Looking at this picture, I ask myself: why didn’t we have one of these? Back in the day, a Suburban would have been a lot more practical for hauling three kids, their friends, grandma, auntie, dogs, bikes and all the requisite gear to remote trailheads and campgrounds than our poor overloaded Dodge Caravan; no wonder it went through four transmissions.
At the time I just wasn’t able to fall in love with the Suburban. It wasn’t for lack of exposure to them, considering that our hometown Chevy dealer in Los Gatos, CA stocked only Suburbans and Corvettes. Seriously. And he proudly advertised that fact: Biggest Corvette and Suburban dealer in Northern California! We lived there from 1987 to 1992, and Los Gatos and its neighboring tony hamlets were already some of the wealthiest enclaves in Silicon Valley. Suburbans were hot. I remember seeing a Boy Scout troop loading up for a camping trip at the temple parking lot down the street: a flotilla of Suburbans piloted by affluent-looking dads that would carry them up into the high Sierra. California—as usual—was a trendsetter in America’s love affair of big SUVs.
But it wasn’t the primary one this time.
The Suburban had already been well established as “The National Car of Texas”. Alternatively dubbed “The Texas Cadillac”, it suited Texans to a T. Here’s a great article at the Texas Monthly from 1986 that explains why Texans ditched their Cadillacs for Mercedes in the seventies, and then quickly ditched them for Suburbans, which were much better suited for them on many levels. The writer also fell under the spell of the Suburban, in his case trading a little Toyota wagon.
The reasons enumerated for the Suburban’s inexorable rise in Texas even includes xenophobia, given that the rapidly-expanding Japanese (and the Germans) had nothing remotely comparable. Of course that’s long changed, but the fact that Suburbans are built in Arlington, Texas is icing on the cake.
I had my first deep immersion in this phenomena on a business trip to Houston in 1986. My hotel was next door to a park with several soccer fields. When I got back from meetings in the late afternoon, there was a long line of Suburbans alongside the playing fields. At first I thought it might be a dealer using it to store excess inventory or such, but a closer look showed a gaggle of elaborately-coiffed Texas soccer moms wearing mom jeans chatting in clusters, waiting for the practice or game to finish.
During our Los Gatos years, a friend of ours we met at our kids’ school got a 4WD Suburban. They lived way up in the Santa Cruz Mountains, which somehow made it more acceptable in my eyes. But I did wonder how it handled on narrow Hwy 17, with its fast pace and relentless curves. It just seemed so huge, and they only had two kids…
Of course we were SUV trendsetters ourselves, just on a smaller scale, having bought a Jeep Cherokee back in the fall of 1984 when we were living in Santa Monica. And there was quite a number of Cherokees lined up at the West LA Montessori School; the West Side Cadillac of the times, along with Mercedes 300TD wagons. California’s Mercedes Mania was longer lived than Texas’.
We had two young kids at the time, and it managed to haul us and our gear on plenty of trips, including some memorable ones that required 4WD. I built a little plywood rear-facing seat (with seat belts) for when grandma or others joined the party. A flexible big rooftop luggage bag came in handy too.
After out third was born in 1992, we needed something bigger. Like a Suburban, perhaps, in retrospect. But no, we went for a Grand Caravan. And somehow we made it work, even when I took five teenage boys and my younger son camping for several weeks. How’s all this going to fit? Careful planning. The roof-top bag was for reserved for their personal gear, and we made it work, barely.
Here it is loaded to the gunnels again, with my brother and his three kids who were visiting.
A Suburban would have made it all so much easier. Except of course for the other 320-some days of the year, when the Caravan was used to shuttle kids and do errands. Who wants to park a Suburban in a crowded parking lot? And we kept the Cherokee, which the boys and I used for some great Oregon back roads adventures.
So why did the Suburban’s popularity begin to explode in the 1970s, as a family hauler? Suburbans and their ilk had been around for almost forever, but their common name “utility wagon” pretty much summed it up. The 1967-1972 generation clearly was more civilized, with its lower profile, longer wheelbase, and…three side doors. But outside of the work truck market, it was largely the province of hard core trailer towers and a certain kind of family that put a preference for utility over stylishness and comfort.
Those latter qualities were still the domain of the big station wagon in the ’60s, and in particular, the best selling Ford and its Country Squire. Chevrolet perpetually lagged in this key market segment.
It’s probably no coincidence that the all-new 1973 Suburban was the first of its kind to espouse such smooth and well-detailed styling for a truck. And now with available wood-grained sides. If Chevy couldn’t beat the Country Squire head on, how leap-frogging it?
Wait a minute; didn’t GM already try that with their “clamshell” wagons, that came out in 1971? They had an extended wheelbase, raised roof and three forward-facing rows of seats.
Huge they were. Maybe too much so?
Here’s a comparison of a few vital statistics of the 1976 Buick Estate Wagon and the 1976 Suburban.
Gee, maybe the Suburban wasn’t so big after all? Shoulda’, woulda’, coulda’
So we already know why the Suburban was so popular in Texas. They like to ride tall in the saddle as well as on big horses.
How about the rest of the country? I couldn’t find readily Suburban sales stats from the ’70s, but it’s probably pretty safe to say they were in the 30-40k range, roughly. The second energy crisis and the nasty recession of 1981 hit car sales hard, especially big ones. In 1982, 28k were sold. By 1989, it was 65k. The 100k mark was crested in 1998. And by 2001, it was 154k.
The Suburban’s appeal to affluent buyers had been spreading beyond Texas for some time, as noted vividly at that Chevy dealer in Los Gatos with rows and rows of them. It was becoming the new Cadillac, and a perfect companion to the BMW or Mercedes in the driveway. Suburban buyers’ demographics, along with the Jeep Grand Wagoneer, were at or near the top of the charts, in terms of education and income.
