Gary Warwick is still in their honeymoon stage with his new Lincoln Navigator, so when he's asked if there's anything he doesn't like about his cavernous new toy he pauses.

Ahem.

"Well, it takes longer to find a parking place," says the retired construction contractor from Port Huron, MI, who now designs and sells custom-built masks for hockey goaltenders. "Going through the drive-through window at my bank I find it difficult to reach in and out to put the check in the canister."

On the bright side, Mr. Warwick says he can fit the vehicle in his carport. Not every Navigator owner is so lucky.

Owners of large sport/utility vehicles (SUVs) regard such trivial inconveniences with as much concern as a pesky little Geo Metro or Toyota Tercel they almost swallowed beneath their chrome-encased grille on their morning commute. In exchange for the room, power and sense of security these mighty machines provide, it's an easy trade-off.

Sales of large SUVs, which Ward's defines as any SUV based on a fullsize pickup truck platform, have skyrocketed from 119,800 in the 1992 model year to 523,000 in the just-concluded 1997 model year, a 337% increase. In the last year alone sales in the segment rose 49%.

Yet, as our collective appetite for bigger and heavier vehicles gobbles up more of our motoring infrastructure, our roadside ergonomics and architecture -- and driving etiquette -- are only beginning to catch up with this Brobdingnagian paradigm shift.

In another year or so Ford Motor Co. will introduce a vehicle now known as the Crew Wagon that will span an unprecedented 19 ft. (5.8 m) from bumper to bumper and offer as an option a 6.8L V-10 engine. Who knows what lies beyond that?

Of course, it could all fall to pieces tomorrow. Middle East peace talks have collapsed. Many Asian economies are stalling. The global warming geeks, who meet in Kyoto, Japan, this December might bully the United States into raising the light-truck fuel economy standard as the quickest way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

But as John Maynard Keynes said, "In the long-run we're all dead."

So, we've chosen to seize the day.