Could survive with a Toyota Corolla? Definitely. Does the Highlander make life better? Yes.
Weird that heavy marketing would finally penetrate my brain the same year we had our first kid.
Nah, but that marketing, and the financial incentives which motivated it, and the arms race from a critical mass of larger vehicles affecting visibility because of it are why minivans and SUVs (the former popular first and then the latter later because of when each worked as a regulatory dodge) bevame the choice for those needs, which were once filled by station wagons.
I’m an SUV owner myself for very similar immediate reasons to the ones you cite. Nothing about that interferes with my ability to understand that the market context within which those preferences call for that result is a product of specific, well-documented interplay between regulation and profit-seeking business behavior over several decades.
1. The set of vehicles on the road and thus what your experience in different vehicles will be like, e.g., in terms of road visibility, and
2. The mix of specific vehicle models and features of each that are actually manufactured and available at the time you made thaf decision.
You know what is even easier for loading kind in a vehicle? Sliding doors.
I agree. I was "indifferent" between the Highlander and the Sienna which is its minivan counterpart.
The funny thing is for all the hate the SUVs get for being big and heavy, the Sienna is slightly bigger and heavier.
Heavy marketing was done to make them popular, and once they reached a certain threshold, their size created an arms race, since they blocked visibility for everyone not also in an SUV.