SUVs were a creation of the government. Ok not really, but it was government regulation which helped the conception and their birth.
Fuel economy in vehicles is regulated by our government. It's not generally regulated per vehicle, but as an average for all vehicles in a fleet of cars produced by a single vehicle manufacturer. This is why you see almost all manufacturers today having such a wide variety of vehicle sizes. This is also known as corporate average fuel economy or CAFE.
Back when CAFE was first born (1975) the idea of the SUV had not really been conceived. Government introduced CAFE as a means to regulate fuel economy in an effort to aid the oil energy crisis. The idea was to regulate corporations building cars by imposing rules on the average gas mileage on their sets of cars and light trucks.. so basically just all passenger vehicles. At the time -and you can see this in movies, read about it in history or just look at some old cars - there were lots of big cars. CAFE marked the death of the big car majority, but not the desire for larger vehicles.
So.. as they say.. the market took care of it. The SUV was born as a result of fuel economy standards.
In 1980 the average fuel economy of passenger car fleets was regulated at 20.0mpg. The rule for light trucks was 16.0mpg on two-wheel drive and 14.0mpg on four-wheel drive. In other words 20-30% lesser fuel economy was required at the time for the light trucks class. As you can see it wasn't too hard for the car manufacturers to imagine a way to make some really inefficient, heavy light trucks to replace the large cars they could no longer easily make.
Now.. you could say that it was just poorly thought out regulation.. maybe even the fault of oil loving politicians that wouldn't let regulators regulate enough.. But the case remains that it truly was government that helped to create the SUV. Never underestimate the ability of the market and individuals to find every single loophole in regulation they want.
