2008 - April

[El Gordo]

SUVs? Has Britain become the 51st United State?

I'm pleased to report Australia is largely resisting this rather ugly term (though not, unfortunately, the vehicles themselves). Sadly we do know what SUV means and will probably fall under its inevitable ugliness sometime soon. For the moment at least (thank God) we're still more likely to use a derogatory term liike "tank" or "truck" when describing such things. "Toorak Tractor" is common as well - I think you use a similar term. The meaning's clear enough.

You've brought back the trauma, just as I'd managed to push it from my mind. I don't disagree with you. We call them 4 x 4s or colloquially, " Chelsea tractors". The problem I had was that writing "4 x 4" just looked wrong. OK in a tech spec, but not in prose, where you can't pronounce "x" as "by". I couldn't think how we normally write this down. "Four by four" seemed even worse. I think. So I went for SUV which is not universally used but used enough to be intelligible.

OK? :mad:

And yes, we have become the 51st United State. But that's another story....