Undoubtedly someone will say that one (or even the main) drivers of the Suburban’s growth trajectory was CAFE. The Corporate Average Fuel Economy regulations required manufacturers to slim down their big cars and wagons, and cut back on the really large engines as well as improve efficiency with overdrive automatics, fuel injection, and other means. Some will say the result was in wimpy little wagons that couldn’t get out of their way, hence folks snapped up big Suburbans.
It’s not nearly as simple as that. The downsized wagons that came along in 1977 were still mighty big, and longer than the Suburban; this ’82 Buick wagon measures a whopping 220.5″ from stem to stern. Hardly so small, and their substantially improved space utilization thanks to taller bodies, higher seats and shorter hoods resulted in as much or more usable interior space in almost every metric than their predecessors.
True, larger engine options were trimmed starting with 1980; 5.0 L V8s with 135- 160 hp or so became the norm. But then the speed limit was 55 and gas was decidedly more expensive, so buyers appreciated the substantially improved efficiency. Why else did GM’s 350 V8 diesel sell so well, until its infirmities made it a pariah? It was slow and noisy, but very economical. CAFE didn’t force it down their throats.
It’s not like the Suburban was any better endowed. The standard 305 V8 in 1982 was rated at 130hp, the optional 350 V8 at 165hp. The 305’s output later increased to 160hp. There was a big block 454 still available, but only on C20 2WD versions, specifically targeted at the big trailer towers. And the new 6.2 L diesel joined the party, with 130hp (148 in the C20) and 240 ft.lbs of torque, the same as the 305 V8.
Thanks to CC Contributor Vince, a Peterson 4WD magazine test of a 1985 148hp diesel C20 Suburban yielded a 0-60 of 15.7 seconds. A 160hp 305 Blazer, which weighed less, took 14.6 seconds. A 500lbs heavier Suburban would be lucky to equal that.
Fuel economy? The 305 Blazer managed 15 mpg in that test; the 6.2 diesel Suburban got a loft 18.3. Given the extra weight and bigger engine, a 350 Suburban likely got 12-14 mpg. I just remembered why I didn’t buy one.
The weakest of those 305 sedan/wagons, the 1980-1984 version, still ran the 0-60 in 12-13 seconds. In 1985, the 305’s performance increased, and 0-60 times were now in the quite brisk 10 second range, with 1/4 mile times in the mid 17s. That’s decidedly faster than a Suburban, and actually very competitive with the pre-energy crisis/CAFE big cars from the ’70s and even the typical pre-smog cars of the 1960s. And after 1989, the fuel injected versions were tested in the 9 second range. And the LT from 1994 on were 7 second cars.
So how come almost nobody was buying these? They were big, wide and fast; more so than the wagons of the glorious ’60s. Did someone say CAFE? And just how many big wagons did Chevy sell in 1994? Exactly 7,719. In 1996, it was…485. The big RWD wagon was dead, and GM retooled the Arlington plant where the last B-Bodies had been built to expand Suburban and Tahoe production.
This generation of Suburban (and Blazer/Jimmy) was built for nineteen model years, 1973 through 1991, in both Chevrolet and GMC versions. That must be some kind of record.
Why wasn’t there a Suburban (or Blazer) version of the new 1988 GMT-400 pickups? Did you have to ask? GM didn’t want to spend the money for its tooling, when the existing generation was still selling so well and had effectively zero competition. In 1992, the next generation finally appeared.
Let’s get back to the question at hand: just what was it that ignited American’s love affair with the Suburban? And killed the station wagon? A key factor is that that Americans’ love affair with full size wagons had already peaked back in 1969 (Ford sold 239k that year), and was on a steady decline ever since. By 1969, the main bulge of the baby boomers were past riding in their parents wagons. Family size was decreasing.
By 1978, a very good year for the industry and the last year for Ford’s really big cars, they sold all of 71k of their big wagons, still available with the husky 400V8. That’s down a whopping 70% from 1969. Was that because of CAFE? Of course not, as it hadn’t even taken effect. Big cars, and especially wagons, were already in terminal decline, as a younger generation came into their prime new car buying years and looked elsewhere.
And how many wagons did Ford sell in 1982, when Suburban sales were still at a paltry 28K? All of 22k. And except for a slight rise to 30k in 1984, Ford RWD wagon sales kept dropping, 15k in 1988, and all of 3,685 its final 1991 outing. By then, Ford’s Aerostar was selling in vastly larger volumes. The reality is that Suburban sales (and minivans and other SUVs) only really took off after traditional wagons were already essentially toast. And Suburban sales never came even close to the numbers that big wagons used to sell at. So what killed the traditional wagon?
Meanwhile, in 1988, for example, GM sold 140k of its space-efficient FWD A-Body wagons, and Ford moved 126k of its sleek beast-selling Taurus and Sable FWD wagons. There was still a healthy market for wagons, as long as they were modern, FWD, space-efficient, with good performance and economy.
Its image. If you haven’t already, go back and read that article I linked to. There’s a very good reason the Suburban was dubbed “The Texas Cadillac”; its prestige and image were comparable. A 1980s station wagon wasn’t. That’s by far the biggest single factor.
There were others too, the same things that killed the big American car in general, a subject that we covered in great detail here. The boomers were on the ascendancy, and their parents’ generation, who had ferried them in their Country Squires, were quickly moving past the peak child-rearing years.
And their kids just plain didn’t want to drive what they had grown up in. The ’60s and ’70s were a time of many vast social changes. Station wagons (and big cars in general) were just collateral damage, along with some others.
