People used to use trucks for hauling. Now they are $70k+ status symbols for people who need to scream, "I am insecure."
I don't get why people think an ugly looking vehicle is a status symbol. To most, it symbolizes something completely different.
"my penis is microscopic, now get out of the way"
I saw some truck commercial yesterday where the thing was eighty thousand dollars AFTER all incentives and rebates.
I thought to myself that the people who are screaming about inflation and how the Democrat president is ruining their lives are the same people who are lining up to make crazy monthly payments into a vehicle that will immediately be upside down on the note.
Completely baseless assumption, but I think it's just a continuation of the phenomenon when toddlers get hyped for trucks/tractors/combine harvesters/anything that is big and loud, maybe because it's associated with power, I don't know. Some people just stay at this toddler's mentality and they see everything that's big and/or loud as something you can boast about. See also: loud exhausts, 6400 deciBel motorcycle sounds, etc.
Fair. They should just get a job with machine builders. I get paid money to play with power all day. Why hello chemical processing equipment, I see you pull 180amps at 460V. Now let's see how loud you are when I push start.
If you havent made an entire factory lights dim are you even alive?
These trucks are also a very American thing. Rarely see that anywhere in Europe. Lots of toxic masculinity in the US
We are getting there though. SUVs are already the standard and it's getting worse. Imo SUVs are even worse in some respects. There at least are theoretical use cases for a pickup truck, a SUV is always egotistical bullshit.
I legitimately had a neighbor tell me "this is a truck neighborhood." In a "joking, not joking" sort of situation.
What sucks is you can’t even buy a truck like the second from the left anymore. I mean, you can buy a used one from a few decades ago, but nobody makes small utility trucks like the old Rangers. The new Ranger is basically just an old F150 (maybe even F250).
The Maverick seems like a reasonable size to me, but by the time I need to replace another car, I'm sure its size will have inflated beyond what I want.
Reasonable footprint, but still a very short bed and 4 door cab. Don't get me wrong, I like the Maverick and expect to buy a 5 year old model in 5 years, but that's because I'll probably still be neck deep in home projects while still trying to commute. It does have great features in the bed and is known to have perfectly acceptable capability hauling full 4x8 sheets with the tailgate tilt. But most of the market is locked away in fullsize crew cabs with 6ft beds at best. 8ft beds typically require utility trims, so you can't get a smaller-footprint nice pickup with full capacity.
I've had a 99 ranger regular cab 7ft bed for about 2 months. It works great for me, but I can barely get a nicer home reno/commuter vehicle. I can go 10 years newer, but not much nicer comparatively speaking from 2024.
I'm sure its size will have inflated beyond what I want.
I have the same problem with phones.
I assume there's some kind of growth formula I'm supposed to have learned about and started taking, but I don't go to the right parties. /sarcasm
You can't buy one because it has never existed, no truck ever had a 40/60 cab to bed ratio except for custom jobs made from using the front of a van with a truck bed.
I love my 09 ranger, one of the last years before they scrapped it and went with the Goliath model.
Honestly don't see the appeal to the huge trucks unless they're for work, but it's not surprising that automakers in North America don't really care to offer what consumers actually want to drive.
Every time I think about the kind of car I want the next time I need to replace mine I am reminded that I miss my old 1994 Chevy S10, and options for something like that these days is rather limited.
I really miss my tiny 1986 Toyota Corolla. My 2016 Prius is not supposed to be a big car and yet it is still bigger than that Corolla. Both sedans. If anything, the Prius should be smaller because it's a hatchback and those used to be the smaller cars.
At the time, the Corolla didn't feel small either. Every car is too big now except maybe Minis and Fiats.
My imaginary dream car would be an EV Nash Metropolitan. It's got 2 doors, a front and a back seat and a decent-sized trunk. I don't haul stuff, there's only three people in my family, I really don't need anything else.
I just want a reasonably sized two door electric truck with a decent sized bed and only minimal space taken up by the frunk. I haul enough stuff that I could really use the cargo space, but I don't want to drive an aircraft carrier on wheels that doesn't fit into parking spaces. And I don't want it collecting as much data as possible on me, but that's not just a truck thing.
