ON RAMP : Four-Wheel Jive

As sport utility vehicles continue to lure Ma and Pa Yuppie out of their Volvos and Beemers, you might think that insurance rates for four-wheel-drive cars would fall. After all, only a tiny fraction of these new buyers ever take their cars off-road, where, insurers have long said, the hazards posed by rocks and cliffs and driver bravado justified higher rates. But though the drivers are a whole different breed from the rugged off-roader of the pre-Range Rover days, rates are as high as ever.

Mercury Insurance Co., for example, one of the least expensive insurers, would charge a 38-year-old single female resident of Burbank with a clean driving record an annual premium of $1,468 to insure a new Volvo 850. The same coverage for the less expensive Nissan Pathfinder is $1,908. Mercury and some other firms impose a surcharge for comprehensive coverage of four-wheel-drive cars.

Meanwhile, mid-size sports utilities--the hot sellers--generate less costly collision and bodily injury claims than mid-size sedans, according to the Highway Loss Data Institute--a group insurers rely on extensively for composing actuarial tables.

Despite the stats and changing demographics, insurers are unlikely to adjust their rates, notes Mary Crystal of Western Insurance Information Services, a trade group. “It’s just like sports cars,” she says. “Even if 70% of the population is driving Corvettes, that doesn’t make them safer from theft and other risk factors.”