Pricey strollers with cool features appeal to fathers

The Bob Trailer Sport Utility Ironman isn't an SUV. For starters, it seats only one person, usually someone under 35 pounds.

The Ironman is a stroller — not that one could really tell from its marketing material, which touts its "elastometer shock absorbers" and "plush suspension for on-road comfort and performance." It's named for the Ironman Triathlon, the famously grueling sporting event, which licensed the baby buggy as its first official stroller. The manufacturer, BOB Trailers Inc., says it has been a big draw among men.

Anything involving wheels is bound eventually to attract the attention of the male of the species. Now, that most rudimentary — even feminine — of vehicles, the baby stroller, is beginning to capture the imagination of men in a big way. A generation of strollers with sophisticated engineering, sleek designs and un-nursery-like colors (from black to "racing yellow") has emerged, allowing dads to compare notes about wheel suspension and off-road handling with a reverence once reserved for expensive sports cars.

"I've actually stopped people on the street to ask if they have a 12- or 16-inch wheel," says Jeff Wechsel- blatt, a 33-year-old New York lawyer. His own child rides in a Pliko P3, produced by venerable Italian stroller-maker Peg Perego. But he covets the new models of jogging strollers. "I don't jog," he says, "but they just look so great."

Wechselblatt confesses that he has run his hands "surreptitiously over the fine construction" of the neighbors' Bugaboo Frog, which is often called "the Hummer of strollers" because of its shape and big wheels. Some days, after stealing peeks at strollers on the Web, he comes home and looks at his Peg Perego "with disdain and I wonder, how can I put my child in this?" he says.

Justin Curtis, 33, who owns an interactive design company in Sausalito, Calif., ran into Bugaboo-pushing guys at a coffee shop during his wife's pregnancy, and chose a black one after consulting with them. "I'd say, 'Do you like this stroller?' their faces would brighten up," he says. "It's like when we were younger and talked about our mountain bikes."