[hipster duck]

I don't know if I agree with the premise of this thread. Most SUVs in Canada aren't the pickup truck-based gas guzzlers that they were when I was a kid in the late 90s. Most of them are now crossover vehicles that are built on compact car platforms and have modest 4 cylinder engines in them. Their fuel economy has improved considerably too.

I don't remember cars being more novel back then, either. The late 90s/early 2000s was a period of mergers and acquisitions in the car industry, and the cars all seemed to be rebadged versions of something else with designers making less of an effort to hide this.

I don't have much nostalgia for the cars of my youth. Maybe that is the turning point for millennials compared to earlier generations, and explains why we don't care much for cars as a status symbol*

*the elephant in the room being that cars are expensive and we don't have much disposable income.