The 2007 Chevrolet Avalanche is exceptional.  Among the crew-cab pickups -- those four-door trucks that can carry five or six people -- the new Avalanche stands out for having a full range of features and some clever engineering.  But it also falls into the category of trucks targeted at drivers who don't really need them.

At first glance the Avalanche seems like any normal, four-door truck.  But, where other trucks have an immovable panel between the pickup bed and passenger cabin, the Avalanche has a “midgate.” which flips down to connect the two. This makes the expanded bed large enough to swallow a 4-by-8-foot sheet of plywood, with the tailgate closed.

This vehicle is a great example of how rarely people buy cars and trucks based on their usual, everyday usage, opting instead for vehicles that meet the largest variety of potential automotive needs.  Marketers have long targeted this tendency to sell trucks to people who don't really need them. Think of all those commuters who drive gas-guzzling pickups just so they can haul a single load of mulch every spring. Or the SUV pilots whose closest brush with the back country is their subscription to "Outside" magazine. The Avalanche is pretty much the crowning achievement of this idiom.

When introduced in 2002, the Avalanche's fuel economy was awful, with the four-wheel-drive version carrying an EPA rating of 14 miles per gallon.  Thanks to a new, all-aluminum, 5.3-liter version of Chevy's venerable small-block V-8, the four-wheel-drive Avalanche's fuel economy is up to 17 mpg.  This is an improvement, but hardly environment or pocket book friendly.
 

The new 2007 Avalanche went on sale in May, and despite its redesign, sales are down 19.3% through October.  Lay the blame on gas prices if you will, but consider that at least some of those people who didn't buy an Avalanche finally wised up and right-sized their vehicle, ferrying the family in a four-cylinder sedan and renting a pickup on mulch day.  More likely is that those lost buyers have been shopping for so-called crossovers, vehicles that trade some of the Avalanche's 7,800-pound towing capacity for fuel economy, but still continue to champion the philosophy of maximum utility.