2004
6 out of 9 found this review helpful
Being a Detroiter, I had to say I picked up this book expecting "outside of Detroit environmentalist" anti-SUV garbage. While being very liberal myself, I'm a Detroit liberal, pro-everything auto industry and then the party line. But the book is very good and enlightening. While it has not quenched my urge to drive SUVs nor my desire to see more sold, it has made me realize it is important that they need to be constructed in a safe manner. While imports rising, I'd like to see my city's brethren employed and Brasher realizes this as he doesn't take the outlandish position many do on the issues of banning them or ridding of them altogether. To do so is to unemploy Detroit. If they can be made more fuel efficient, and safer then everyone can win. Cars though are inherently dangerous. Unless we all drive in NASCAR cars we can expect to have injuries in a crash, Bradsher realizes it is important to limit these faults but accepts it is inevitable there are some problems. A very balanced approach to an often polarizing in viewpoints, issue. Great read.
How can we be so short-sighted? February 12, 2004
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
If you have any compassion for the future of children and other living things, you will be downright frightened by the information and inferences in this book. The author has amassed and analyzed an overwhelming amount of evidence condemning the greed and selfishness of people who produce and purchase these dangerous vehicles. We should all open our eyes to the consequences of using SUVs as they are now classified and regulated. The quality of life that we want to create for our children is being seriously compromised. How can we stop the proliferation of these vehicles of mass destruction? This book presents some cogent suggestions...
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