Watch me make a Ford Country Squire magically disappear! For ever!
They wanted something different; anything different. In the late ’60s, the VW Beetle and bus became symbols of that change. In the ’70s it was the full-sized van. Or maybe a Jeep or big Blazer. And when the boomers settled down to have kids, in an era of significantly higher gas prices and greater environmental awareness, the minivan was what they wanted. Chrysler had sold over a million of them by 1987, in its fourth year. They soon were selling at a much higher rate than big wagons ever sold. In 1999 alone, 1.4 million minivans were sold, and Chrysler had the biggest share of that.
Power? What power. These early minivans were slugs, with their wheezy fours. It wasn’t CAFE that created an avalanche of minivan buyers. It’s what a new generation of buyers wanted; well, some of them.
The SUV market had been growing steadily ever since WWII. It was still a niche in the ’50s, but it started to take off in the ’60s. The Big Three and International took notice, and the Scout, Bronco and Blazer joined the expanding family of Jeeps.
Jeep’s 1963 Wagoneer was a milestone in that category, as it blended uncompromising 4WD capability with a stylish, low-profile four door wagon body. The family-friendly SUV had arrived.
It wasn’t just the Wagoneer either. International’s Travelall had pioneered the four door utility wagon back in 1961, including a version with a smooth riding torsion bar IFS, as well as 4WD versions, like this ’65. This is the proto-Suburban, and Chevy soon followed suit with more doors, a better ride, lower and more civilized 4WD versions, and plenty of room, even in the three-row version.
Were these early big SUVs objectively better cars for most of the daily driving tasks than big wagons? Quite likely not. But tell that to a generation that had grown up with cramped and noisy VW Beetles and equally cramped Mustangs. What’s objectivity got to do with it, for the most part? The buyer knows what they want, and they wanted SUVs, and minivans.
And I get that now, better than ever. As I said at the top, if I could do it over, I’d probably have been better served by one of these, especially after moving to Oregon. Their utility for certain lifestyles is unassailable. Like this 33 year-old Suburban is demonstrating. For others, the utility is obviously a secondary factor.
This one is quite the veteran, showing the scars of an active lifestyle, probably all in the West, as this rust is clearly from rain water trapped in that cavity. My F100 has a similar issue in the cab roof just above both doors, where condensation pools that formed on the inside of the cab roof.
More patina, but harmless stuff.
The interior shows commensurate wear, but it’s hardly excessive. I wonder how many miles it has covered.
It’s not like it would be hard to keep its 350 running. Or running better, given the lack of smog inspections in our part of the world.
I’ve never thought of myself as a Suburban owner, but this picture makes it very possible to imagine. I get it now, thirty years later. And isn’t that what Curbsiding is all about? Falling in love with the cars and big SUVs that I never owned?
Briefly; and then climbing into my car of choice and driving off, until the next unrequited love affair.
I remember about twenty years ago talking classic cars to buy with many people, and whenever I brought up choosing a wagon over a sedan I was laughed at for preferring the pedestrian family hauler. This response was absolutely about image and the wagon’s direct association with daggy family responsibilities. I wonder whether that association with family dagginess will ever afflict SUVs in the future classic market. hehehehehehehehe
I like this gen Suburban’s shape, even with stacked headlights. Nice ride.
Whether or not most people like to admit it, image plays a large factor in vehicle purchases, even for most who aren’t “car people”. The sense of not driving what one’s parents drove has also long been a part of this equation. It’s part of the reason I’ve abstained from jumping aboard the CUV/SUV bandwagon with the last four of my vehicle purchases, choosing sedans or coupes instead.
As for the Suburban, I’ve obviously known countless people who have owned them, but only one of them a Suburban from the generation of our featured car. In fact, it was the exact same color combination as this one and in very similar weathered condition plus a lot more duct tape back in the late-1990s when it was driven by the principal of the middle school my mother taught at. His first name was George and he used to take it over to Martha’s Vineyard on fishing trips and sleep in it instead of a hotel or tent. Hence, it earned the nickname by many teachers as “The George Motel”.
A really excellent piece, Mr N., lots to contemplate. Say, you should consider launching a website.
Funny thing is, being a staunch dag, I always loved the wagons of anything, so the fall of them was mysterious to me. You have helped explain how normal folk viewed them, and why the buying shifted so.
For reasons I cannot fathom, this article keeps triggering images of you buying JP Cavanaugh a cup of CAFE.
I mean, coffee. At a café.
“Undoubtedly someone will say that one (or even the main) drivers of the Suburban’s growth trajectory was CAFE.”
OK, now you’re just baiting me. 🙂 But yes, I would be that someone. I will pare it down to two points.
First, those GM B bodies you give such high marks to for “space utilization” – I lived with several (along with their Ford counterparts). They had one big problem – they were narrow. They might have been great in the late 70s before child seat laws came along, but those cars were a poor substitute for the former “standard size” cars like my 66 Fury III.
Second, sometimes tastes change after widespread dissatisfaction with traditional alternatives. The 1986 article you cite – where was the very first place the author went looking for a car? A Buick dealer. He was ready to buy a Buick wagon, but found it an unappealing package. I recall a WSJ article from around that time about how the Suburban replaced the Cadillac in the late 70s when well-heeled owners of Airstream trailers found those cars unsuited for the job. Those who could afford these big Suburbans became style-setters.
I read recently that millennials who can afford to do so are now leaving the cities and moving to the suburbs just like their parents did. The Suburban is a great experiment. Unlike on the car side, when gas prices came down buyers had the option to go back to essentially what had been offered in 1976. That option was no longer there for passenger cars. And, as we know, a whole slew of new options opened up. CAFE was not the only cause. But it was a factor.
