European buyers aren't interested in full-size trucks; US car industry doesn't care.
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No F-150 in France? US automakers complain the EU blocks big trucks.
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Can't find it now, but I saw a photo before the 2027 Bolt was officially on sale where one was parked between a couple of Silverado EVs. The outside top of the Bolt was at the lower window line of the pickups. It's not just kids that are invisible from modern US pickups...
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I have to question the 50 foot figure. What exactly are they calling a residential road?
I'm in Colorado, and the roads inside my neighborhood are about 20 feet wide, while the road just outside the neighborhood is about 30 feet wide. I've lived in many states in the US and I never saw a road within a residential neighborhood that was more than 30 feet wide. 20 is MUCH more common.
We do have 50 foot roads nearby, but they are larger 4 lane roads between communities.
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My friend in high school's dad owned an engine rebuild shop and they had a LUV for deliveries. When the Isuzu engine wore out they dropped a Buick 215 V-8 (the basis of the famous Rover V-8) into it. Then when they got a new delivery truck my friend inherited the LUV. It was beat to hell, covered in grease, and could burn rubber in all four gears. Being gentle with the clutch it could also take any muscle car when the light turned green. It's a wonder we didn't die in that thing, but it was a lot of fun.
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Fair is fair. If the US is so demanding then a demonstration of safety is in order. I suggest that a representative of the US, let's say DJT, drive a raised F350 down a single-track road in Eire for 25 miles and then parallel park it in the nearest village without incident. Repeat ten times. If he manages that then let the negotiations begin. In any case, given the GVW of many large US pickups (loaded) a C-class license would be required to drive one on the public roads and getting one is not simple.
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Here in the US I drive a not-jacked up Ranger and am constantly dwarfed by idiots with "real" pickups that are at least 33% larger in all dimensions. It's really bad.
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When my dad retired, he bought a 5th-wheel trailer and a GMC pickup to go with it for Those Long Retirement Road Trips. The rig got used for the intended purpose maybe 2-3 times a year; the trailer spent most of its life in a storage lot, and the truck parked beside the house. The truck was too big and used too much fuel even for the 1980s, even for them (fairly well-off retirees with a good pension). When they decided to dump the trailer, it was sold as a set with the truck, which was replaced with a 90s Tacoma; the Toyota was smaller & easier to drive (so it could be used as a 2nd car too), used much less gas, and was just as useful (payload, bed size) for the occasional suburban trips that required a truck. It moved several of us kids, several times, and afaik is still running around with one of their grandkids.
Unfortunately, that style of "Tacoma" is long gone. Modern ones are as big and imposing as any current US pickup model (I think it's considered "mid-size" now), though not any more useful. In fact, the bed is smaller than the old one because you can only get current models with 4 doors afaik.
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Dang it! Just a few hours ago saw a big long Dodge RAM truck parked between 2 small 3 doors Fiat Punto (i'm in Italy), and my first thought was : Hey, look, a dick! Unfortunately i was driving and i could't take a picture.
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Export-model Ram (looks like the older model resurrected for this purpose, not the current US Ram) in Europe. Probably should have the disclaimer on the all-rural video: "closed road, professional driver; do not attempt this yourself!"
View: https://youtu.be/nr-Op6C4XTM?si=X64s2TQyLu2hFiK6
Then there's this one. Obviously needs more than its own lane.
View: https://youtu.be/NmrLpb_JdXo?si=mEaOaqtq5XjiLg-P
Supposedly, though, most of the Ram pickups for Europe will be a smaller (but still large for Europe - US mid-size) model that won't be sold in the US.
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To add to my earlier post about this and how insane pickups have gotten. Because I forgot , my dad had a 99 Silverado until a few years ago. That truck was not oversized at all. And it could haul and tow everything he ever needed it to (boats, trailers with Snowmobiles). He bought a modern Silverado like 2 years ago and it's absurd how much bigger it is. The truck bed can't even haul more stuff than the old one
And I drove it the other day as a designated driver and the thing feels so unweildly and weird to drive. It's like they are trying to get pickups to look and feel like an 18 wheeler .
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Total agreement. It's not about what they need, it's about what they could do.
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Lmao, that's pretty much the same, it's the people who think they have big dicks but really don't. The smol bois needing to project "YEAH MURICA! LOOK AT ME IM SO ALPHA BIG DICK"Big dick energy? The first thought that comes into my mind when I see on in the Netherlands is "Oh look, a guy with a small dick"
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Further to that, after yesterday, a country that facilitated one genocide and threatened a second has forfeited any right to be given the benefit of the doubt.
