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Here's a fine read... yes there are both and yes sometimes the exhaust side is useful.

Great Vietnam era story on page 2 as well.

http://forums.off-road.com/jee...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suv

"Early SUVs were descendants from commercial and military vehicles such as the World War II Jeep and Land Rover.SUVs have been popular for many years with rural buyers due to their off-road capabilities.

Except they were not called SUVs. From the page you linked to: According to the transportation curator at the Henry Ford Museum, Robert Casey, the Jeep Cherokee (XJ) was the first true sport utility vehicle in the modern understanding of the term." And according to the wiki article on the Jeep Cherokee (XJ) it came out in 1978. As I said in the post you replied to I am a relic. Before that Jeep model ever came out I was mud stomping. Heck I was doing that in Massachusetts in a 6 wheeler before then.

"According to the transportation curator at the Henry Ford Museum, Robert Casey, the Jeep Cherokee (XJ) was the first true sport utility vehicle in the modern understanding of the term."

So my list is correct, those are all SUVs.

I see you include the same quote I did above, but you did not check out when design for the Jeep Cherokee (XJ) started, 1978. So you are still wrong. You also neglect to mention the first XJ Cherokee wasn't introduced until 1984.

I grew up in South Dakota and we used Blazers and Suburbans all the time when going off road in the farm and on friends ranches, going up 40 degree slopes.

But they were not called SUVs. Depending on where they were located they were called 4X4s, 4 Wheel Drives(4WD), or All Wheel Drives(AWD). Try going up those slopes in most SUVs made today. Heck someone I knew rolled over a Suzuki Samuria a couple of weeks after it was bought new.

Falcon

Are you sure ?

Engeneering is much more critical than just plain mass.
If a car is designed to withstand very high shocks, it doesn't matter if they come from a wall (fixed to the ground) or another car (which will decelerate too), as long as it can resist from all critical directions (including shocks from top if heavy car ends up landing on top of small car).

That and use seat-belt + airbag + avoid to have free sharp objects inside the car.

Wot no more Formula Off Road! How the hell are they going to get 500 horse power plus out their buggies now? Hydrogen fusion? link - http://www.off-road.com/bvreviews/cliff.html/

Similarly, I found that when I had a crack at racing Pilot buggies, it felt like I was just playing a driving sim. Well, until I span out, forgot to let go of the steering wheel and dislocated my shoulder, anyway. That felt pretty real.

You can see an offset collision between a smart and an s-class here:
http://www.off-road.com/mbenz/videos/Sclass_Smart. avi

It doesn't "bounce around", but i think it's fair to say that it does "bounce off" the larger vehicle.

I'm sure it's survivable, but i suspect i'd be more comfortable in the larger Merc (that said, i'm a fan of the smart car concept, my main problem with it is that i think it's overpriced for what it is).

At the Pacific Northwest Natinonal Laboratory every machine excessed for schools, non-profits, or for public auction has its hard drive removed and then subjected to a machine similar to this bugger.

Believe me, no data is going to survive the bearing press.

How will these robots be routed around wilderness areas generated by the California Wilderness Protection Act?

Wasn't the Barstow to Vegas motorcycle race cancelled due to declaration of these same wilderness areas? How is DARPA ensuring these vehicles aren't going to run over some tortoise?

Dont' get me wrong, as I'm no tree-hugger. However, it seems the Wilderness protection act only applies to people who cannot afford a congressman...

Sure thing! You can actually find quotes like this all over:

http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew/artic les/fee/average.html

http://www.cei.org/gencon/029,03332.cfm

http://www.off-road.com/green/ecoquote.html

http://www.bloomington.in.us/~lgthscac/biblicalchr istianity'sdefinition.htm

If you copy one of those quotes into Google, you'll come up with a whole slew of good results.

Offtopic Stuff:
Always good to compliment the fellow slashdotter - the sliderule thing mentioned in your sig is awesome. I got a couple sliderules and read the Log-Log Duplex Decitrig Slide Rule Manual to learn how to use them. My plan was to use a sliderule in the classes where calculators were not allowed :)

Hopefully the sliderule will not go the way of the Abacus.. the symbols in the books that teach abacus algorithms are all forgotten; nobody knows how to use an abacus like we did at the beginning of the century. It took only 50 years of western influence (pencil and paper math) on Japan at the beginning of the 20th century for them to completely forget how to use it. Pretty amazing. Although we can at least read our former sliderule books, hardly anybody knows how to use them. And for a legitimate reason too: we have calculators.

I don't give a fuck what your or my national origin is; that's immaterial to the argument. The term is offensive to some people, and has offensive roots. The fact that you know a few people that are not offended by the term does not scale to everyone.

As for your argument that you only use the term in the company of people that you know aren't offended by it . . . do you carefully check with each person within range before saying it? Including the vast hordes of Slashdot readers that may or may not have been reading our little discussion?

I don't give a fuck what your or my national origin is; that's immaterial to the argument. The term is offensive to some people, and has offensive roots. The fact that you know a few people that are not offended by the term does not scale to everyone.

As for your argument that you only use the term in the company of people that you know aren't offended by it . . . do you carefully check with each person within range before saying it? Including the vast hordes of Slashdot readers that may or may not have been reading our little discussion?

Normally, I'm a big fan of Sprint's wireless services ("clever" commercials notwithstanding), but there's an alternative here with a decent review of the unit here.

Basically, it's the two-way DirecWay satellite system from Hughes/DirecTV designed for mobile (read: vehicular) use. Obviously, you can't keep this kind of connection alive while in motion due to the satellite aiming requirements, but it does make sense for those with high-bandwidth needs and are on the road for most of their lives or for people who have the cash and the money to spend on this. Those with fifth-wheel campers or RVs, a DirecTV account for their home, and need/want broadband internet speeds when they're out-and-about will probably find this the most useful. The unit will also receive DirecTV signals for those with the ultimate need in mobile entertainment.

It's obviously not as inexpensive as Sprint's offering, and it's far less mobile (you can't carry it with you into a restaurant, for example), but it should be less expensive per unit of bandwidth. If you're wanting this to work on a Honda, it's going to look awefully goofy. But it won't look terribly out of place on a larger vehicle like a pickup truck, camper, RV, or semi cab.

And before anyone gets the idea that I work for these people: I don't. I'm just a bandwidth junkie that has the "occasional" craving to get online when on the road over my annual 2-week-long driving vacations.