[Michael_S]

Originally Posted by hrcslam

Why must I always defend owning a Suburban? I have only one daughter, yes, but I also have 4 cats and 2 rottweilers and find my self moving every 6 months (I'm in aviation contract maintenance).

In your previous post, you only said you have a wife and daughter. If you have 4 cats and 2 rotties and move every few months, then obviously you're going to use the fullsize SUV all of the time and a rental won't cut it.

P.S My Suburban costs less per month than my Ion (including gas). But, you know they are just expensive, gas guzzling, environment destroying, end of the world, war causing, plant killing, road hogging, dangerous, evil epitome of all that man kind has done to destroy gods green earth, right?

Hey, did I go on a rant? Did I call you evil? Did I demand that you sell your SUV or that the government take it away from you?

I'm just going from experience. I know 7 people who own half ton pickups, and only one uses his to tow - and he tows a little trailer that's less than two tons fully loaded. There are hundreds of thousands of people driving around 5000 pound trucks and SUVs that do not use their true space and hauling capabilities at all, or use them at most a few times per year. Be proud to be an exception, but that doesn't undercut my point - the rest are wasting their own money and needlessly contributing extra to our dependence on foreign oil.

And if your Suburban costs less per month than your Ion, how much did you pay for it? $15,000? $12,000? I want to shop where you shop, because most nicely optioned Suburbans near me run past $40,000.

Try this on for size. A Tahoe Hybrid gets the same city fuel economy as a Honda Civic Si. The difference? One can carry 6+people and tow 6000lbs. The other is a smaller little thing that goes a little bit faster.

So, why did GM make a full sized SUV hybrid? Hmmmmmm, I wonder.

The Civic SI is sold as a sport coupe, and of course it's not much of one - but it will still handily outrun your Suburban and be more fun to drive around a road course. A better comparison is the regular Civic coupe, which still gets 50% better mileage than the Tahoe hybrid.

But more importantly, there's a $30,000 difference. The Tahoe hybrid is great for the environment, and I'm glad GM made it and I hope they profit from it. But $30,000 buys a lot of gas.