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2.8 litres to the US gallon, 4.4 litres to the imperial gallon which is the only way your maths works
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Yeah, kinda, but it's mostly about how much harder it is to get a license in Europe.
I barely scraped by on my first try in Europe (get on this ring road, now make your way over to the fast lane, now take the next exit, now park here in a space with a single foot of clearance).
When I took the US test, I almost pissed myself laughing over how easy it was. Drive down this road, now this road, now park in this 65ft opening. When the examiner said I passed, I fully expected Aston Kutcher to jump out from behind the bushes. No, really, it was that stupid.
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Full sized is a very generous term that implies they're normal. Oversized makes far more sense.
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I really appreciate the article pointing this out. Almost nobody in the US understands just how much of our built environment: roads, setbacks, elevator size, double-loaded corridor/single stair hotels/multi-family apartments/condos, etc. are determined by fire departments. These fire departments are basically making these decisions on vibes, and suffer from the same "big truck" mentality that F-150/Silverado/Ram buyers do.
Our fire trucks have to be BIG to carry a BIG ladder and LOTS of water and ALL our equipment. Nevermind that most of that is wasted since fire departments spend far more time responding to car accidents than structure fires. Many of of those accidents are at least partially caused and typically exacerbated by excessive speed, since nobody drives the speed limit because roads are so wide and distances between things so far (building setbacks and parking requirements) that it tricks the mind into thinking we aren't going fast enough. It's utterly absurd to send a 60k-80k lbs, multi-million dollar articulated ladder truck to respond to car accidents, but our fire departments do it routinely. The need to get to the scene FAST in that massive truck drives the requirements for wider streets which themselves encourage unsafe driving.
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Safety?
Porsche wants to sell many models of car/suv in USA that easily goes over two times the legal speed limit.
Just saying...
Porsche wants to sell many models of car/suv in USA that easily goes over two times the legal speed limit.
Just saying...
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Were there really only 5,000 Rams imported in the entire EU in a year? I'm in the EU now, and I can't turn the corner without seeing one (yes, different ones, I'm not being stalked), usually parked at some impossible angle or jutting out into the traffic.
Maybe it's just how grotesquely out of place they look, but if you'd told me it was 50,000, I wouldn't have blinked either.
Maybe it's just how grotesquely out of place they look, but if you'd told me it was 50,000, I wouldn't have blinked either.
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Here in Australia it's currently at US$8.25 a gallon (A$3.08 a litre).
Funnily enough massive trucks, though mostly compact by US standards, are finally taking a hit in the market. Add in a big steering fault recall on Toyota Hiluxes and its shifting the market a bit.
EVs have trebled sales.
It's hilarious when the US administration talks about respecting trade deals after a couple of years of whim based tariffs used as threats and punishments in complete abrogation of those very trade deals. It shows what was always said by the critics that the trade deals are only there for the major corporations to control the smaller partners governments and they work well for that.
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Actually regulation is likely the main reason we have so many oversized trucks in the US, at least originally (by now it's probably more cultural inertia than regulations) : https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2012/10/how-cafe-killed-compact-trucks-and-station-wagons/
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In Eixample in Barcelona, the corners have been converted to motorbike or car parking spaces, the road has been converted to four lanes where one is for buses or taxis, one is for parking and loading/unloading, leaving two 2.4m wide lanes for cars and nobody's fitting a Dodge Ram in a lane or in an underground car park when they arrive at their destination (which they won't because it's wider than a lane).
These obese gas-guzzling vehicles just won't sell, except to the kind of idiots who think it's a good idea to import cybertrucks themselves and then get them impounded shortly afterwards by the police for being a danger.
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That's interesting about truck sales declining, since the US "midsize" Ranger was first designed for the Australian market. You need to revive utes and then get the rest of the world on board.
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The one silver lining of this horrible Iranian war is that these fucks are paying out the nose to fill these pieces of shit with fuel.
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You represent like 5% of the people who buy these things. The rest are just using the vehicle as a gender-affirmation device.
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So it will pull the 15 to 20 foot fishing boats I see on the road all the time to the lake a couple of hours away? Pull the dual 4x4 UTV trailer my neighbor up the street has loaded without issue? Carry two to three cubic yards of mulch?
The Maverick is a wonderful vehicle that deserves to be a best seller, but don’t mistake it for covering most of the stuff rural people do with their trucks.
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