Originally Posted By: MDinana
I haven't read the dozens of posts here, so forgive me if it's been discussed (and where it is, if you now).

Why the push for an SUV? I thought about this a bit over the last few days. I live in a fairly rural area of MO, and in an evacuation situation, there aren't a ton of roads or gas stations. So, I can either cut across fields, or stick with the few roads there are. I think I'm more inclined to stick with a car that can get 30-35 mpg than one that gets, hopefully, 20mpg. The smaller and hybrid SUVs might do better. But, if we're all sitting in traffic idling and not moving fast, I'd prefer a car that won't need a top off every few hundred miles. This rings even more true for me if I'm carrying extra gas. 5 gallons for 150 miles, or 75?

In an ideal world, my girlfriend's Camry would tow my Explorer until we needed to bail out cross country smile


I find medium-full sized SUVs tend to have comparatively larger gas tanks than smaller cars, so even if they do use a bit more fuel they tend to have a greater overall range.

For example, the Chevrolet Tahoe has a cruising range of 468 miles. The Corolla only has a cruising range of 435. So, even though the Tahoe gets about half the gas mileage it can go a greater distance before you have to stop for gas.

If you really want to go far my new Dodge dump truck has a 52 gallon diesel tank with a 22 gallon auxiliary tank. I can go over 1000 miles highway before I need to fill up. grin