The 2001 Chevy Avalanche:

In response to the constant clamoring for ever larger, more absurd vehicles Chevy has released the 2001 Avalanche. If your old SUV is no longer big enough for your family, dogs and Costco haulings, if your truck no longer intimidates the neighbors, the Avalanche may be the vehicle for you. The avalance is neither an SUV nor a Pickup truck, but a combination of the two. In the avalanche we see a promising new trend - The SUV/TRUCK combo, or SU/CK. This exciting new sub-genre offers multitudes of space, and yet still manages to just barely squeeze down your average suburban street.

The 2001 Avalance is powered by some sort of huge bundle of hoses and pistons that burn gasoline and spit out carbon monoxide. And when I say 'powered' I mean that you could probably drive over a Honda Civic or a crowd of school-children without noticing, thanks in part to the height of the vehicle. Objects in front of the Avalanche are clearly visible as long as they are over five feet high or 20 feet away. Objects behind the Avalanche are not visible, thanks in part to the pickup truck bed that stretches beyond the SUV portion of this SU/CK. Needless to say this makes parking the avalanche an interesting experience.

The pickup bed is covered by fancy plastic armor plate that must be removed individualy to use the back 1/3 of the SU/CK. This gives the top of the back end a cool kind of trilobyte or armadillo look to it, but is the opposite of handy. The interior of the Avalanche is comfortable and spacious, and a joy to be in, except when driving. The sheer size of the Avalanche may have good intimidation factor, but it also limits where the SU/CK can go. This is not a side-road innercity driver.. This vehicle is at its best parked in a huge driveway, or driving down a wide unoccupied road in a car commercial.

Somewhere out there is a stable of automotive engineers that is absolutely convinced that the only problem with the hybrid vehicles like the ElCamino or the Subaru Brat was the size. I can just picture a group of sweaty half-drunks in stained tanktops "hey I got an idea! lets weld this flatbed to the suburban! Yee-haw! Now lets see if we can jump the canyon!" But before they could get to the canyon they were intercepted by the Chevy Design team. The rest, as they say, is history- lasting most likely for the next year or two, before this goliath 'Gremlin of 2001' disappears in the rockslide of common sense that I'm still waiting for.

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