To me (and admittedly I have no empirical evidence to back this up), the SUV’s rise in popularity is an offshoot of the dreadful cars of the late 1970s and early 1980s. People were forced into cars they didn’t like — by the concurrent punches of an unstable economy and the fuel crises. So for a decade, people were buying cars that were increasingly small, underpowered, and ill-suited to their needs.
When the economy and fuel crises eased up, people were now free again to consider a wider range of vehicles. And like a child who’s been denied candy and then gorges himself on the stuff when he has the opportunity, carbuyers responded to this choice by going to extremes.
One example is how some (mainly older) buyers revered to the full-size cars that just a few years before were considered all but deceased. Town Cars & GM B-bodies got an unexpectedly new lease on life. Another example is that younger buyers, who craved room that econoboxes and K-cars denied them, went to another extreme… increasingly large SUVs.
In other words, I think SUVs satisfied a pent-up demand for big cars that had been denied people a decade earlier. And the wealthy Suburban buyers of the early/mid 1980s likely paved the way for social acceptability further down the line.
To me (and admittedly I have no empirical evidence to back this up), the SUV’s rise in popularity is an offshoot of the dreadful cars of the late 1970s and early 1980s. People were forced into cars they didn’t like — by the concurrent punches of an unstable economy and the fuel crises. So for a decade, people were buying cars that were increasingly small, underpowered, and ill-suited to their needs.
You’re 100% correct; you have no empirical evidence to back this up. It’s purely a subjective opinion. Nobody was ever forced into dreadful cars they didn’t like.
Did people buy cars they later didn’t like, as in those several hundred thousands that bought Pintos and Vegas in 1974, having traded in a mid-sized or full-sized car? Of course. But they weren’t ever forced. They reacted emotionally (panicked, actually) to rising gas prices. And many soon dumped them for bigger cars in a few years. And the same cycle happened in 1980-1981. And in 2006. And in 2008.
I’ve lived through this panic reaction at least four times, and watched people trade in their big cars and trucks for peanuts to buy a small fuel-efficient car, often for ridiculous prices.
It’s just dumb, and even at the time, a simple back of the napkin arithmetic calculation would have shown that. But the unfortunate truth is that a big percentage of the population doesn’t act rationally with their money (and other things).
But please don’t try to tell me that “people were forced into cars they didn’t like”. It’s completely and utterly untrue. They could have kept their big cars, or they could have bought a big car. They were lemmings. And nobody forces lemming to jump off the cliff.
I never got the panic about fuel prices that was going on in the late 1970’s-circa 1990. Loads of wonderful full sized cars were going for peanuts.
In 1983, I could get a spotless 1978 Impala for $1000, a car that was no doubt traded on a Celebrity that exploded the day the warranty was up.
I get a real kick about “people being forced to do x and y.” In 1955, Chevrolet made one car line. Something like three car lines made up a huge portion of the market. No “coastal elite,” or “Globalist Conspiracy” forced people out of their sleds, which by 1973 had become so obscenely obese that regular folks bought something smaller, easier to driver and cheaper to run.
By 1973, there were hundreds of choices around. Here in Canada, anyway, the Beaumont and Nova were far more popular than big sleds, long before the “energy crisis.” As more choices were offered, it is obvious that is going to come from your former mainstay.
The same thing is happening these days. The SUV-CUV is all the rage and EV’s are coming in huge volume.
It is not a conspiracy change happens. It is not a shadowy “elite.” It is the market in action.
“even at the time, a simple back of the napkin arithmetic calculation would have shown that”
Also, you see the price of gas every time you pull up to the pump, while the other consumables and fixed costs of vehicle ownership are thought of once a month, or less. If people did the math, hybrids and diesels would only appear in high-mileage fleets. Only electric cars justify themselves for commuters, and then only for some. But there’s that image thing…
I got a great deal on a three year old pickup in 2009 for that very reason. It actually increased a little in value after driving it for two years as gas prices came down. Even with the poor gas mileage it ended up being a very economical vehicle.
But, that said, people were forced into buying emissions-choked vehicles. That was a good and necessary thing as it did wonders for urban air quality, but it sure wasn’t a good thing for car enthusiasts at the time. In any case, regulations may not always be technically forcing buyer behavior, but they often are and almost always done with the intent to influence the market by making inefficient vehicles less attractive economically to manufacturers and consumers.
Is it a conspiracy? Well, in the sense that there are seemingly always particular groups working very hard to get particular vehicles off the road, I suppose that could be the impression, but that’s simply a function of how democratic governments operate, for better and worse. And as Paul clearly points out, it’s certainly not the only influence on the market.
You are correct in that people were forced into smaller cars. I know folks who personally were. It doesn’t matter if Mr. Niedermeyer believes it. I can attest to the difference between a Pontiac that got between 8 to 10 mpg and a Buick that got 25 mpg. Folks needed the fuel savings for home heating oil, food, electric bills and taxes. I lived through the oil embargo, the days when you could only get gas based on your car’s tag #, and the 1980s. The difference between fueling a big behemoth and a smaller car left money for more important things. Sometimes, Some Americans had to trade their big cars even for low prices as the dang things broke or became unreliable in a decade. It would make sense to trade and buy a newer car as opposed to fueling and constantly repairing an older model. More evidence comes from Consumer Report’s reviews on both a 1988 and 1990 Camry four door sedan. I believe they obtained over 40 mpg in both reviews. If you had to commute 177 miles a day, I am almost sure a Pontiac of the 1970s or 1980s would not make a decade. The Camry, however, possibly could. And consider the abysmal mileage of a 1972 Catalina ranging from 8 to 10 mpg. Yes, I’d go smaller even if I didn’t really like the newer car. There are other bills to pay with the savings. Many Americans were not lemmings as Mr. Niedermeyer suggested.
