THEY'RE HERE ... THEY'RE THERE ... THEY'RE EVERYWHERE : MOVE OVER, MINIVANS - THOSE OMNIPRESENT 4X4S ARE TAKING OVER AS SUBURBANITES' VEHICLE OF CHOICE.

Byline: Glenn Gaslin Daily News Staff Writer

The scene looks like the starting line of a road rally, a grueling dirt-and-dust race through exotic terrain. Two lanes of large metal objects rumble and idle, waiting for the gates to open, waiting to tackle the course.

Below a landscape of arid mountains, the vehicles - not cars or trucks, mind you, but vehicles - appear ready for anything: war, floods, earthquakes. They have four-wheel drive, tires the size of mules, engines powerful enough to scale Mount Baldy. Some even have the black bars of ``brush guards'' covering their grilles and headlights, protecting them against the thick underbrush of the jungle and maybe even collisions with moose, caribou, endangered white rhinos.

As 2:15 p.m. approaches, the rumbling grows louder. Slowly, the gates open, the vehicles move forward across the asphalt. Only a few yards later, they stop. They open their rear doors, and in climb ... children, backpacks, soccer balls.

This is the scene as class lets out at A.E. Wright Middle School, a scene familiar throughout Los Angeles, a daily parade of something called the sport-utility vehicle, the new family automobile, the station wagon done up in '90s excess.

Four-wheel fad

The recent surge in the vehicles, now about 15 percent of the new car market, has sent them careening into lanes once occupied by minivans, station wagons and luxury cars.

These go-anywhere, do-anything transports are now filling the freeways, parking lots and driveways of Southern California, a land where the climate and terrain resembles the inside of a mall.

``My kids are comfortable in here,'' explains Sharon Sahebi, part of the middle-school road rally, dwarfed within a Limited Edition Jeep Cherokee. ``Plus, I'm so high up, I can see so much more.''

Perched above the Corollas and BMWs and even the Caravans, surrounded by soft leather seats and baseball mitts and basketballs, she can see the growing number of her peers, the ever-expanding fleet of suburbanites driving machines once reserved for off-roading and war.

In the past decade, sport-utility vehicles have doubled in number, soared in price and ballooned in size. Some drivers say they need space to fit five people comfortably. Others say they feel safer.

And many owners say they seek something deeper from their $50,000 land craft: image.

The evidence of popularity cruises by the middle-school parking lots in the form of eight Jeep Cherokees, three Ford Explorers, four Toyota Land Cruisers, five Chevrolet Suburbans, two Land Rovers, one Range Rover, one Mitsubishi Montero and one Suzuki Samurai. Scattered among sedans and minivans, the vehicles represent maybe a third of the fleet.

``At least 10 mothers I know drive these,'' Sahebi says of her Grand Cherokee. ``They don't want to be seen in minivans.''

The new Mom-mobile

The sport-utility vehicle is, basically, a high-speed collision of the classic wood-paneled station wagon and a machine of war. It falls somewhere between a pickup and a dump truck, a Jeep and a minivan, a tank and an actual automobile.

The National Highway Safety Administration doesn't classify it as a passenger vehicle. The government agency considers anything built to drive off- and on-road a utility vehicle, and those weighing less than 8,500 pounds to be of the ``sport'' variety, which means higher insurance rates and not-so-strict safety standards.

But the rolling metal beasts are now produced at a rate of almost 1 million per year, according to a study done by J.D. Power and Associates, a market research firm.

Big vehicle, high price

``The price has surged in the last few years because of the demand,'' explains Lisa Plosky, manager of economic analysis for the firm. ``But now that every manufacturer you can think of is coming out with one, that price is going to go down.''

Prices now range from $15,000 to $100,000 and have soared. So has the number of models, rising from 21 in 1987 to an estimated 50 by the year 2000.

Even Porsche has plans to make one, which supports another finding of the report, the reason the mostly high-income consumers like sport-utility vehicles: the look. They can drive luxury cars and minivans, but they simply don't.

The 32 or so models on the market now offer any look you could crave:

Do you want lightweight fun and good gas mileage? Try the Suzuki Samurai (recently replaced with the Sidekick and X-90) or Toyota RAV4.

Want a traditional I've-been-driving-these-things-for-years look? The Jeep Wrangler or Chevy Blazer might work.

