Melinda Davis knows there are plenty of people who don't like the Land Rover she drives.
As chief executive and founder of The Next Group, a marketing think-tank in New York, Davis is especially sensitive to shifts in public opinion. But these days, American displeasure with the sports utility vehicle - the mighty machine that symbolised the excesses of the 1990s and helped rescue Detroit - is far from subtle.
In north-western Pennsylvania this month, a radical environmental group claimed responsibility for starting a fire that destroyed two SUVs and two pick-up trucks.
A TV advertisement this month declared: "Oil money supports some terrible things. What kind of mileage does your SUV get?" The advert, part of a campaign by columnist Arianna Huffington, seeks to link the gas guzzlers to terrorism.
"The SUV has really become the litmus test of social consciousness," says Davis. It's all a far cry from the all-American-ness that shaped the SUV's early years. The vehicles trace their roots to the Jeeps first built by Willys-Overland for the US army in the second World War. The cars lived on quietly for years, almost entirely used by people in remote places who needed the high clearance and four-wheel-drive the Jeeps offered. But in the early 1990s they moved from the tough outdoors to the cities and suburbs, where drivers liked their capacity to carry children and big toys and make the driver look tough behind the wheel.
"Car companies have been so adept at selling this idea that the SUV buys you the ability to drive up a mountain vista and see something you never could with a regular car," says Larry Webster, technical editor of Car and Driver magazine. "I bought mine when it was part of being a butt-kicking babe," recalls Davis.
Any signs of a weakening SUV market would be an immense worry for US vehicle manufacturers. Today, SUVs account for about 60 per cent of the US motor industry's earnings and, for the past decade, they have been far more profitable for the "big three" - General Motors, Ford and DaimlerChrysler - than smaller cars.
In particular, the SUV has helped Detroit revive brands with an ageing buyer demographic. Buick, long associated with retired, golf-playing men in their late 50s, instantly lowered the average age of its buyer profile in 2001 by bringing out a SUV version, suggestively named the Rendezvous.
With its broad appeal, the SUV is a uniquely American phenomenon. "Americans have a thirst for big engines and powerful cars," says Webster. Now Japanese and even South Korean competitors this year plan an aggressive assault on Detroit's dominance of the American SUV market.
In Europe, it's a different story. SUVs are not sold in any significant numbers because their engines are generally much larger than those in European vehicles and attract high import taxes. Besides, urban Europeans are accustomed to narrower streets and tighter spaces than US drivers.
Although SUV sales show no sign of declining, Detroit has detected a subtle shift in consumer attitudes. At the recent Detroit Motor Show, Chrysler showed two vehicles that some observers believe signal a shift from the traditional SUV. Shaped more like station wagons that dominated US highways in the 1970s, these vehicles are not as high off the ground and drive more like a car. There are some indications that this type of vehicle, known as a "crossover", could catch on.