Since we don't have a subforum for engineering, this must be the place for this question.

We are told that some sport-utility vehicles are "car body" and some are "truck body." What exactly does that mean? Does a car body have unit-body construction, strut suspension in front, coil springs in the rear and possibly front-wheel drive, while a truck body is bolted to a chassis, has leaf springs in back and rear-wheel drive?

The only visible cue is that the "truck body" SUVs are ridiculously tall, with ground clearance they will never need in their lives of pure highway travel, and look like station wagons for Klingons. Whereas the "car body" fleet are only very tall and look more like overgrown minivans.

My wife recently bought a used Mercedes SUV without my judgement. (I would not have tried to impose my prejudice and talk her out of it because it's an SUV, but simply because it's a shoddy product with a dismal frequency-of-repair record, nothing like the Mercedes diesel sedan we bought new in 1978 and is still running just fine.) This is the star of the car-body SUV fleet, with stability control and all that Buck Rogers technology. Still, it's way too high, with ground clearance we don't need even in our rural area, and it's awkward to climb into. With all that bulk it still doesn't have any more carrying capacity than a minivan. And the huge frontal area gives it just awful fuel economy, around 21mpg (more than 10L/100km).

I shudder to think what it would be like to own and drive a true truck-body SUV. Other than the ability to pick up Klingon hitchhikers, of course. :)

i feel that motor vehicles should be rated by the maximum horsepower the motor can produce without being modified in an illegal manner. all motors over a certain horsepower are trucks.

Since we don't have a subforum for engineering, . . .
and you are a moderator? :confused:
http://sciforums.com/forumdisplay.php?f=100

Considering the average size of an American, I'd say HGV.

I feel that motor vehicles should be rated by the maximum horsepower the motor can produce without being modified in an illegal manner. All motors over a certain horsepower are trucks.That would be of great benefit to the auto manufacturers, at least in the U.S. The standards for safety, fuel economy and pollution are much more stringent for cars than for trucks. If every car with more than, say, 300hp were reclassified as a truck, they could sell lots more Corvettes and Ferraris, and bring back the old 2-ton sedans with 7-liter V-8 engines that Americans love so much. Their automobile corporate average fuel economy would not be dragged down by those models if they were not classified as automobiles. Those engines would even get better fuel economy than they do today because trucks are not required to have all the horsepower-robbing pollution control equipment. And people would be delighted to buy them for lower prices, without the airbags and other safety equipment that is mandatory on cars but not trucks.Since we don't have a subforum for engineering, this must be the place for this question.And you are a moderator?
http://sciforums.com/forumdisplay.php?f=100Aha, one of the new ones. Thanks! I guess I never look in the forum with all the I.T. stuff because it reminds me too much of my day job. :)

Moderator: I restarted this thread under Architecture and Engineering. Please close this one.