One of the ‘wish we had kept it’ things, my dad had a 46 Chevy pickup, but when we moved from the farm to the city people did not have trucks, so it was sold.
Yes! Comparing today’s pickups with the 1951 Chevy we had on the farm, today’s vehicles are gigantic. Detroit has always been on a product growth with “bigger is better”. I remember the Mercury Comet in the late 60s as being advertised as "the largest, longest “COMPACT”. Tom McCahill thought that was ludicrous. I recommended a Toyota intermediate truck model to a colleague in Texas and he said it was “too Small”. This guy shoots one deer per year and commutes in Houston traffic the rest of the time. He ended up buying a Ford F-150.
Increased wealth has something to do with it of course, even European cars have increased is size because of more wealthier clients. My neighbor inherited a 1976 VW Rabbi for his late father and has lovingly maintained it, and . It looks puny compared to today’s Golf models.
Some interesting trivia regarding the Comet:
It was originally destined to be the Edsel division’s compact car, hence the larger size.
With the demise of the Edsel marque in 1960, Ford decided to market the Comet as Mercury’s compact car.
Cheap money has made buying all that you deserve much easier. With $10,000 off MSRP, ZERO down, 84 months to pay off and skip the first 3 payments who can’t afford the top of the line Titanic?
If Nissan ever decides to discontinue their Armada marque, perhaps they will replace it with the Nissan Titanic.
Also known as the perpetual car payment plan. You might as well just lease.
Around here…the bigger the vehicle…the smaller the driver. It’s funny seeing a huge pickup with 33" tires and lift kit…and the driver is 5’5" and might weigh 140lbs.
I also find they are far more aggressive drivers.
There’s one intersection I use to drive through. It’s a T. I had to turn right at the T. But these huge trucks would drive in the shoulder and block my view to the right. I would have to wait for them to clear before I could go. One time there were 5 trucks - one after another blocking my view. Since that what I would do is get way right to turn left. I got a few of the little punks honking their horns…oh well.
Same thing here but the intentional intimidation is usually rare. 5 times in 5 trips to the same location was incredible! Not very relaxing.
I usually stay out of the stereotype game related to what people drive (Miata, Volvo, BMW, whatever). It’s almost all malarkey. However, I have empirical evidence that some pickup drivers are, in fact, jerks (not all). I am the Admin for the Facebook Prius owner’s club. I admin about a dozen different FB clubs including the Chevy Colorado ZR2 club (a truck club). It helps me to stay up to date on the trends. Anyway, in the Prius Club, we have about 6,000 active members. We have also had to remove and block 936 trolls who joined just to harass the Prius owners. Almost every one is a truck owner. How do I know? Because when you ask to join a club on FB, the admin is given a list of your clubs and can see your profile. I can see the truck-related clubs these trolls belong to. I also see the posts that require removal and who posts them and their profiles. Just today we had one showing a person vomiting. Another (can’t make this up) was about a woman and a horrible act not for this group’s ears. I’ve deleted racist ones and the homophobic ones are constant. The most common post that we get that spurs removal is the classic “Rolling coal” pickup meme with the vertical exhausts spewing diesel particulate. Most of the trolls joined before I was admin, but some still sneak in. I block about a dozen pr day from entering. Having been a truck owner, and having many friends who are, I’m not sure what wires get crossed, but there is a subset of truck owners who act badly and I have the list to prove it.
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Could it be that the huge vehicle and the financial obligation involved to drive it infers an entitlement ethos. There’s a lot of that ethos going around these days.
The massive pickup trucks probably began with the initial Dodge Ram “Big Truck” look. I thought it was ugly when it first came out, but now all the manufacturers are making their pickups as massive as possible with the “big truck” look. I read an article a while back that looked at the price to produce a smaller pickup compared to the price to produce an old-style size. The difference wasn’t that much more, but the price the manufacturers were asking was. Margins are much larger in these monsters.
As B.L.E. pointed out, the beds now are so high as to be difficult to use. I’d have a great deal of difficulty loading or unloading one, and would be unable to get up into one. A colleague with one of these gave me a ride once, and I had all I could do to climb up into the cab. And he’s never used the bed for anything more than I could carry in my Scion.
Yup!
A friend of mine–who only recently became a car owner for the first time since the '60s–used to marvel at the behavior of his co-workers who owned big pickup trucks. When he was given a ride by some of them, they objected to his placement of a work-related duffle bag in their truck’s bed!
He asked me, “Why do they own those huge trucks if they refuse to carry anything in them?”, and I couldn’t answer his question.
I suspect entitlement ethos is a huge part of it.
I think a lot of them might have gotten new tires for winter and they are showing off. When we used to take our dog to be groomed, you could tell she was so proud of her new hair cut and would prance around. Same thing for truck owners. Just my opinion of course.
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It’s the driver, period. Parking lot today. Chevy crew cab, dually, Marine Corp sticker in back windo, MC plates parked diagonally across two parking spaces. Nearby, an older Corolla taking up two spaces.
Even had a driver, write a letter to the editor (op-ed) that admitted he had bad driving habits but said his handicap placard justified his habits!
BTW, MY 4X4 F150 cost less than my V6 Mustang.
They got big, now they are are smaller. International hasn’t built the CXT for a decade. That was the epitome of a BFT. You always could buy an F450 too, if you wanted it. Tanner Foust drives an F450. Hmmmm… he is a tad bit short…
I guess some people must think they are being cute, I guy I know decided to smoke me as he was passing me while I was riding my bicycle home from work, I told him I did not think it was cute, and he apologized. Had an intern, jacked up his truck, and his favorite thing to do was accidentally leave his brights on. Hey I had a pickup for 25 years, and drive an suv, so I say yes there are some jerks out there, but in the minority.
I’m sure they are in the minority, but the jerks are the ones that stick out and we remember them. That’s just the way we peoples are.
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True, it’s like loud exhausts on motorcycles. Nobody hears the motorcycles that aren’t loud.
Once an old lady walked over to me and asked how I made my motorcycle so quiet. I said “I just left it alone”.
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I absolutely agree.
I guess it’s human nature. On Armistice Day in 1970 I marched with my squadron through Chicago in a parade. We had bottles, cans, insults, and spit directed at us from some viewers in the crowd. That’s just the way things were back then. While the vast majority of the crowd were there enjoying the parade, it was those protestors that stand out in my memory.