“I read recently that millennials who can afford to do so are now leaving the cities and moving to the suburbs just like their parents did”
This may not be the case in Indiana but in many/most places the suburbs are what’s less expensive, often vastly so. People aren’t going from a 1bedroom flat downtown to a 5000 foot mansion in the ‘burbs but they are swapping rents in the thousands per month to a mortgage at a fraction of that. “Drive until you qualify” is very much still a thing.
I totally agree. Being a childless urban hipster in a downtown loft is one thing, (no offense to childless urban hipsters!) but when the kids come along, it’s all about getting the most for the money. Price per sq.ft., a yard, and a good school district are the big drivers. Tough to beat the suburbs in those.
One can find less expensive places in the city, but they tend to be “iffy” neighborhoods were one doesn’t want to be out much after dark. And forget about sending the children to the local public school.
At least, that is the dynamic at work in Pennsylvania’s urban areas.
First, those GM B bodies you give such high marks to for “space utilization” – I lived with several (along with their Ford counterparts). They had one big problem – they were narrow.
You can’t blame CAFE for that. These downsized GM B/C cars were locked in before CAFE was passed, in 1975.
The difference in width: rear hip room was reduced from 58.9″ to 55.3″. That’s not really all that much.
If I had to guess, the author looked at an A-Body Century wagon, which was very popular at the time; much more than the B Body wagons.
Your honor, it’s time for closing arguments. My learned opponent has been claiming that CAFE resulted in undersized and underpowered “full size” RWD cars that nobody wanted, and were thus forced to buy Suburbans and such.
I’ve proven both points to be utterly baseless: GM downsized their big cars before CAFE was ever brought up in Congress. CAFE had nothing to do with it. And the overwhelming majority of buyers in that segment welcomed these “right sized” cars, sending their sales upwards initially.
I’ve also presented the stats that show these cars were clearly not underpowered.
I’ve shown how a huge swath of buyers embraced minivans when they arrived, with sales that exceeded those of big wagons even in their heyday. And another large swath of buyers simply preferred the outdoorsy image of SUVs, and their sales exploded.
In this article I did fail to point out that the wagon market overall didn’t die, just yet. Only the big RWD wagon market did. The new FWD A Body GM wagons and Ford’s Taurus/Sable sold very well indeed. In 1988, as an example, Ford sold 126k Taurus/Sable wagons, and GM sold 140k A-Body wagons. These very space efficient cars clearly suited the needs of the typical family of the times.
My younger brother had three kids within 1.5 years of each other. All three rode in the back of their Taurus wagon in their baby/kiddie seats for years, and my brother never had any problem fitting them all back there.
My learned opponent clearly had a fetish for very large American cars from very early on. How many kids/young adults went out of their way to buy older full size cars in the 70s and 80s? He was clearly an outlier. And he feels the loss of his beloved big barges. That’s quite understandable, and there are obviously others like him out there.
But to blame that loss on a government program that has saved untold billions in oil and consumer spending is simply misplaced, when the facts I have presented clearly show that CAFE is innocent. The market changed, and my opponent didn’t.
The defense rests, and no longer wishes to take up the time of the Curbside Courtroom for this case. I await the judgment of the jury.
OK, debates aside, I had to laugh at the title. Some relatives moved to Texas. They bought a used Suburban, very much like this one. A few years later they bought another of the next generation. And kept the old one. They fit right in.
A few years later they moved to the Philadelphia area. When my BIL told guys at the office that his family fleet consisted of two Suburbans, they looked at him like he had two heads. He told me that this version of the 70s-80s was wider than the later vehicle.
The first time I drove one equipped really nicely was maybe 1980 or 81. I marveled at the high trim level and suspected that if people got a taste of these they could be popular. That prediction sort of offsets the one I also made a little later that minivans would never be really popular.
I agree with the Philly coworkers; the utility of ONE Suburban in the household is harder to argue with but if you can afford TWO high-end cars why have duplicates?
Back in the late ’90s, I hauled kids around the high sierras in these at an amazing summer camp. They had 3 ‘burbans: a mid ’70s one, a mid ’80s one, and an early ’90s one, but they were all essentially the same vehicle. That shows how long these weathered the changing times while remaining the basically the same.
The ’70s ‘burban had very floppy steering, and we thrashed it up and down the trails where we’d go for day hikes and occasional overnighters. The 90s one had a CD player in it, so that was the one all the counselors wanted to get their hands on at the time.
They were big, capable vehicles, and we piled seven or eight boisterous kids into each one. I don’t recall how much milage these had at the time, but I’m sure they are still out there somewhere.
The Square Suburban still my favorite of all Suburbans. Give me a late production model with the composite headlights, 454 with TBI, 4×4, tasteful two tone paint, and towing package.
That to me is the Cowboy Cadillac.
Sorry, 454s weren’t available in 4WD.
IIRC Ford topped out at 400 and only Dodge went to 440 with 4WD. They all used transfer cases made by Chrysler-owned New Process Gear. I wonder if that had anything to do with it?
Well that’s just silly. 😉 I knew some relatives who had a 2wd 454 but I always assumed that was because they mostly drove it from Ohio to Texas every late fall to avoid the cold and the snow.
