Running on Fumes

to Americans, cars have never been just a means of transportation. Our choices about what to drive have always had a social component--keeping up with the Joneses--and an antisocial one: outdoing the Joneses. Both impulses have, of course, been fostered or, if you prefer, exploited by automakers, but, in the end, responsibility for our decisions is our own. In the early nineteen-eighties, Detroit introduced new versions of several S.U.V.s, including the ... Full Story »