THE AGE OF THE CAR IS GONE, that of the SUV has succeeded.

The United States started the trend. SUVs took up 1.8 percent of the U.S. light-vehicle market in 1975, rising to 5.1 percent a decade later and to 18.9 percent by 2000. The financial crisis of 2008 induced only a small dip and by 2010 SUVs made up nearly 30 percent of all sales and reached half of the market in 2020.

Judging from his biography, the author is roughly my age, yet he clearly disremembers the SUVs [suburban utility vehicles] of our youth: back then they were called station wagons. I haven't bothered to look up the data, but I'll bet in the 1950's and 60's station wagons took up a larger than 1.8% share of the automobile market.

Evolution happens. The author didn't.