As far as the comments on the death of the full size station wagon, the announcement that the next gen Tahoe/Suburban will have an IRS makes me think that as long as someone engineers a suspension lowering system for the new Suburban that would likely be the easiest way to get a brand new full size wagon in the vein of the old Caprice Estate or Chevy Kingswood.
The 454 was available in 2500 series 4X4 Suburbans in the GMT 400 series starting in 1992, but no ‘Big Blocks’ in any previous generation.
Well, I’ve wanted to move to Texas for a long while now, and I’ve said that a new car of mine I would buy would be one of the pre 2021 refresh Suburbans, so may I’m halfway there? 🙂
All joking aside, I had a roommate in school who had one of these generation Suburbans, only his had a lift kit and 35 tires on it. It suffered a lot of problems and maladies while he was at school, partly due to the poor condition it was in when he bought and partly due to age. But, it wasn’t like I didn’t see appeal in the beast. I do see myself as a Suburban driver, if only because I like them and there one of the few vehicles today that reminds me of the old type of cars I like. I’d get the GMT400 generation myself, since I thought that was perfect minus the typical plastic crap interior, but that’s just me.
Having owned a couple is Suburbans in the past, and currently having a 2003 Excursion as my daily driver, I am well acquainted with the charms of the large 4×4 wagon. If parking space. Is not an issue, it is very practical to have a vehicle that can handle pretty much anything you might wish to fill it with. Truck based SUVs tend to be extremely durable, easy and inexpensive to maintain, on a relative basis, and also less costly to insure. Of course mileage is atrocious, but looking at the cost as a whole, it is not unreasonable.
I am very sorry to report that it was a 1987 Chevrolet Suburban, bought new in Lansing Illinois, that killed any chance of me ever having another Chevrolet.
We got the extended warranty. 60,000 miles. We got rid of it the moment it appeared close to 60,000. It was an unbearable four years of continued quality control problems. The file folder holding all the repairs was as thick as a telephone booth.
Before taking delivery, I walked around the Suburban and created a list of the many loose parts, trims, and imperfections that needed to be fixed before taking delivery. All of them got done except for the bad glove box door, which was misshaped. Panel gaps were huge. The entire hood shimmied and shook when it went over bumps. Trim pieces on the grille – fell off.
We knew these were rust-buckets, so the Suburban was heavily waxed throughout and garaged daily. It still rusted. Had to replace the exterior skins of all the doors and have a new tailgate. Fortunately, there was a rust through warranty.
All the gages in the instrument panel needed to be replaced after they failed. Had to get a new gas tank. Had to have all the rubber door gaskets replaced.
Then it had two new fuel injector systems. The head gasket blew. The radiator leaked. The brakes failed. A leaf spring broke. The engine needed to be at the dealers, it seemed, every other month. We got another car to drive when the Suburban was at the dealers. We had to leave it at the dealers weeks at a time continually.
We paid it off and watched for the next disaster. Then when the warranty was ready to go – we got rid of that ginormous lemon as fast as we could. The Suburban looked brand new. We took amazing care of it and babied it like it was a dying grandparent. The dealer bought it right away and sold it just as fast to another couple thinking they got the deal of a lifetime. Nope – they bought Satan’s Chariot.
After years of fixing Camaros, Citataions, Chevelles and this Suburban – that was it for us. I think Chevrolets are very handsome rides. I like that they are as American as a Budweiser. But I will never, ever, ever, buy another Chevrolet – thanks to this horrible vehicle.
Sorry. I simply despise this vehicle.
Keeping a salted vehicle in the garage accelerates the rust. Outdoors is best.
This song played in my head while I read that…
What’s the “V-Jimmy” referenced on the 1991 brochure? I’ve never seen the “V” part before today.
The featured generation Suburban has finally made me a fan, where I thought it was and looked horribly outdated for the last thirty-odd years (yes, from new) I now like it and find it charming, if something this large can be termed that way. The gray/red two tone paint was a popular choice in the last few years, or at least they stand out.
When the GMT400 came out in 1988, the C/K designation became exclusive to the new platform, and anything on the old platform became “R/V” (R for 2wd, V for 4wd).
“anything on the old platform became “R/V”
Exactly right- Along with the Suburban and Blazer this also included 3/4 and 1 ton pickups. Check the VIN- If the fifth character is an R or V, it’s one of these interim trucks.
If you owned a pickup with the ’88-’92 R/V chassis, the parts guys pretty much always gave you (the incorrect) C/K parts for it- especially brake parts and suspension pieces.
Wow, how weird but thanks for explaining it. Seems like it would be easier to just use the chassis code instead of changing the designation.
I always use the number of points on the letters to remember which is which, i.e. C is 2WD, and K is 4WD. Too bad it didn’t become U and X or something like that…
I have no recollection of this truck actually being marketed as the “V-Jimmy”. What a weird name.
1993 Chevy Suburban Silverado 2wd with woodgrain interior.
Seems like an aftermarket conversion, which were often seen on the 1973-1991 and 1992-1999 Suburbans.
I have lived in Texas for over 30 years now and completely understand the logic behind the Suburban’s outsized popularity here, where they are a prominent part of the landscape. I am reluctant to accept the compromises inherent in the ownership of this vehicle, however, namely the gas mileage (admittedly better than expected), maneuverability in close quarters (parking garages are very common in many parts of DFW and Houston), and the overriding sense of overkill in “needing” a vehicle of this size to haul two 45 lb. children to school. In the years since that Texas Monthly article was first published many of the highly affluent families living in the Park Cities, Preston Hollow, River Oaks and the Memorial villages have moved on and now drive Range Rovers, M-B GL 450s, and BMW X7s. Sadly, Texas may no longer be as distinctive as it once was.
