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SUVs Are Not Cool, Unless They’re “Hybrid Hybrids”

2:15 PM EST on November 20, 2007

 
Here's a pretty repulsive ad for Ford's Escape Hybrid SUV. In it, a middle-aged father and his middle school-aged daughter are strolling from their leafy suburban home to the family truckster -- a green one, natch -- when the daughter asks to be dropped off a block from the theater where, we're to assume, her friends are hanging out.

At first you think that, considering dad's expanding waistline, she's looking to get some exercise. But it turns out she's embarrassed to be seen in an SUV, since "people in that [presumably urban] part of town are riding bikes and have hybrids and stuff."

Ah, but the family truckster is a hybrid, dad points out nonchalantly.

"Like a hybrid hybrid?" asks the daughter.

"I don't know what a 'hybrid hybrid' is, but yes," dad replies.

Queue voice over proclaiming the 34 MPG Escape hybrid "the most fuel efficient SUV on Earth."

Cut to father and daughter driving away, as daughter, now inaudible, explains that an anemic 34 miles-per-gallon hardly qualifies the Escape as a "hybrid hybrid" -- any more than the Chevy Tahoe is the "Green Car of the Year" -- and asks dad why the family can't move closer to the theater so he and mom might stave off heart disease and she wouldn't have to be ferried around in "the greenwashing machine."

Video via Dailymotion

Brad Aaron
Brad Aaron began writing for Streetsblog in 2007, after years as a reporter, editor, and publisher in the alternative weekly business. Brad adopted New York'’s dysfunctional traffic justice system as his primary beat for Streetsblog. He lives in Manhattan.

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