Everyone wants a sport-utility vehicle, even if some glamor editions run $40,000 or more and are bigger than your house.
Fashionable, some say, just like designer duds and sushi.
Fad, others say, and as such, eventually will go away.
One argument prompting speculation SUVs will be a fad is that sport-utes are notorious for being large in size but low in gas mileage. With a high-powered V-8 engine, the full-size sport-ute can pass anything except a fuel pump.
Those who warned that high demand but meager mileage would catch up with SUVs now have reason to gloat: “Told you so.”
Comes quiet word that some consumers who want a 1998 model, full-size Chevrolet Suburban or Tahoe or GMC Suburban or Yukon, vehicles with the biggest size but lowest fuel-economy averages, aren’t going to get one. They will have to settle for a 1999 model instead.
The model year, which usually runs 12 months, has been shortened to four months.
How many folks who ordered or wanted a 1998 Suburban, Tahoe or Yukon are going to be short-changed?
To get one with the equipment you wanted, you had to order by Nov. 11 (Nov. 21 for fleet buyers). Otherwise, you’ll now have to take what’s on the shelf until the shelves run bare of ’98s.
Chevy says the 1998 model year for those SUVs will run from Oct. 1 of this year through Jan. 31 of next year, or about four months.
On Feb. 2, the ’99 model year will begin for the trio of SUVs, and you can start ordering again as if nothing happened.
It’s not that those who want a Suburban, Tahoe or Yukon won’t get one, it’s just that they’ll have to be content with a ’99 model.
Will they have to pay more for the ’99?
“To be determined. That’s the future, and we don’t talk about the future,” a Chevy source said.
What’s the problem?
CAFE. No, not a diner or truck stop, but CAFE, as in corporate average fuel economy, the federal regulation dictating how much mileage each auto and truck manufacturer must obtain from its fleet of vehicles sold each year.
You can sell all the trucks or cars you want as long as the average of those sold reaches the CAFE dictate.
The CAFE truck mandate for ’95 was 20.6 m.p.g. For 1996 through 2000, it is 20.7 m.p.g.
The more trucks you sell with 15.7-m.p.g. ratings, the more you need to sell with 25.7-m.p.g. ratings to average 20.7.
But, like anything the government touches, there’s a catch. Automakers can borrow CAFE credits to meet the law.
A manufacturer can borrow credits from the three preceding years to meet the current year’s law. That means producers who must get a 20.7 m.p.g. CAFE for 1998, but will reach only 20 m.p.g., can avoid paying a fine by going back to 1997, 1996 or 1995 and borrowing excess mileage from any year in which it exceeded CAFE.
So if it averaged 21.4 m.p.g. in 1997, it can take that excess 0.7 m.p.g. and apply it to 1998 to meet the standard.
If it didn’t exceed CAFE in the three prior years, it can borrow from the three successive years. It can say, “we’ll get 21.4 m.p.g. in 1999” and borrow that extra 0.7 m.p.g. from ’99 and apply it to ’98 to escape a fine.
Here’s where GM had a problem and why Chevy and GMC need to halt ’98 SUV production early. GM didn’t reach the 20.6 m.p.g. CAFE in 1995. So it borrowed mileage from 1998 and now has to pay the piper.
To meet the ’95 and ’98 CAFE, it has to stop building those ’98 SUVs.
And will the ’99 model run be limited to four or five months for GM to meet a prior-year CAFE? Too early to tell.
Only SUV production will be curtailed early, not full-size pickup trucks, probably because GM has redesigned pickup trucks coming out early next year as ’99s.
And though GM will halt ’98 Suburban, Tahoe and Yukon output early, it will switch to ’99s in a matter of hours, not days or weeks. So if you want one, you’ll get one–be it a ’98 or ’99.
It should be noted that Suburban, Tahoe and Yukon, all built off the full-size truck platform, will be redesigned for 2000. That’s when they are supposed to offer better fuel economy that might put to rest four-month model years and borrowing from the past and the future.
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MORE ON THE INTERNET: An archive of Jim Mateja columns from the past 13 years is available at chicago.tribune.com/go/mateja
