READY, SET, LEASE. 5.1.06
I can't claim to know what the future holds for the auto industry... but I think it's a pretty safe bet to say that unless something miraculous happens with this whole oil crisis thing, your current or next SUV is going to be worth squat when you try to sell it a few years down the road. Most likely, it will live out the rest of its days in your front yard as a rust magnet. "But SUVs are oh so wonderful! I can't run people over with a Camry... I simply must have my SUV!" Well, here is my proposed answer.
As covered in my post regarding resale values, the value of your car when you decide to sell it can mean the difference between it having been a good investment and a horrible one. As gas prices skyrocket, SUVs look less and less appealing to consumers, which means their resale values will drop significantly over the next few years. If you finance or purchase an SUV within the next year, you're likely to find that when you try to sell it down the road (again, assuming that the oil problem doesn't get fixed), people will be offering you detergent coupons and movie ticket vouchers instead of thousands of dollars.
So, what do you do? You lease it. In a lease, the bank has determined the resale value (called the "residual" in a lease) of your SUV already; it is necessary to do so in order to deduce the amount of the vehicle you're going to be paying for. As of right now, this means that banks are in somewhat of a compromising position: they don't really have any evidence to be able to say that your SUV will be worthless in 3 years (or however long you're leasing for), even though we all know it will. Because of that, they really can't penalize SUV residuals too harshly (for now).
What does this mean to you? It means you basically get a guarantee from a bank that your $35,000 SUV will be worth $18,000 in 3 years, as opposed to the $12,000 (just a guess) you'd probably get if you had to sell it yourself at that time. One of the advantages of leasing has always been that you don't have to haggle with anyone over the resale value of your car... that amount was determined years ago when you signed the lease, and now all you have to do is turn it in. Now you can use that to your advantage, trapping the banks in a promise that your car will be worth a certain amount down the road, no matter how much gas prices increase.
Of course, banks are smart. I'm sure they're already on their way to a profitable solution, so if you're considering an SUV, I would say two things to you: 1) lease it, and 2) stop reading this and go lease it right now.