6. Carpool. You can fit four or five Smart Cars in an Escalade.

"Free house with SUV purchase. Local Las Vegas residents only, please."

You could also use "condo" and "Sarasota" in that listing.

@apotheosis: Yep. Suck it up a little, meet your neighbors, and see how 4 people in an Escalade offers similar net fuel economy to one person in a Prius...

I think we're going to see a lot more leasing of SUVs. My wife and I leased a mid-size SUV last year for 39 months. Yeah, I pay the gas costs, but we got a great deal leasing around Christmas and we can drop off the keys in a couple of years and not worry about its "value."

44 Gallon tank = $150 fill ups if you let it get really low. But then I can drive for a couple weeks without visiting a gas station again.

I love my Burb and still have no intention of trading it for a smaller vehicle. Granted, its used for towing AND I can write off a lot of my fuel expense as business.

Small cars scare me; not just safety issues but how would I haul building materials, my wonderful purchases from car swap meets, half dozen of my best buddies, etc?

@Ash78: No, I meant the actual Smart Cars.

They get to save mileage, thereby increasing resale value. You get gas money, and the warm glow of knowing you're protecting those beer cans from getting smeared across the front bumper of something a thousand times denser, like a Honda Civic.

Everyone wins!

Post it on craigslist in the Trade section. Just make sure to fully explain what you're looking for in a trade. Remember, there's a fool born every minute in this country. Somebody will buy it or trade for it.

@mdkiff: They're already heavily leased. That's the reason Ford Credit is taking one on the chin: lease returns that have a tiny actual resale value.

I can only imagine how awful last month's new retail sales would have been *without* a built-in pool of customers who were reaching the end of their lease terms.

6. Encourage your children to decorate your SUV with Elmer's Glue & Glitter. Everyone likes shiny, sparkly things!

7. Emulate fine department stores and offer a "gift with purchase", perhaps a canned whole chicken?

8. Don't be afraid to consider export sales. SUV's are very popular in Nigeria and other countries. Sometimes buyers will pay over asking price!

9. Be sure to list all your SUV's features. [Price includes engine!]

10. Yes, gas prices are depressing. Take a cue from smart retailers like Walmart. Put a smiley face on your for sale sign!

@SkokieGuy:

8 : Yes, a very nice gentlemen who sadly recently lost a favorite relative offered me the sum of three hundred million pounds for mine.

I sent him $25,000 to help him release the funds and my money will be wired to me today.

@Ash78: THIS. I wonder, though. Do we really despise our neighbors that much that we will continue to resist carpools?

Keeping the SUV and driving it less, and more efficiently, has been the win for me. Honestly, to avoid sticker shock, I gas up when my tank gets to the half mark. Makes me feel better since I know selling it and buying a $12k+ vehicle just to get 10mpg extra hardly makes financial sense.

11. Do nothing at all to change it, but advertise it as a "Gotham SUV." Because if Domino's can do it with a freaking pizza, YOU can do it with your gas-guzzler.

Of course, you could keep the SUV for when you're going on a big trip, or need to haul stuff, and spend 3-4k on a economical used car (or 2-3k on a motorcycle) and use that for your daily commuting.

@HurtsSoGood: Do we really despise our neighbors that much that we will continue to resist carpools?

That's the core of it. American life for most people is not about wanton wastefulness--it's about the luxury of privacy. Freestanding houses with big yards, cars with one person inside, and the list goes on. We have become an anti-communal people. Frankly, I love it and will work as hard as possible to maintain it (pushing for telecommuting, trying to conserve both at home and on the road, etc). For me, it's the highest measure of living standard there is.

@Ash78: Word.

I just sold my 2007 Burb via Craigslist. I know, what?

@CarFreak: How often do you haul the kind of crap that requires an SUV (or a minivan - yes, they still sell those)? Seriously. You'd think everyone made weekly trips to Lowes for 4x8 sheets of plywood and large appliances to hear some people talk. I saw a woman yesterday - couldn't have been more than 5'2" - driving a Ford Excursion all by herself. Not that it's any of my business, but what does she do with all that vehicle other than complain that it doesn't fit in the garage?

If the shoe fits, feel free to slip it on, but in general, people got really stupid with their vehicle choices in the past decade because they were getting gas virtually free. I tanked up near Cleveland about ten years ago for 67 cents a gallon. 67 cents. They might as well have been giving the stuff away. Is it any wonder that we all just blew off fuel economy?

