Adverts like this make me wonder just how far down the rabbit hole we've gone; making words do things that they shouldn't and giving substance to pure wind.
FUV or Fun Utility Vehicle - granted, it is probably more fun than an SUV but so is every sports car (which this is not) and in its defence, it is a vehicle, but a Utility? Hatchback maybe.
Then again I disagree with the term SUV in the first place.
SUV: Sports Utility Vehicle. Ok, so "vehicle" isn't in dispute but the first two most certainly are.
Sports - No-one in their right mind would call a two and a half ton behemoth like a Toyota Land Cruiser a sports car. It would be utter idiocy to round McPhillamy Park at 200km/h over the top of the mountain. I suppose that technically you could build a BMW X6 V8Supercar under the Car Of The Future regulations but it would be so top heavy, it would probably tip over as Jamie Whincup's Commodore came up the inside.
There are big 4WDs in the Dakar every year and for rally raids across open desert where there are no roads at all, they are in their element but you're never going to see one in the WRC against a Citroën C4 and certainly never at Le Mans up against the Audi R18s and Peugeot 908s.
Sports cars, they most certainly are not.
Utility - I'm not particularly sure about the validity of this.
If you were to compare a Mazda CX-9 against the Mazda 6 wagon which both sit on the same platform, I'm reasonably sure that you'd find more usable space in the wagon; mainly because the CX-9 being a much taller vehicle, sits on larger wheels thus requiring greater intrusion of the wheel wells into the available boot space.
If SUVs have supposedly more utility, then why have I never seen a Ford Territory as a taxi? I still see plenty of Falcon wagons as taxis despite then Falcon wagon being discontinued last year.
Things that we do call utilities usually have a bed at the back to haul stuff about in. The very idea of a utility came from a farmer's wife wanting to drive to church on Sunday but haul pigs to market on Monday. Even today although you can get an HSV Maloo with more power than common sense and a dress kit with skirts and spoilers, the vehicle will still take a set of tradie's tools, or a fridge or even half a dozen pigs to market should the need occur.
Toyota have of late even tried to pitch their Hilux as an AUV or Action Utility Vehicle but the public haven't taken to it because quite rightly it is seen as daft.
So if SUVs are neither Sport or Utility, then where and why did the three letter acronym come about when everyone was using the term Four Wheel Drive to fulfill the same function?
I went to the library to check this out and right up to the December 1998 issue of Autocar magazine, adverts for Range Rovers which surely must be the top of the SUV tree, referred to them either as "wagons" or as "estate" cars. The names "stationwagon" and "estate" pretty well both describe the fact that the intended purpose is to drive them either on an estate (obviously rural) or on a station. Both terms imply either uneven and boggy ground and a vast amount of space. In most places and especially the UK, estates are almost exclusively owned by either the aristocracy or the recently monied gentry.
I can't say that I know exactly who the culprit is, though the reason for their popularity lies solely at the feet of US auto makers.
The story begins with a series of oil crises in the 1970s coupled with increasing levels of smog over California and specifically Los Angeles. In response to this, the US Dept of Transport passed laws which effectively drove the 7 and 8 Litre V8 monsters off the road and into the pages of history. They then enforced harsher emissions standards on cars under so called CAFE regulations. Trucks though were exempt.
If you were American and you still wanted a very big thing on the road, you'd move to buying a big pickup truck instead of the whales of cars you used to. Technically SUVs weren't cars but "trucks" and as such fell outside the operation of CAFE emissions and smog laws. The big three auto makers saw this and eventually there was the Cadillac Escalade and the Lincoln Navigator which technically remained trucks to avoid the CAFE regulations.
Throw in some clever marketing and suddenly the weren't pickup trucks or utilities but Sport Utility Vehicles even though as discussed they're neither sporty nor very utilitarian.
I can't say for sure but I'm guessing that the term probably started to appear in about 1993 at best guess.
Anyway back to the MINI (all-caps) Countryman which they're trying to give the moniker of FUV to.
Vehicle is a given. You could use it as a henhouse but that comes in about 25 years time.
Fun is entirely subjective and so can't really be argued against because it is entirely the opinion of the individual. If you were to find the funnest car though, I'd say the the regular MINI because if its smaller footprint is more chuckable into corners and therefore more fun. Outright sports cars are more fun but they already have a name: "sports cars".
This leaves "utility"; as a smallish hatchback, although it will carry a washing machine or a fridge, that's it. No tradie would use this as a work car.
If anything is to be called an FUV or Fun Utility Vehicle, then the best cars to wear this tag would be utes by HSV or FPR. Tricked up Falcon and Commodore utes. They are seriously fun things to drive, they're genuine utilities and they're vehicles.
Maybe its just time to call things out for what they are. The MINI Countryman is a hatchback that thinks its a wagon but has an identity crisis and tries to pitch itself against big four wheel drives. They themselves are just jacked up wagons or estates and the only true Sport Utility Vehicles are racing V8 Utes.
Now then, if I can convince someone to get me a Land Rover Defender 110, I'll go bush with it and show you what a Fun Four Wheel Drive looks like. I bet within three days it would be completely covered in mud.
Let's see you do that with a MINI.
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