Discussion Groups / English Usage / May 2008

In the best tradition of American advertising, "it's 2 mints in 1!"

It's a sport vehicle (for going off road), and it's a utility vehicle
(for hauling your gear to where you go off).

Sometimes the join is between the front of one vehicle and the back of
the other (a la griffins) and sometimes it is side-to-side (Victor/
Victoria).

/dps

Because at least a few generations of these vehicles had a "utility"
trim level, without a rear window, and therefore fell into a
less-stringent classification ("light-duty truck") under the Corporate
Average Fuel Economy (known in Washington and Detroit as "CAFE")
standards.  A "light-duty truck" (commonly called a "light truck") is
defined as a vehicle of a certain size which is "(1) Designed
primarily for purposes of transportation of property or ***is a
derivation of such a vehicle***, or (2) Designed primarily for
transportation of persons and has a capacity of more than 12 persons,
or (3) Available with special features enabling off-street or off-
highway operation and use." (emphasis mine)

This allowed the gas-guzzlers to be sold in huge numbers without
inflating the domestic automakers' fleet fuel economy figures, so they
didn't have to pay the "gas-guzzler tax".  I suspect (but don't have
the requisite law library at hand to search) that clause 1 is the
original language and clauses 2 and 3 were added later.

-GAWollman

In this case, the only way to prove it one way or the other would be
to look for early written uses of the word "sport-utility" and see if
it was used on its own, or just in the /sui generis/ combination
"sport-utility vehicle".[1]  My impression, which may be biased or
otherwise erroneous, is that "sport-utility" as a noun is a later
shortening of the full "sport-utility vehicle".

-GAWollman

[1] I took a shot at this in Google Books, but the only thing it
proved is that Google Books hasn't the faintest idea when most of the
stuff in it was published.

I remember hearing "utility vehicle" used to describe trucks like the
Chevy Suburban and International Scout in the '70s, and "sport utility
vehicle" not until the mid-'80s for smaller, easier-handling versions
like the Jeep Cherokee and Toyota 4Runner.  People I know definitely
commented on the irony of using "sport" to describe ever larger trucks
like (at the time) the Chevy Tahoe and Ford Expedition when it had been
used ten years earlier to distinguish SUVs from larger, unwieldy trucks.

¬R