🎵 12 yards long, 2 lanes wide 🎵
65 tonnes of American pride!
The shift to these ridiculously large trucks is partially consequent of the poorly-implemented Obama fuel economy regulations. The regulations were determined by wheelbase and tread width, which disincentivized manufacturers from making mid- or small-sized trucks. The bigger they made them, the less restricted they were by fuel economy. Larger vehicles also ease constraints on engineers; they don’t have to struggle fitting a lot into a small body. Once large trucks became the default offering, they morphed into the annoying cultural “status” symbol we know today.
Anyway I have a Miata MX-5 and I love my tiny car.
Say it with me folks!
Miata
Is
Always
The
Answer!I’ll just leave this here. Took this shot of my car a few years ago.
Ugh, that reminds me - just a few weeks ago, I ended up next to this monstrosity:
With it being that high up off the ground, using the truck bed for any actual purpose is going to be difficult, unless you have an actual semitruck loading bay in your back yard.
That truck has not, and will not, experience a single second of actual work.
Nor will it ever leave pavement.
Why does it remind me of this two
I mean these are also two different types of cars. But it is actually so weird to see even two cars of the same type made in different times next to each other. It’s like somebody messed with the scale slider in the level editor. It’s uncanny.
I don’t want to defend the overly supersized truck too much, but I do want to point out that even these are two different class of vehicles. Sure, you can cram 4 smallish people into that old Ford Ranger, but nobody is going to be comfortable or happy about it. Also, that small ranger has far less cargo and towing capacity.
Of course, a good chunk of truck owners do not need that much capacity and big trucks are just a toy/status symbol to them. Which is stupid. But there are use cases where those trucks are actually needed, and a small Ford Ranger won’t cut it.
That said, I do wish we could get more small pickup trucks again. The maverick is a good start.
For these kinds of comparisons people have to cherry pick and cannot compare similar class trucks because similar class trucks haven’t really changed in 30 years
If you compare the size of a base 1990 F150 https://www.edmunds.com/ford/f-150/1990/features-specs/
To a base 2025 F150 https://www.edmunds.com/ford/f-150/2025/features-specs/
The 2025 is 6 inches shorter, barely an inch taller, and barely an inch wider. Or in terms of percentages: -3.1%, +1.1%, +1.2% respectively
What has changed in 30 years is it was common back then for an average consumer to buy a “regular” cab two door truck with a 6 foot box, four door behemoths were rare. If you wanted a 4 door truck you had to get the F350
Today it’s the other way around, it’s rare to see a single cab F150 and now you can get a 4 door F150
Yeah, the problem isn’t that the big trucks exist. There is a place for them, always will be. But they shouldn’t be a commuter vehicle, the majority of owners never use them for their intended purpose, and even those that do need a truck rarely need one of the size they get.
