I learned to drive in a Suburban. We always called it the Monster.
Huge vehicle. The one I drove had a tiny V8. Of course, Also my first
few months of driving were in WV, where trips to town were infrequent.
So a large vehicle to stick 7 or 8 people in was very useful.

The nice thing about Vanagons is that they are deceptively large.
While you can stick 7 adults in them comfortably (unlike some of mini-
vans where you aren't comfortable.) on the outside, they still are
small.

On Sep 12, 2008, at 10:41 AM, Don Hanson wrote:

> I never thought SUV stood for SPORT Utility Vehicle.
> I always understood it to mean SUBURBAN Utility Vehicle.  The
> Suburbs is
> where you see most all of them, not doing sports, but usually
> sucking down
> petrol going to music lessons or shopping or headed here and there
> on the
> freeways..
>
>  In the country or in 4wd territory, pickups seem the vehicle of
> choice..
>
> As an acronym(sp?) "SUV" works pretty well if you think of the "S" as
> standing for Suburban..
>   As an aside, it may be that the original SUV was the Chevy
> Suburban of
> around 1958...Very like the today larger 'Murikan SUVs, but a bit
> smaller
> and certainly quite different from what was being built by anyone
> else at
> that time.  Kinda like a huge Station Wagon built on a truck chassis
> and
> with lots of ground clearance, but simply awful to ride in.  I
> remember
> riding in one that a pal of my father owned in the '60s, down a long
> washboard road in Montana to hit a fishing spot they knew...It must
> have
> been awful if I remember it still to this day..
>  Don Hanson