There is a difference between rebellious 15 year olds and adults that need to haul their families.
If you have a typical family with 3 or 4 kids, busy weekends with projects and sports and stuff and gas costs $1.50 then an SUV or Pickup looks perfectly logical.
...if you don't bother to think it through.
There is no set of needs -- none -- for which there is not a better solution than an SUV. That includes hauling "3 or 4 kids" (which, by the way, is not a "typical family" anymore...but I digress). A wagon beats an SUV for that job any day. So yes, people did get sold a line of crap. It's their fault they bought it, because -- just as with cigarettes -- there was and is plenty of information out there telling you that this is the wrong choice. But how many people ever avail themselves of that information? Some of us do, but most people don't.