BOB GARFIELD: So now we have an idea of at least some of the reasons reviewers may love the SUV, but that doesn't explain the rest of us who buy SUVs even though they're incredibly expensive gas guzzlers that are environmentally rapacious and impossible to park. Last spring we spoke to medical anthropologist Dr. Clotaire Rapaille who has been a marketing consultant for most major SUV manufacturers. He says the SUV's success grew of Detroit's failure to generate automotive sex appeal.

CLOTAIRE RAPAILLE: All these cars -- they were boring and ugly. They look all the same; they had no identity. It's a little bit like the cars were telling you well, I, I'm, I'm not so sure of myself; I don't dare to be a car. They - that's what the message of these intellectual cars designed by Nascar - they're trying to get more aerodynamic and gas mileage. And then they were not sexy at all! So suddenly this SUV is hey, the hell with you -I'm strong, I'm big, I'm taller than you --and I'm proud of being that!

BOB GARFIELD:If SUV marketing is about appealing to primal instincts, it would seem to me that the hummer, which is possibly the most impractical automobile ever designed--

CLOTAIRE RAPAILLE: Right.

BOB GARFIELD: -- the appeal must be practically bestial! One of the commercials shows a, a series of phrases one after the other--: [ROCK MUSIC UP AND UNDER] Do not do this. Do not do that. Eat your vegetables, it says on screen. [LAUGHTER] Play it safe. And then you hear--: [ROCK MUSIC UP LOUD] and then you see the phrase--: Whatever. Is the message there: "I own a hummer. To hell with you."

CLOTAIRE RAPAILLE: Definitely something like that. I mean I'm, I'm not behind this message, but there is something about feeling good about the hell with you; I do what I want, you see? And this is part of the American culture. And a lot of people resent this attitude around the world. You see that, that's what a lot of people resent about this administration - what they say is the hell with you - we're going to go to war anyway. But on the other hand there is something positive about it, because we know what we want and we do it!-- whatever it is. [MUSIC]

copyright 2004 WNYC Radio