Pay No Mind To That Sport-Ute; Just Pay The Bank

Is there some law that I don’t know about? Is everybody in the Northwest required to own a sport-ute?

A sport-ute is not, as I used to think, the name of a particularly athletic Native American tribe. Sport-ute is short for “sport-utility vehicle,” which, until about a decade or two ago, went by the all-purpose name of “Jeep.”

But now we have Blazers, Explorers, Broncos, Pathfinders, Four-Runners, Troopers, Rodeos, Monteros, Land Cruisers, Sidekicks and Cherokees, and I haven’t even touched upon the entire “Rover” genre.

Take a census next time you’re out on the street.

I must be the only person left in the entire tri-state area who has not plopped down most of a year’s salary on a sport-ute.

That’s right, we’re talking $20,000 or $30,000 for one of these things. And for what? So you can sit up higher than other cars. This truly is one of the selling points of a sport-ute, and I have to admit, I like the idea. I feel safer riding up high; if I had my way, I’d be driving a Greyhound bus back and forth to work every day.

The other selling point is, of course, four-wheel drive. Almost all sport-utes have four-wheel drive, which is why I coveted one this winter. I was the guy standing forlornly in the snow at the bus stop, watching hundreds of sport-utes whizzing past. However, this also gave me the opportunity to observe that sport-ute owners do not necessarily know how to drive in the snow. According to my own personal survey, two out of every three vehicles in a ditch this winter was a sport-ute, although that means nothing except that, yes, they really are popular.

The other thing I covet about a sport-ute is the fact that it drives like a truck, for the very good reason that a sport-ute is a truck. A sport-ute doesn’t have anything that my pickup doesn’t have except a back seat. I figure that if I put a couple of lawn chairs in the back of my truck, I’ll have a pretty nice sport-ute myself.

Anyway, I can see the appeal of a sport-ute, but I have only one question: Whatever happened to gas mileage?

Remember when everybody wanted 30 miles per gallon? Well, a sport-ute gets gas mileage in the midteens, but I suppose that’s a small price to pay for the pleasure of taking the kids to day care in a vehicle that drives like something your average ironworker might drive out to the bridge construction site.

Speaking of “a small price to pay,” have you heard about these fancy luxury sport-utes? According to my copy of Motor Trend, Acura, Lexus and Infiniti are all coming out with luxury sport-utes, which will sell for the price of starter homes and will combine rugged wilderness durability with totally excellent stereo systems.

The king of luxury sport-utes is the Range Rover, a British vehicle that is quite the rage among those who roam the wilds of Manhattan and L.A. A big city may be the best place to have one - as a British-carenthusiast friend of mine pointed out, you don’t want to find yourself 40 miles up a logging road in anything built by the British.

Maybe so, but I’d be glad to take one as gift from any faithful readers out there. I rode in a Range Rover once, and it was an marvelous combination of being in “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” and “Apollo 13.” On one hand, I felt like I was on safari in the Kalahari; on the other hand, I felt like I was in the cockpit of a Stealth bomber, it had so many lights and switches.

If I was to actually take my new Range Rover out to the Kalahari to stalk wildebeests (one of my hobbies), I could do so with an 11-speaker sound system and poweradjusted heated seats, although in the desert, the appeal of a butt-warmer is limited.

The base price for this Range Rover is $62,000, which means that it should be equipped with just about the same amenities as the average double-wide mobile home, including indoor plumbing.

However, most mobile homes are considerably cheaper. But then again, they do not have four-wheel drive.

, DataTimes MEMO: To leave a message on Jim Kershner’s voice-mail, call 459-5493. Or send e-mail to jimk@spokesman.com, or regular mail to Spokesman-Review, P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210.