Some people are so under with their car loan (like myself) that I decided to bite the bullet... I was willing to put $1,000 down, if I could trade in my VUE and get another vehicle. Then the good cop/bad cop scene played in my head, what I would get out of the deal, what I would lose... and in the end, took $850 and slapped it as principal on my car loan and never looked back. PLUS decided that if I could afford an extra $50 a month bigger payment on a new loan, hell, I could do it NOW. So I've been paying my car down quicker, and in the end, own a car thats still in excellent condition with high miles. Hell, I'll take repair costs over a loan anyday :)

Personally I like the idea of a great big SUV rolling up and disgorging a swarm of Smart Cars.

Like a dropship full of unarmed, eco-friendly space Marines.

Here's a question. Are the Kelley Blue Book and NADA values being adjusted to what the actual market will bear for pricing of these vehicles? Or do they just use a formula and have not adjusted it for the steep drop in market values?

@HurtsSoGood: I carpool with one guy at work. The company went all out advertising it and only 4 people signed up for carpools. This guy and I were the only two on our route. Still, driving 50 miles a day makes going that one mile out of my way to carpool seem really like chump change.

No way in Hell would I carpool with someone I don't like or just a random person, though.

I get good conversation, a backup driver in case I ever have some ill feeling befalling me and a $20 bill every couple of weeks. Bringing my lunch saves more money than carpooling, though.

@heavylee-again: Good question. Kelly has always been questionable (and lagging). NADA has moved to weekly updates, I believe.

Black book is updated daily, which is what most of the lenders and auction people use. Yes, there's been a quick shift in prices for large vehicles.

@B: I'm trying to get my dad to do that. He has a Tacoma pickup so 20mpg isn't horrid but I've been saying it'd be nice to save it and keep it nice, ya know?

@philipbarrett: I hate to tell you this, but you may have been scammed. I did the same thing last month, so you will be getting whatever is leftover after I am done. Don't worry I'll throw you a bone or two. They told me it would only be about 3 more weeks, and they can't come soon enough.

@CarFreak: As for how you would live without a large car: Building materials? Rent the truck from Home Depot. $20 for about and hour and a half. It's got gates on all 3 sides and rails for standing stuff up and you don't have to fill it up. Most small cars seat at least five, many seat 6. Of course, it's not as comfortable, but how often are you gonna "clown car" it. And large purchase, with folding seat, perhaps an open window and a little finagling can be fit into almost any small car. YMMV.

I drive a Matrix, and most of the time I feel it's actually too big for me. But since the mileage is great (30/38) and it's a ULEV, I don't mind the extra car I'm always carrying around.

I read another comment about small women driving large SUVs. I wonder what that is all about. Would it be better if it was a guy who ran 4 bills? Would that make it ok?

I like my neighbors, but we all work in different places. Individualism requires vigilence. If we wanted to be socialists we would live in Europe or elect democrats.

I lease my H3...so when the lease is over, I just return it...not a big issue for me.

And to be honest, I get a lot of utility out of the damn truck. 16mpg last fillup wasn't killing me in the wallet either.

I've been moving stuff into storage and would have had to either rent a truck or take multiple trips with a smaller car. And with random flooding of my area cause all the drains on the roads are terribly designed, I can get right through the water w/o even thinking about it.

These reasons alone outweigh $4/gallon gas.

@getjustin: Rent the truck from Home Depot. $20 for about and hour and a half.

U-haul and most local rental places will give you a full-sized panel van for an entire day for $20-$30, plus fuel. That's always been the best argument for not owning a truck or SUV for me. I've gotten 24' extension ladders, all kinds of pavers, rocks, etc, into the trunk of my midsize sedan. Sure, you have to work a little harder to make it fit.

Weathertech trunk liners are a Godsend. www.weathertech.com

I have a Subaru Impreza, and for a 4cyl, the milage is averaging about 25mpg. The focus I have I haven't started calculating it in a while, but I was getting on average 30 when I was calculating it before. My Focus is a ZX5, and it's a baby SUV as far as I'm concerned. Yes I'm looking at getting an Prius, but after I put all the toys on it that my current cars have, it's nearly 30K. Not worth it when I consider I only paid $21K for the Subaru, and $16K for the focus!

@jasezero: You can drive through random flooding with any leased vehicle :-) Reminder people, whenever you think a lease-return car looks like a good purchase, assume someone like me held the lease.

@JDisnidiet: Or own guns.

