Tough love:SUVs are getting a lot of flak of late. Rightly so, says I. But then, I'm biased. I despise the things even more than the average man. Here he comes now. Ask him how much he hates SUVs. Double it and you'll get an idea of the extent of my loathing.
But not, as you may think, for the oft-touted environmental reasons. The fear of being labelled a hypocrite prevents me from cadging a seat on that particular bandwagon.
I don't want to minimise the damage SUVs cause to our lovely ozone layer, but Chinese factories and farting cows and leaking fridges and soaring aeroplanes cause far more pollution than they do. But we're not up in arms about them. Then again, how many of you have ever been nearly run over by a flatulent bullock driving a motorised fridge at great speed through narrow streets because he's late for a flight to Shanghai?
Fact is, many modern SUVs are cleaner than most old cars. Take my precious 32-year-old banger for example. Her 2-litre engine does a glorious 20 miles to the gallon. Possibly 25 if I'm going downhill with the wind behind me. And her breath is as rancid as a beached sperm whale. Her emissions rating is presumably astronomical. I'm afraid to check for fear of what I'd find.
It gets worse. Because she was designed to run on leaded fuel, I need to add a few squirts of additive to her tank every so often to stop her engine dissolving. Great care is required while doing it - the stuff is so malignant it'd liquefy my feet if I spilled it. I shudder to imagine what it does to the atmosphere once it's been belched out by the Duchess.
So I'm acutely aware that any anti-SUV tirade from me based solely on environmental concerns could be seen as ever-so-slightly hypocritical. In my defence, she's driven less than 5,000 miles a year. My lardy butt spends far more time astride my bipedal steed or wedged into a sweaty bench on the 19A bus than it does in the driver's seat of my car. The obvious option for the green motorist is to buy a new hybrid, right? Wrong. Have holier-than-thou Prius buyers never considered how much energy goes into manufacturing their cars, how many tonnes of noxious gases are produced by the factory that makes the steel and rubber and plastic required?
The only solution for those who really must drive, but want to save the planet while they're at it, is to buy a small-engined, second-hand diesel. Hmm. How enticing. The reality is, people have big cars with big engines - be they SUVs or executive saloons - not because they need them, but because they want them and can afford them. And, most of all, because they want everyone else to know they can afford them.
Which is why any proposal to heavily tax SUV owners is pointless. They can afford it. They wouldn't be driving the things if they couldn't. If anything, paying more tax will just reinforce their view that they own the road.
Therein lies the crux of the matter. We can bleat about protecting the environment all we like, but if we are honest with ourselves, the reason we hate SUV drivers is that they are bullies.
They throw their weight around, forcing their way through traffic, intimidating motorists in smaller vehicles, scattering pedestrians and cyclists before them like rampaging mini-Hulks terrorising the playground. Obnoxious thugs and thugettes, the lot of them.
The saddest thing of all is how many normal, decent folk have gone over to the Dark Side and bought SUVs. I suspect they are themselves victims of childhood bullying. Their deep-rooted trauma has driven them, for want of a better word, to buy SUVs as protection from bullies. Or, worse still, to become bullies themselves. I pity them. The poor misguided lambs. It's counselling they need, not heaving great behemoths under their bullying backsides.
