Sports utility vehicles (SUVs) is fast-becoming the car of choice for most Australians and according to the latest data furnished by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday, the month of July alone saw some new 20,405 units rolling out of dealers' outlets.

ABS said that the total sales were an improvement of 24 percent from the prior month and the highest so far recorded, leading the SUV further to secure an overall automotive industry market share of 30 percent, which is another first for the industry.

Analysts said that the gas-guzzling vehicles, regarded by ABS as mainly the off road automotive type with four wheel drive capability and could seat up to nine passengers, are slowly hugging a big market segment of the car industry, when only 15 fifteen years earlier SUVs only account for eight percent of total sales and nine percent of market share.

The vehicles' fast-rising popularity is a cause of concern for many environmentalists who were critical of the machines' extreme appetite for the increasingly expensive petrol fuels, not to mention the environmental footprint that they leave behind.

The hulking behemoth in SUVs were being blamed by environmentalists as critical contributors to increased carbon emissions in the atmosphere, spiking by as much as 870 quadrillion kilograms by latest estimates and could soon envelop the entire planet with an 86 centimetre thick invisible carbon blanket.

Carbon emission experts were in agreement that the dangerous blanket would only thicken each passing day and as SUVs continue to whet Australia's appetitive for a space-hogging presence on the road.

The July sales figures represented a 33 percent improvement from sales performance posted in the same month last year while sales of passenger vehicles and non-passenger vehicles could only manage measly increases of four percent and 12 percent respectively, also in the same period.

However, environmentalists are optimistic, and even industry experts are in agreement with them, that SUVs could soon follow the lead of the once popular station wagon, which took the road to extinction as car buyers realised the futility of maintaining tank-busting vehicles while oil and gas prices were becomingly more and more volatile and at most times, expensive.