MotorsFeature: the SUV debateAfter another week of SUV controversy, some owners have decided it's time to fight back, writes Tim O'Brien, and not just on issues of the environment
Sports Utility Vehicle owners are fighting back. Tired of being cast by environmentalists as pariahs among the motoring public and facing threats of increased taxes - even penalty rates for parking in Dublin City - SUV drivers are preparing to circle the wagons.
First up is the information war - a few home truths will be aired over the coming months as mandarins in the Department of Finance work on plans to rebalance the motor tax system.
Ministers Dick Roche and Brian Cowen, responsible for environment and finance respectively, have announced plans to "rebalance" motor tax payments in favour of cars with lower CO2 emission levels, at the expense of vehicles with higher emission levels.
The Department of the Environment has launched a public consultation period on the proposals and the deadline for submissions is March 1st - which is only four weeks away.
It is a short time for the SUV owners to get across a simple point: the majority of owners have no problem with the proposals to tax the gas guzzling heavy CO2 emitting vehicles. Their great fear is that SUVs themselves will be targeted in a scheme which ignores logic and targets SUVs just because they are SUVs.
The key point is, they argue, that many saloon cars have higher emissions - and indeed bigger engines than SUVs. Many SUVs, the argument goes, create less CO2 emissions than, for example, a Government Minister's Mercedes.
Many SUVs such as the Daihatsu Terios, Chevrolet Captiva and the Suzuki SX4 use engines that are smaller than 2-litres in capacity. They are SUVs but there is a whole range of saloon cars which have bigger engines and guzzle more petrol, as well as creating more carbon emissions.
And there is anger too among SUV drivers who use biofuels at being painted as road thugs whose only need for an SUV is to be a bully. Kieran O'Byrne of Greystones in Co Wicklow is particularly incensed at the depiction of SUVs as "being too big, too polluting and not needed by suburbanites". O'Byrne's own vehicle is a Mitsubishi Pajero 2.8-litre - one of the machines sure to attract a few sneers in traffic on his daily commute to Dublin city centre.
But he argues that he has four children and needs seven seats. He shoots, he fishes and pulls boats and trailers: "I need power and I need four-wheel-drive and yes I do use it off road quite a lot - just look at the sides of the car and you will see the evidence, the dinges and scratches."
O'Byrne also has an environmental advantage. His Pajero runs on vegetable oil. It is a carbon neutral fuel and he wants to know how the Government's proposed changes are going to take that into account.
We met him launching his boat in Greystones Harbour, a feat which would be difficult without his SUV.
"What I'm annoyed at is that I am branded a polluter by everyone for driving my SUV - including the Government. If we are serious about our polluting vehicles why are there no grants to do these conversions? Why do I have to pay extra tax on shop-bought vegetable oil as soon as I put it into my tank as a substitute fuel? Why am I penalised for trying to help the environment? Why am I not rewarded for helping air quality?"
In a final question he neatly steals the moral high ground: "Do they not believe that global warming is here to stay as long as we continue to use polluting petroleum-powered vehicles?"
O'Byrne's argument is a familiar one to Peter O'Neill of ecomotion.ie which converts SUVs to run on vegetable oil: "I could give you 10 people who would say the same."
The main ecomotion.ie customers have high mileage distribution vans, but O'Neill is finding an increasing customer base among SUV owners because they want a four-wheel-drive, and the ability to argue that their fuel is carbon neutral, which has to be better then the smallest fossil-fuel using engine.
As O'Neill explains: "I recently converted a Range Rover for a man who was sick of being sneered at by the politically correct. His Range Rover is now more environmentally friendly than the Toyota Prius."
Cyril McHugh of SIMI takes up the cudgels on behalf of the "ordinary" SUV owner. "Overall, the arguments don't stack up. There is an inverse snobbery about well-off people who don't drive SUVs, those who drive big engine saloon cars turning to criticise the SUV."
Then there are the farmers who have taken to the commercial SUVs in large numbers because they can get them around the farm with a bale of hay and a sick calf in the back. Many small businesses too, he argues, use the SUV for deliveries as well as a personal car.
"Take the small florist for example. They will use the SUV to make deliveries instead of a small van. But they will also use the SUV as a personal vehicle instead of a car, so they are really running one vehicle instead of two. A lot of this argument is imported from the United States where SUVs have engines of four litres and more. Yet people use the same argument against SUVs here."
He thinks the current tax system is enough of a deterrent against the use of larger engines. Cars over two litres, he points out, "have 55 per cent added to the base price in VRT. If you consider all taxes, 76 per cent of the base price is added on in Ireland."