The world's coolest SUV

An MRAP.

See the Ford Expedition to the right for perspective.

Move over Cadillac Escallade. Go play with your tonka truks, dinky little Nissan Armada.

That's because the MRAP is in the House.

For folks who don't follow the latest in military vehicles, allow me to introduce to you the Mine Resistent Armor Protected (MRAP) vehicle - the latest and greatest thing that is out there protecting our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines every day.

Designed specifically from lessons learned here in Iraq, this goliath represents the most advanced all-terrain vehicle the planet has ever seen. Able to take immense pounding from IEDs - and belive me, it can endure a lot - the MRAP is the closest possible combination of the security of a tank and the agility and utility of a Humvee.

When the apocolypse comes, you probably want to be in an MRAP. When the world is a nuclear wasteland full of mutant scorpions a la "Damnation Alley?" You want to be in an MRAP. Zombies? MRAP's got you covered.

There's pretty much nothing on this earth that wouldn't be improved with the use of an MRAP. Sure, Indy uses Corvettes as pace cars. An MRAP would be the pace car at a monster truck rally.

Now don't get me wrong. A Humvee is a pretty cool vehicle itself. And when it's up-armored (see below), it can withstand a ton of stuff. But a Humvee is so...yesterday.

I've never ridden in an MRAP yet, though I've sat in one. You're probably six to eight feet off the ground. The whole vehicle is very tall, but is surprisingly stable. None other than Gen. Petraeus himself, who got to take one out for a spin, said the thing has almost no tendency to roll despite its ungainly altitude.

Technically, the MRAP is not just one vehicle, but a whole class of vehicles, with varied different uses. There's the standard MRAP (above), and then there are a dozen or so variants, some made by different companies. One of them looks almost exactly like an armadillo on wheels, but unfortunately I don't have any photos of that one.

Still, these vehicles are worth every dollar we spend on them. Your tax dollars going to create these pricey, testosterone-dripping monsters is saved and paid back with interest by the lives that they are saving every day. More than a few soldiers owe their lives to the MRAP, and as these new machines rotate in and the venerable old Humvees are rotated off the more dangerous jobs, more and more American soliders will be able to get out alive and get back to their lives back home.

A slightly smaller variant.