while very few of us would buy anything brand new, the fact of the matter is, our input DOES still (or should) influence the car market, the used car buyer will buy from dealerships (one method of influence) also, the used car market, which people like us control for a decent amount, directly influences a vehicle's resale value... if there was a decent vehicle for 4x4ing, and people like us wanted it, it's resale value would be higher, causing people to want to buy it more brand new, because they know the initial depreciation wouldn't be AS much, even though it will always be there... these yuppy pieces of crap will have significantly lower resale value than they could, and the one "SUV" that would fit our needs, which in my mind would be a TJ,(or YJ, which ever it is) could have a used resale value as high as 90% because they have the market control in the "used 4x4/trail worthy 2005+ vehicles" category... new car buyers see this, which make them go well maybe i should buy a tj/yj, which then in turn makes the manufactures go well, maybe we should make one to compete with jeep...
that being said, it doesn't work quite as well in actual practice as it does on paper