So, my options are basically leave the country, drive a 30+ year old ICE truck, or start my own car company. Because despite the fact that there is clearly demand for a smaller truck that's actually a truck, no one is interested in making them for the US market. Not when you can make a big useless luxury truck that has a much larger profit margin.
Get a Ford Econoline pickup and an electric conversion kit. No frunk at all!
Your legs are the crumple zone!
I want a reasonably sized 4x4 truck with a good sized bed that can fit a side by side two snowmobile hydraulic ramp. No such thing in EV or ICE AFAIK.
I mean, it makes sense to me.
I know there's a lot of hate for pickup trucks, but they are useful. Not useful all the time, unless you use it for work, but that can be said for many things that we own. Obviously, most people don't use trucks for work, so they increasingly want more people-space and less (but not necessarily zero) cargo-space.
Cars and trucks in general are a problem, and the trend of increasing size of certain trucks is a problem, but imo if someone wants an SUV with a spot in the back to carry a Christmas tree or whatever, I don't see anything particularly wrong with that.
I really wish two seat utility vehicle format in the spirit of the El Camino would be a thing again. Basically a station wagon size, but with an open bed. These could easily have bed covers in the same shape as a wagon as well, but removable to allow for taller items and a bed that can be hosed out.
The market shifting all in to four door cabs sucks.
I wonder how hard it would be to modify a Hearse into an open bed?
An angle grinder and a week of free time
While I agree with the sentiment, it is still annoying when they take up 2 parking spaces. They are just bad cars for cities and work better on rural areas.
Trucks with smaller beds are objectively less useful than trucks with larger beds.
they don't make em like they used to
good thing too, but those were fun to drive
This doesn't belong in the humor community because it's seriously depressing.
I'd like to see a similar infographic of the height of the truck beds. Putting a tiny bed way up high is a sure sign the bed is ornamental.
Black people couldn't vote in 1961 so maybe it's not so bad after all.
My dream car was a Subaru Baja. Failing that, it's now either a Ford Maverick or a Honda Ridgeline. Those are the closest I can find to the "ute" style I'm looking for, just by virtue of having a 4 door cabin and a small bed.
My friend bought a Baja. He said that the bed is so small that he can't even fit a bike in there.
Tell your friend to ride smaller bikes
The problem with this infographic is that they aren't depicting the size of the trucks in proportion. That 37%er is probably 3x as large as the 64%er (the whole truck itself)
Bed size is measured in feet. There's never been a light-duty truck with more than an 8' box, which is probably what the first one depicts. The last one might be a 5' box but way more 6' boxes get sold. So yah, they're smaller, but they sure as hell aren't half the size. Putting it terms of overall length is disengenuous at best.
I have an 8' box because I want a toolbox and still be able to get a lot of undesirable stuff in the box besides. I wouldn't have a shortbox.
I guess proving (again) so many pick up truck owners do not really need a pick up, they just need to feel manly for a change
Really should be comparing the volume of pickup bed, not just the % of its total length
The volume could definitely be higher now, since the box sides are so bloody high that you can't actually put anything in the truck without a ladder.
As a farmer and actual truck user everyone I know has a beat up farm truck from the 80s for actual truck use, modern truck is just a big car for comfortable city trips
Yeah, let's compare different types of truck so we can complain about them
Always the same shit with you guys
A current gen regular cab long box F150 (you know, the same thing as the first one in the picture) measures 228" so 42% bed.
A 1995 F150 regular cab long box was 213" long, so 45% bed.
1983? 208" long.
1975 (first generation)? 205", 47% bed
And you know what, just for the heck of it, the 60s F100 was 202" long, that's 47.5% bed! The only way you got it to 50% bed was without a rear bumper and that was 50% on the dot, I don't know where they got their first truck but as far as I can find it's never existed!
Inline 6 were the smaller engine back in the day for trucks, no way they could make the hood super short.
Trucks, especially full sized ones haven't changed in size that much, they're mostly taller so it makes them seem much bigger than they were, the rest is mostly so they're actually safer than the thin boxes of the past.
🎶 "Like a ~~rock~~ impotent cock!" 🎶
wait until you see a cab-over design
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