A few more points in Suburbans favor:
1) These are TRUCKS. They were tough and durable. 300,000 miles was common with halfway decent maintenance. Very few cars built in this era could do that. Also, being trucks the expectations for fancy trim were not nearly as high as for cars so we were more forgiving of their shortcomings.
2) Safety. We had a 1989 model that was rear ended by a two ton truck. The Suburban was bent like a banana but I was not hurt. If I had been in our former minivan the outcome would probably have been far worse. For many many families the thinking was if the kids are safe we will live with terrible fuel economy.
3) Image As a Suburban owner you got to pretend that you had a ranch somewhere. of course most people didn’t but they could act like they did.
If only these were more attractive. I thought the rounded-rectangle rear-passenger doors were dorky looking and hobbled the truck’s looks.
This attribute always reminded me of the ’70s colonnade wagons
King of the Highway. FULL STOP.
Speaking of squarebodies…unless you’re going toward the early end of this model’s run before they got all smogbound with disintegrating overdrive automatics, the ’87-91 are the ones to get.
1) Everything was fuel-injected by ’87, and…
2) The turbo 700-R4 transmission was revised.
…making the drivetrains stone-cold reliable.
Or you could just do what I’d do and LS the thing with a current 6L80E. An L83 5.3 would be a nice choice and you can find them with low miles, quite reasonably priced.
Lord willing, the ride that replaces my 2002 Tahoe with 245,000 miles will be a GMT900 generation, built toward the end of the run so I get one with all the bugs are worked out.
Whether said vehicle is a Suburban, Tahoe or Avalanche will come down to price, condition and my mood, ‘cuz to me the three are pretty much interchangeable.
Paul is truly back! Great in-depth article on a popular and interesting (to me at least) vehicle.
As a Texas resident, I can testify the Suburban is still pretty darn popular here, though William Hall above points out what I also have noticed that it is not the most fashionable vehicle anymore in the toniest districts. Still see some parked in front of mansions, though. The other part of the story for another article is Suburban’s little brother, Tahoe/Yukon. GM brilliantly leveraged the Suburban’s popularilty in the mid-90’s by offering a junior version which I believe, without looking it up, has consistently outsold the original while maintaining its spirit in a less extreme package.
A couple nitpicks. The RWD Ford wagons were made tbrough 1991. While techically correct that the 94-96 B-bodies had an LT engine, in that context the engine is always referred to as LT1 rather than LT. The new gen V LT engines are probably more often referred to that way as LT. Finally, while the big wagons certainly had falling sales towards their end, the amazing Caprice drop to only 638 in 1996 is a bit misleading. Production of 9C1’s and Impalas increased, but GM purposefully shifted production to the more profitable Roadmaster wagon in the final year, which sold 9147, a substantial increase due to an extended model year and many people wanting to buy the last of the breed since it was well publicized that production was ending (and shifting to Suburbans and Tahoes, as Paul mentioned!)
The linked article talks about northerners’ Spartan tastes in Suburbans – in elementary/middle school in Vermont a classmate’s well-off parents had two Suburbans, a ’76 later replaced by an ’86, that were base models with full hose-out interiors. You could carry a cow in one (they didn’t – besides kid-hauling they were ski rigs). No A/C – that went without saying. They were even plainer than my dad’s ’79 C-10 work truck, the single-cab pickups had double skins of metal to the cab roof but you could look up in the back of the ‘Burban and see the metal ribs holding up the outer skin. It’s almost surprising they fully painted it in the exterior color rather than leaving the inside in primer with overspray.
The first one I ever drove was a 77 or 78 with rubber floors and no rear seat. It was used as a utility vehicle. The company’s other utility vehicle was a 76 Ford van. The van must have had a 351 as it was quick and ran well. The Chevy was (I think) a 305 and had a horrible hesitation right off idle in all weather and states of warmed-uppedness. I liked the idea of the ‘Burban, but usually avoided it when I could because of the way that particular one ran.
A colleague back in the ’80s, who was lieutenant governor at the time and always ran on a green ticket, drove suburbans. Always had driven suburbans. He could give you a fairly convincing rationale.
I still had my doubts.
Paul’s explanation helps to understand the logic.
I would have liked to buy a Suburban, but I couldn’t stomach the price.
Even here in the upper midwest these were fairly uncommon until the mid ’80s.
Nice piece Paul, I was surprised that wagon weighs more.
Motorweek had an ’86 2WD model with the 6.2 Diesel as a production vehicle. They averaged 23 MPG on their ‘economy loop’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQoYh5pBeSg
Great article! I hit 12,000 miles this morning in my 2019 Suburban I wrote up as a COAL. I am in love with it and, all things considered, it’s the best car I have ever owned.
The interior is sufficiently feature laden and luxurious, it’ll tow my 6000 pounds of boat and trailer with ease, the 4WD will handle the snow this week, my gas mileage average for the past 7000 miles is right at 20mpg (the highway rating), and so on. It’s much easier to manage in tight quarters and parking decks than I expected, with the nanny features.
There’s of course all the room you need for adults and luggage. The fit and finish are very, very good. I’d say at least on par with my wife’s 2016 Cayenne (the Cayenne having better materials inside, but I’d rate the Suburban paint finish as superior).
I still do a double take whenever I see one of these old square body Suburbans. Just something about them is so right.
Speaking of size, I see the new 2021 Suburban is getting bigger! 134 inch WB versus my 130 inch WB, and overall length just passes 225 inches. What’s old is new again.
