Pick-up Trucks: Image or Utility?

[IzzyR]

*Originally posted by Tamex *
Oh, and IzzyR, I’ve seen forums like that discussing Dodge Neons. Now, do Neons have any sort of macho image?

The mere existance of a forum shows absolutely nothing. My comment was about the type of interests that seemed to be prevalent on this particular forum.

Not conclusive, of course. But suggestive.

[Southerner]

Been driving a F-150 with the I6 300 engine for 20 years. Will always own a pickup. Can’t live without one. You just don’t realize how useful a pickup is until you don’t have one.

[Tamex]

Well here’s a Dodge Neon forum.

Seems just as testosterone-laden as the Ford truck forum. Perhaps even more so.

[Tamex]

I wanted to add that people who use their trucks for hunting or fishing or camping or garage saleing or home improvements, etc., etc., would probably tend to, if they posted to internet forums, post to ones regarding those interests rather than a truck forum, I’d think. I think there are a lot of people who use trucks who are not “truck enthusiasts.”

[NurseCarmen]

I have a loaded Ford Ranger that was an Insurance totaled vehicle. It was banged up real good, but had 4WD (Good for Minnesota) and the engine worked fine, auto trans, electric windows, ac, etc. I bought it with my Debit card, then sank about 1k into it so it was road worth. Grand total, around 5k.

I use it, or more specifically, I use it how god intended a pickup truck to be used, all the time. I have no fear of scratching it.

I’ve never understood the “Pretty Mall Trucks”.

I’m considering puttin the Calvin peeing on the Ford emblam, just to make people do a double take. Either that, or I might make a sticker that has Calvin peeing on Calvin peeing on Calvin…

[NicePete]

I used to wonder about this too, before I got my first truck.

Now I wonder how I ever survived without one.

I could give a flying fark about image. I have stuff to do and my truck helps me do it.

[enipla]

Yep, utility.

I’m off to pick up -

7 sheets of 4x8 x 2" rigid foam.
6 4x8 sheets(?) 6"x6" 10g wire mesh.

And people don’t think I have fun on the weekends. Shheess.

(note to self - don’t forget the hammer drill)

[Ranger]

Just thought I’d point out that from the driver’s seat in my Volvo VN 660, they all look like mini pickups.

[kniz]

Well, mine has been used to haul things, as a quick look at the bed will testify to, but image is very important. First I live in rural Mississippi, which has a high per-capita pickup ownership. If I still lived in Tupelo, I’d probably have to drive a car, but out here in the country I need to shed that “city boy” image. All my neighbors that drive own a pickup, so I’m just trying to fit in the best I can.

[IzzyR]

Here’s a NYT article that seems to back up the image position: The Pickup, a Love Story

The bed of a full-size pickup truck stretches as much as 8 feet long and 5 1/2 feet wide. It can carry 2,500 pounds, give or take, as well as tow something a good deal heavier, like a boat. But that’s not why Shannen Doherty drives one.

As useful as the bed of a pickup is, for most drivers these days the receptacle over their right shoulders remains untapped potential, a Void filled only by duffel bags and the occasional bag of manure. What’s more, the cab of the Platonic pickup – its single bench seat, more precisely – is entirely impractical if you wish to travel with company beyond your dog or your best girl. But that’s the point: alone, but not lonely, the wellspring of a pickup’s iconic appeal in America. The man (and increasingly, the woman) behind the wheel of a pickup is the automotive equivalent of the lone rider loping off into the horizon. It was, after all, for the pickup that the gun rack was invented.

Suburban car shoppers started trading in minivans and station wagons for full-size pickups. Observing this shift, Chevrolet commissioned what Ludwig describes as the first comprehensive anthropological study of car buyers to determine what accounted for the change – and to see if ‘‘Like a Rock’’ had anything to do with it. ‘‘The economic conditions were much the same as they are now: huge economic downturn, people losing white-collar jobs to downsizing, all manner of economic instability,’’ Ludwig says.

What the study indicated, Ludwig says, was that white-collar consumers, feeling anxious about the economy, were drawing inspiration from blue-collar workers (desribed in Campbell-Ewald’s study as ‘‘Skilled Labor’’). Lawyers and doctors and other professionals realized, according to Ludwig, that members of the working class ‘‘have always dealt with this instability. They just pick themselves up, dust themselves off and keep on going.’’

The white-collar consumers tried to emulate the stoic self-reliance of ‘‘Skilled Labor’’ by purchasing the stuff that they identified with the other half’s lives – not only signifying vehicles like pickups but other items too, like work boots and hunting jackets.

For most pickup drivers, though, the Void lives on, and it confers meaning. In a new television spot for the GMC Sierra, a guy is stopped by traffic in front of a construction site. As he waits in his brand-new truck, an earth-moving machine dumps a ton or so of soil into his empty bed. The truck’s owner is not upset. He glances back, almost contentedly, understanding it as an honest mistake. General Motors wants us to understand that he doesn’t mind being mistaken for a member of the construction crew, a genuine working person. In fact, it’s one of the residual benefits of driving a real machine. The pickup has always referenced a simpler kind of existence – one without kids and mortgages, one in which playing with dirt is permitted, even if the dirt is not your own.

[Green_Bean]

Great minds think alike, eh? I thought back to this thread when I saw those articles too! I thought they did a very good job of explaining the “pickup truck image” thing.