Hahaha I still remember riding in the back of that while my friend was four-wheeling across what is now the campus of the University of Texas at Dallas. So dumb.
Good heavens! Protectionism at work. I guess not.
(admittedly, it’s partly that the US has different safety and emission standards than the rest of the world.)
I was going to mention the Subaru Brat. LSLguy beat me to it.
We all have our different needs.
My father in his later years bought a 2 wheel drive truck. We begged him to get 4wd. We would pay for it. Nope, would not do it.
Dad could not get to my house 6 months out of the year, and the truck was useless to either my brother or I when he passed away.
2 wheel drive trucks are not good in snowy climates. They are the worst.
I think pickup trucks are increasingly being ditched by contractors in favor of vans. If you need to regularly drive onto jobsites on unimproved dirt lots, and pull trailers, a diesel truck is still useful, but for general contractors working mostly plumbing or electrical, a van will offer more space for equipment and is lower to the ground for easier access. With the proliferation of Sprinters and Transits, fewer pickups are being spec’d as work trucks.
My impression is that minivans became seen as uncool, and “mom-mobiles” (much like the station wagons that they replaced), whereas SUVs (even if not as functional) don’t seem to have that negative perception.
I also have the sense that the parents who buy SUVs believe that the higher driving position, and big mass, make them “safer” transportation for their families.
LOL, buying a “frontover” machine to keep your family safe.
Yeah, higher means less safe.
I don’t disagree, but I’ve read enough people saying that the greater visibility makes them think that it’s safer.
Whether SUVs, minivans, sedans, or pickup trucks are “safer” for their occupants depends massively on what accident or almost-accident they’re involved with.
Which is a different question from whether the public at large would be safer if they were surrounded by more or fewer SUVs vs minivans vs sedans vs pickup trucks vs …
I recently ran across an interesting article on the evolution of pickups. One tidbit:
Today’s midsize “lifestyle trucks” — newly popular among off-roading and camping enthusiasts — are about the same size as the ‘80s’ and ‘90s’ fullsize pickups.
https://www.axios.com/ford-pickup-trucks-history?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Speaking as someone who works in the insurance industry, there are clear, measurable, statistically significant differences in the overall safety of vehicles for their occupants, at least within the US. Both mortality and total “bodily injury” costs incurred are tracked by an industry group that gets data from that vast majority of insured vehicles. There’s also a publicly accessable FARS (fatal accident reporting system) that captures every motor vehicle death reported to the police, which is essentially all of them.
Differences in the risk a vehicle poses to other vehicles is not captured in anything like the same detail, and the data that exists is less statistically significant.
I always check out the data from IIHS and HLDI (insurance institute for highway safety and highway loss data institute, or some such acronyms, both really the same group but two legal entities) before buying a car.
Agee completely that the aggregate data on e.g. SUVs vs. sedans paints a pretty clear picture on which is safer overall on a per mile or per seat-mile basis. Which is probably the most sensible measure of merit for safety-oriented decisions by car/truck buyers.
What I was commenting on, albeit indirectly, was what I saw as one person saying “high vehicles are more prone to rollovers so less safe” and another saying “being in a high vehicle when hit by a low vehicle is safer”. Both statements are true enough. But don’t capture the whole picture. The safety of any style of vehicle depends on which accident. Heck, an oft-quoted comment about motorcycles is they’re the safest kind of road vehicle up until the moment of impact. Meaning if carefully ridden their superior maneuverability enables then to avoid accidents that cars & trucks would be forced to simply plow into.
I don’t believe that’s true. But it’s a factual claim and HLDI had a factual answer to that claim, and also to whether taller vehicles are safer or less safe overall.
Now, maybe due to features about you, your experience would be different. Maybe, because you are very short, that extra height matters more to what YOU can’t see than it does to the average US driver. But they have surprisingly detailed understanding of what makes cars more or less safe.
I have a 1995 F-150 regular cab and my plan is to run it as long as I can. Rust is my biggest problem, it’s starting around the rear wheel wells so I’m going to need to spend some time/money on that.
I’d love to buy something like a Maverick with a regular cab and long-ish bed, that could replace my truck and car and let me have a classic car as a second vehicle.
IIRC, the Ford Transit Connect cargo van is built in Turkey. To avoid the chicken tax it was imported with back seats and rear windows installed, so it was officially imported as a passenger vehicle. Then once in the US Ford would throw out the back seats, replace the rear windows with metal plugs, and sell it as a cargo van. That seems ridiculously wasteful, but it must have been cheaper than paying the chicken tax.
Perhaps they ship the rear windows and rear seats back to Turkey to fit in the next van rather than throwing them away?
I’m with you. If you use your pickup as a pickup no problems whatsoever. They serve a really useful purpose. If you drive it to church on Sunday or the movies so what?
I reserve my ire for the guy in my garage with a Ford F-350 (I think) in my downtown, big city, hi-rise garage that sticks out into the aisle where the cars drive and is difficult to get around (it is at the end of a ramp on a turn going down).
That truck has never seen a day of work in its life. It is pristine. Immaculate. Not a scratch anywhere nor any dirt. Beautiful truck really. But why? I don’t get it. I’d be surprised if it even carried so much as groceries home.
I have a 13 YO truck in pretty good shape, but the bed is beat. IMHO if you have a tonneau cover on more than 90% of the time, maybe you don’t need a pickup…
I’ve always said that a crew cab pickup with a bed cover is essentially just a sedan with a giant trunk.
Or a very tall station wagon. ducks and runs