Need room for two kids, two buddies, ski equipment and a Great Dane? Go with the Chevy Suburban or Tahoe, new Ford Expedition or Toyota Land Cruiser.

Invading Iraq? Try the Hummer, a commercial version of the U.S. Army's Humvee.

Not willing to give up your Infiniti or Lexus? Well, you're in luck. Now they make 4x4s, too.

Who buys 'em?

Paul Baloo, director of the J.D. Power study, says that dual-income commuter types who rarely, if ever, use the four-wheel-drive option have created a market that could put 2 million new sport-utility vehicles on the road each of the coming years.

``Most of it's for show,'' explains on-roader Jeff Jelinski,sitting inside a shiny, refrigerator-white Land Cruiser in an Encino Office Depot parking lot.

He wears a shirt and tie, has a Filofax open across his lap and holds a cell phone. His vehicle sports brush guards over the front and rear lights.

``It makes it look a little more four-wheel-like,'' he says of the accessories. ``So many of the vehicles don't look four-wheel anymore.''

Jelinski takes the $45,000-or-so beast off-roading once a month, in Baja or Big Bear, testing it against the elements. ``I hate the feeling that I could be stuck anywhere,'' he says.

No chance of that, not with a 4.5-liter engine and a feature called differential locking, which, Jelinski explains, ``turns the thing into a tank.'' But when the function's turned off, he says, the Land Cruiser drives like a BMW.

``The only disadvantage is that the gas mileage sucks,'' he says of the 13-miles-per-gallon performance. ``If gas becomes an issue again, I'd have to go back to a Cherokee.''

And as a longtime off- and on-roader, he has seen the surge, the transformation of the San Fernando Valley into a place where you need a Jeep to get around.

``There's a real anti-minivan feeling out there,'' he says. ``Women want a different image rather than the Mom-mobile.''

But, Mom Arnold's got one

Having a Hummer handy for lugging groceries around may cost more than $80,000, but you get style points for belonging to an elite group of owners such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and the late Tupac Shakur.

However, having 6,500 pounds of metal around you doesn't necessarily mean you're invincible. The U.S. Department of Transportation requires that all utility vehicles have stickers on the dashboard warning drivers that it is not a car, that it shouldn't be driven like a car, that it is two or three times more likely to topple over and roll than a car.

The hard-core off-roading types know this. They've known this for years. They took the war machines into the mud and gave them a reputation.

``But everything's all station wagons with four-wheel-drive these days,'' says Andrew Marshall, president of a Thousand Oaks off-roading club called On the Rocks. ``That's what they've become lately. But there's a few of us who use them for more extreme purposes.''

He talks about the ``grocery getters'' and how their new popularity has been both a boon and a bother to their pastime, how manufacturers are making suspensions softer and cushier for the highway travelers, yet are producing more and better models than ever.

``They're one of the few American traditions we have left,'' says J.D. Smith, a member of On the Rocks. He drives a 1979 CJ7 Jeep, painted red, white and blue and loaded with enough options to haul a West Hills mansion up the side of Mount Whitney.

His and other area groups take regular trips to tackle mountains and creek beds and deserts.

``We're big on `tread lightly' and not doing stupid things and not destroying the environment,'' he adds. ``And we sponsor trail cleanup crews.''

A rolling money pit?

The still-expanding off-roading crowd has, over decades, created a huge catalog of ``aftermarket'' gear, such as winches, lockers, running boards, brush guards and anything that will make a truck bigger, higher and more mobile.

But most drivers of the San Fernando Valley's freeway tanks are less concerned with getting over giant boulders than just getting around.

``I've had this for two years, and I want to get rid of it,'' says Nancy Cipriano, ensconced in a Ford Explorer waiting to pick up two kids from A.E. Wright. ``I had a BMW before and, honestly, this isn't much bigger.''

So she and her children and their baseball, soccer and football equipment want something larger, something like a Suburban or a Tahoe or an Expedition.

Something more practical.

``My son, he's 12,'' she says, ``and he wants a Humvee.''

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos, drawing

Photo: (1) They're here...they're here

Photo illustration by David Sprague

(2) Brush guards protect the grille of a Land Rover from just about anything the off-road world can dish out.

David Sprague/Daily News

(3) Four-wheel-drive sport-utility vehicles, including this Jeep, turn out in force to pick up children at A.E. Wright Middle School in Calabasas.

Drawing: (color -- cover) 4Xmore

Bradford Mar/Daily News