Car Makers Tap Into Giant Market New Generation Of Lumbering Suvs Will Obliterate Cash, Gas, Smaller Cars

Big is getting bigger on the American road.

Car makers, inspired by the recent popularity of big cars and trucks, are planning even larger models with equally gigantic sticker prices. Take the behemoth being tested by Ford Motor Co., which, at 19 feet, would dethrone the Chevrolet and GMC Suburban by a foot as the longest mass-produced family vehicle ever built.

At more than 3 tons without cargo, or about twice the weight of a typical family car, this station wagon on steroids will also be one of the heaviest. It will have an optional 6.8-liter V10 engine, twice the size of a typical minivan engine.

And the march of the road hogs will only get bigger.

Chrysler is about to roll out a new Dodge Durango sport utility wagon that is roomier and more than a foot longer than the biggest Jeep.

Not to be outdone, General Motors Corp. is planning to redesign the Suburban over the next two years to make it more appealing to families who want to treat it as an oversized car rather than a truck for towing boats and horse trailers. Also, BMW is apparently testing a design for a sport utility wagon it may offer in a few years derived from its 5-series sedans.

Ford has expanded on its successful Explorer sport utility vehicle by building a larger Expedition model that went on sale last fall. And a big, plush sport utility version of its Lincoln luxury brand, called the Navigator, will go on sale in two weeks.

Safety groups are already expressing concern about Ford’s plans to build the bigger, heavier vehicle two years from now because it could inflict a lot of damage in collisions with smaller, lighter cars.

“From a public health vantage point, clearly it’s better not to have such a weight mismatch,” said Adrian K. Lund, senior vice president for research of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a research group supported by insurance companies seeking to reduce the cost of accident claims.

But automakers say they are simply meeting demand. What sells these days are the biggest things in the showroom. Since 1990, sales have climbed more than 60 percent for Suburbans, and there are waiting lists to buy them. Since Ford introduced the Expedition, its largest sport utility vehicle, it has doubled production and still cannot satisfy demand.

People buy the big vehicles because they think they are safer, they want to ride above the traffic, intimidate others or simply want something bigger than what their friends have.

Automakers love to sell them because the vehicles generate huge profits; for example, up to $10,000 each for a Suburban whose development costs have long since been recouped, analysts say.

The gigantic new models scheduled to roll out over the next two years are likely to have their devotees and detractors. The Transportation Department released a study last Tuesday concluding that big sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks and minivans posed a growing danger to the occupants of smaller cars sharing the same roads. And with fuel economy ratings of 14 miles a gallon or less and generally dirtier emissions, the new sport utility vehicles will generate more pollution and raise the nation’s reliance on imported oil, environmentalists warn.

People with large or tall families, or who tow boats or trailers, buy many of the biggest vehicles. Pamela R. Staneck, an inn manager in Saugatuck, Mich., said that she and her husband owned a Ford Econoline full-size van, which airports commonly use as shuttle buses, because minivans would not be big enough.

“We go to dog shows; I play bagpipes; we travel all over the place,” she said. Staneck added that she and her husband, a hospital administrator, would like to buy a Suburban or something similar. “We’ve always been wanting to get one,” she said. “We have a son who is 6 foot 4 inches and two Scottish deerhounds.”

In Cheyenne, Wyo., Nick Nickel, a Ford dealer, said that the people buying big vehicles in his area were not the farmers and ranchers pictured in some advertisements for Suburbans. The buyers are “primarily professionals: doctors, lawyers and accountants,” he said. Ranchers mostly prefer the more down-to-earth and more practical pickup trucks, he said.

While the value of large sport utility vehicles in intimidating or impressing other drivers may be debatable, there is growing support for the view that large sport utility vehicles provide excellent protection for their occupants and a hazard to those in smaller vehicles.

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, death rates in Chevrolet Suburbans are among the lowest for any vehicle on the road. But the institute is beginning a study on whether the proliferation of such large vehicles is increasing death rates in other vehicles that they hit, Lund said.

Because large sport utility vehicles typically come with four-wheel drive and high bumpers, they also tend to override the strongest sections of a car body and drive into the passenger compartment during collisions, the Transportation Department study warned last week.

With a gallon of gasoline now selling for considerably less than a gallon of gourmet water, the cost of gas has largely disappeared as a worry for buyers of big vehicles. But even if gas prices rise, the Suburbans, Ford crew wagons and other rough, tough land yachts may not disappear.

The reason is simple: The people who can afford to pay $25,000 to $40,000 for a big sport utility vehicle can usually afford to fill their huge fuel tanks even if prices rise. One of GM’s envious rivals has done market research calculating that the average Suburban buyer earns $133,800 a year. The average car buyer earns $67,100 a year.