SUVs Could Be The Death Of The Cool Estate Car, And It's All Wrong
A good estate car is a wonderful thing. It can carry lots of your stuff, swallow furniture or take your mates on an epic road trip. An estate car has character, especially when you put an interesting engine in it.
This week Alfa Romeo told Car magazine that plans to build an estate version of the Giulia have been scrapped, in favour of the cash cow that is the Stelvio. The firm’s manufacturing chief, Alfredo Altavilla, claims that the Slevio SUV, which caters for one of the fastest-growing market sectors in the automotive industry, will drive just as well as a Giulia estate.
He’s wrong.
Porsche can’t make a Macan or Cayenne, as good as they are for their size, drive quite as well as its lower and lighter cars. Audi can’t make the Q7 drive as well as the RS 6 Avant. Try an E60 M5 Touring against an X5 M and there’s no contest. It’s the same story for Mercedes-AMG between the GLE 63 and the E 63 estate.
The estate always drives better than the SUV. The laws of physics are insurmountable. But that’s not my only beef with SUVs. Show me a pretty one; a truly, honest-to-goodness pretty one. Sometimes car makers can make them look butch, quirky, expensive, aggressive or even limply unthreatening, but I don’t know of one single SUV of any size that’s anywhere near as good to look at as a well-designed estate.
This gorgeous render from X-Tomi Design shows what might have been if Alfa had developed the Giulia wagon. Gaze at the goddess of perfection and then take a look back at the Stelvio. Hmmm.
The point here is that estate cars are just better than SUVs. They often have bigger boots, they look better and they drive better, and yet I’m sitting here watching SUV sales figures go through the roof while estates are quietly forgotten. For the love of [insert deity here], it makes me want to tear out my own eyes.
Anyone who thinks as I do is being proved sickeningly wrong by the numbers. Maybe we’re all out of touch with what people want, but that’s not true at all. People want taller cars because they imply size, and size implies prestige. People want prestige. There’s also the issue that a lot of people are incompetent behind the wheel and have to be as high up as possible to make it easier for themselves.
You may have gathered that the SUV takeover grinds my gears. It’s not that they’re bad cars; it’s just that their ever-growing presence is depriving future me – and future you – of the chance to own what would have been glorious V6-powered Italian wagons. And that’s just the most recent one. How many other desirable estate ideas have been indirectly squashed by SUVs?
Time will tell whether there’s any hope for cool estates, but the outlook is bleak.
Comments
So no family racecar ?
Soccer moms buy more than enthusiasts, that’s the only reason the estate won’t exist
I herby declare whoever buys a suv and never go off road will be sentenced to 50 years of building estates building prison.
Stupid Usless Vehicle
The sad fact is that most of people who buy cars are not car people at all.
And the real problem is not just that they don’t care about the particular car aspects that we do, e.g. handling and responsiveness. The problem is that they also don’t understand that someone may buy a car based on how good it drives, rather than what sort of status it implies.
Thats part of the reason why, even if I had the money, I probably wouldn’t buy a Ferrari or Lamborghini - for most people it’s a status symbol, rather than a car to enjoy. 99% of people think that if you buy a supercar, you want to show off, rather than enjoy the driving experience. Of course, maybe a lot of people do want to show off, but it also makes real car enthusiasts look like dorks.
And the worst thing is that all these ignorant people are in the majority. Hence, they drive the market more than enthusiasts do. And what they want is cars that make their neighbours jealous, are easy to drive and have a fashionable badge on the bonnet. Thats it.
Thats why there is more and more “premium” SUVs spawning and less cars which care about the driving experience.
The problem is that SUVs are marketed as off-road capable, even though most of them aren’t. People want the image and the ride height, even if the SUV is a little worse in pretty much every petrolhead measure. But I really want fast estates to remain a thing.
I can’t agree with you more man, SUV’s are the cancer if the automotive world.
I agree. The estate will always drive better than the SUV. Convinced my dad to sell the E53 X5 (an amazing car, btw) and get an E91 320d (which happens to have the exact same cargo volume).
He was blown away at the test drive. It’s low and RWD, has very precise steering and corners like nothing he’s ever driven. We’re never going back to an SUV, but we may want to get a 5-Series next (The German Shepherd is getting fat).
This article describes everything that’s wrong with the car market today. People nowadays are treating cars like fashion objects, status symbols, etc. This is the reason sporty cars are dying out in favour of these gigantic SUVs.