The defining vehicle type of our era, the SUV, is an anomaly in aesthetic as well as practical terms.

Most of the history of car design has reflected an ongoing pursuit of something more sleek and graceful.  If you had shown people 20 to 50 years ago the high, boxy vehicles people now choose to drive, and told them these were the automotive products of the future, they would have guffawed in your face.

The shift to SUVs can’t be explained in terms of practical considerations.  Aerodynamics, handling, safety, traffic congestion, and high gas prices all suggest a different kind of shape.

But how about the way these vehicles make people feel?

When SUVs first began appearing in significant numbers, the first characteristic that many people noticed was the way they seemed like people standing up at a sporting event—blocking the view for everyone behind them.  Perhaps predictably, given the prevailing idfulness of the times, rather than somehow trying to induce them to stop blocking the view, most people’s response was simply to copy them.

As SUVs have gone on to become not only tall, but more massively formidable in every other sense, their purpose as identity props has become increasingly apparent.  It is now hard to ignore the way they help us overcome a feeling of being small and insignificant.

Like the SUV, today’s new variants of the pickup truck can also be better explained in terms of how they make people feel than in terms of the practical functions they serve.  Most owners today seldom use their pickups to actually haul anything.  The trucks are now more in the nature of male identity statements—big and virile and macho, perfect for an age of devalued manhood.  And the more threatened male identity has become, the bigger and more formidable-looking pickups have grown, to the point where many of them (especially Dodges) now look more like heavy-duty industrial haulers than privately-owned vehicles.

Another interesting variant is the increasingly popular pickup with a back seat, four doors, and a covered, lockable bed.  For all practical intents and purposes, this is a family sedan—but it is one that desperately proclaims that it is not. What could be more perfect for the guy who is afraid of being softened and diminished by domesticity?

The imperative to “bulk up” and create a more substantial-looking presence has also affected other forms of vehicles. A good example is the redesigned Chrysler 300, an immediate sales hit when it went from a sleek and nimble-looking car to one that projected pure massive, brutal power, from its enormous "crusher" wheels to its shrunken armored car-type windows.