@JDisnidiet: Individualism will be the death of this country. Just you wait.

So let's think about this. My old Jeep is paid for, I know it's been maintained well, and I've got 4WD when I need it. (I don't need it all the time, but when I do... let's just say it would be expensive to have to get winched out where I go.)

I have no car payment, the major repairs are done and should last me a whole bunch of miles, and the car has a book value of about $12.75, or $412.75 if you include the new tires. A minor repair is needed once or twice a year, and it usually costs less than a car payment.

If I got a new car, not only would the headliner not be sagging, but I'd also have a shiny new car payment. And if I got a used car, I might get lucky and buy one that has been as well maintained as my Jeep... or I might not, and have some expensive car repairs to do.

But at least I wouldn't have that $80 bill after filling up, which at 21 MPG I have to do every couple of weeks.

I don't understand the need to get rid of a vehicle for the sole purpose of buying a car with slightly better mileage and a smaller fuel tank.

@heavylee-again: Emphatic no.

I just ran my pickup. 2002 (old body style) 3/4 ton dodge with a v10, fully loaded, 30000 miles.

Nada says my trade is 16825
Kbb says my trade is 11700

I bought the thing from a dealer a year and a half ago for less than the nada trade value (their SRP is 19900).

I'd expect it to be more around 10500 than nearly 12000 as KBB says. I'm not delusional.

Kbb and NADA are ABSOLUTELY USELESS tools in the kind of market we have today. If you've got a gas guzzler, the first thing you need to do when you get rid of it is accept that you won't get top dollar for it. As with anything, if you want it to move, price it to sell.

@HurtsSoGood:

I would love to carpool but my work hours are different every day and sometimes I don't know what time I'm going to leave work at. Add that to the fact that none of my reasonable sane neighbors work near me and thus I drive alone.

I think there would be more carpooling if more people worked a straight 8 to 5, but nowdays that is not the case.

I for one am glad to see those SUVs go. Here in Connecticut, for years it had been a status symbol to get a huge SUV. You see tiny housewives driving Tahoes to the Starbucks. Ridiculous, what a waste of resources.

Now the status symbol is shifting to having a Prius. Or a Vespa.

@nsv: I agree, for someone in your situation, with a paid-for car, it would be absurd to ditch it for something with better mileage.

Of course, many folks are paying a $300+/month lease on their gas guzzler, in which case it might be worth trying to get a <$300/month econobox.

@JaguarChick: I think there would be more carpooling if more people worked a straight 8 to 5, but nowdays that is not the case.

Ironic, since I work 7-4 partly to save 3-5mpg by not having to sit in traffic!

SUV Schadenfreude. You can't write a better ending to the age of irrational exuberance.

6. Take sexy photos of a woman leaning up against the SUV in it's natural habitat (the gas station).

So we're now officially ushering in the age of sober despondence?

@HurtsSoGood: Because not having individualism worked so well in Soviet Russia.

If the SUV is older (more than 8 yrs for example) why not donate it to one of those organizations that take used vehicles (my local public radio station takes used cars, for example) and take the tax write off? Depending on ones tax bracket, that could work out to more than the final selling price.

I picked up my lovely '08 Kia Spectra on Monday. Good size, peppy as hell, and hardly any available on the lot. They only had one hatchback as they sell as soon as they come in!

The number of SUVs piling up was very telling, as was the lack of non-Kia hugemobiles.

Yeah, I may have a Kia, but I'll take the fuel sipping, 14.5 gallon tank any day.

"you'll usually get more selling it yourself than trading it in"...i think thats a no brainer, as a seller you have that control of what you wish to let the vehicle go for, working for a widely known dealership, suv's are def. depreciating at even the auctions.

Yeah, if your gas guzzling SUV or truck is paid off, it doesn't make financial sense to ditch it and buy a new fuel efficient car.

As for car pooling.. You can place an ad in Craigslist, under their 'Rideshare' section. If you don't mind riding to work with strangers, I'm sure you can find a few people that live and work in the same general area as you, with similar work schedules.

@unohoo: The IRS has really cracked down on donation valuation. You'll always get more selling it, if it's a saleable vehicle. Otherwise donate to charity or sell for scrap (by-the-pound sales aren't too bad when you have a really heavy SUV!)

Explain to the new buyer how you intend to save money by selling your SUV and buying a $20k car. Wait, that doesn't work, does it?

@B: Except you then need to insure both vehicles (not to mention store the extra one), which may negate any gas savings.