I remember touring through Arkansas to Texas in 2006, in a pre-airbag GMT-400 Subie. I remember how comfortable it was-and also how temperate it was, with a fuselage-like cocoon, factory window tint, and lots of posts and sheetmetal. Mileage was decent, everybody was comfortable. My friend’s dad still has it, at over 300k miles with no major repairs. I’d wager that the appeal of Subies, having spent my entire childhood roasting in glass-laden B-body wagons, especially in the Sun Belt, was the fact that they honestly were literally cooler cars than the wagons, which had a lot of glass, as shown by all of the photos of the wagons. That’s just a theory, but damn, if those full-size SUVs aren’t comfortable in all weather. I just toured in a 2000 Yukon Denali this spring and those attributes still held true. I don’t know what it is with those kinds of SUVs but they are really dark on the inside!
Great article as usual. One tiny correction, though. You refer to 1988 as being the last outing for Ford RWD wagons; however, the Panther wagon did last until 1991 …
Thank; fixed now. The sold all of 3,658 wagons in 1991.
They were so good at being the Cadillac of Texas that Cadillac came out with a Cadillac of Texas, the Escalade 🙂
LOL
Suburban, the most honestly named SUV…
Being from the UK, Ive never seen one of these in person, so I have to ask:
Do these things have the smallest wheels known to man or are they so ridiculously big no wheels would look normal fitted to them?
One of the weirdest unproportional cars Ive ever seen.
Being from the UK, Ive never seen one of these in person, so I have to ask:
Do these things have the smallest wheels known to man or are they so ridiculously big no wheels would look normal fitted to them?
One of the weirdest unproportional cars Ive ever seen. Looks like theyve got 11 inch mini cooper wheels fitted.
Hmmmmmmm well back in the 80s 16 in wheels were pretty much the largest you could get. And we had this thing called sidewall on our tires. 16 in (or maybe 15?) wheel and 75 ratio sidewall would give you that effect.
And a pretty cushy ride. Now you can get a Suburban from the factory with 22 in rims. I wouldn’t even want to think about taking a long trip in one set up like that!
Like principaldan touched on, a lot of the old brochure shots above are 15 inch wheels at the most. Maybe some are even 14 inch wheels. And the squarish wheel openings probably magnified the “undertired” effect. GM pickups of the same era had the same visual effect.
15″ wheels were the standard size for 1/2 ton trucks, and no larger ones were normally optional. The 3/4 ton versions (C/K20) had 16″ wheels, on larger hubs with more studs.
That’s just how things were back then. And they worked ok too! 🙂
We were a Suburban family in the 1980s. At one point we even had two of them: after our workhorse ’79 was sideswiped by a semi, the insurance paid for a replacement. My stepfather bought a loaded ’83 as a new family truckster, but kept the ’79 and fixed it up as a work truck for a few years. The ’83 was never as reliable as the old ’79 though. For us, the Suburban was the only way to go. We were a family of six, plus had to often accommodate my grandparents. No other vehicle short of a van could fit eight people along with all their luggage. And we went camping all the time, too. Not until me and my brother both were old enough to have our own cars, did my stepfather downgrade the family car to a sedan – just as everybody else started buying minivans and SUVs. I still have a soft spot for Suburbans of this generation. Sometimes, there is no substitute.
Excellent piece Paul, and I am glad you were able to use that data I dug up. I love these big ’73-91 Suburbans. They looked great, had lots of room, were easy to fix and super practical. However, they were not very well made and often not the most reliable even if they were generally durable. I read VanillaDude’s account above, and I am not overly surprised at the issues he had with his trucks. The body were horrible on these, terrible fit and finish and seem to rust before your eyes. The rear power window gate was a compromise at best too. The barn doors were better, even if it cut your rear vision.
The engines and driveline were generally okay, but early TH700-R4’s were failure prone. The carbureted engines, other than the 454s were not overly powerful by any stretch. At least once the TBI engines were introduced the 350 got a healthy boost to 210 hp which never made more than 185 hp with a carburetor, more often only about 165 hp.
IMO, the Suburban really got it right with the 1992 redesigned based on the GMT400 chassis. It was a much better truck overall, far better made and far better road manners. I had a ’93 and it was one of my best all time vehicles. It was reliable, tough and could do almost anything.
There were quite a few of these around when I was young. Almost all were 2WD, 4x4s were rear even here in snow country. The 4×4’s were crude riding and really not necessary. A 2WD Suburban is actually really good in the snow, especially with decent tires and a locking rear diff. A couple of my good friends had dads that owned early 80’s Suburbans that both proved to be trusty steeds that they kept for over a decade. Both were 2WD versions, one a 1/2 ton, one a 3/4 ton. Both rusted out badly but ran far longer than one would have expected. The 3/4 ton truck burned through a few TH700-R4’s until it was replaced with a TH400. This 3/4 ton truck ended up running almost forever, going through the multiple stages until it went to the scrap yard. In it’s final stage, it actually became a rolling dumpster. My friends parents retired to rural area, and use the truck just for dump runs as it was no longer road worthy for general transportation use.
Paul it’s “gunwale” not “gunnel.” The word applied to the reinforced walls or railings at the top of a ship’s hull, which on a military vessel was often around a gun deck. Like many nautical terms the pronunciation doesn’t match the spelling because sailors tend to slur their words.
I am generation x. I never liked minivans, sideways motors, and predominatly hated all small cars after being in the back seat of a 86 Nissan 200sx halfway across the country and back twice. Most of my years driving I have always drove full size rear wheel drive v8 cars. I love classics and own several. I have loved Suburbans and wanted one growing up, and I gave had several. In fact I still drive one, and I will completly rebuild it befor I consider replacing it. Best most utilitarian vehicle I have ever drove. And small cars avoid it, in fact I never see a Prius trying to get in front of me for long