👌 is definitely not the customer choosing a bigger car. The entire western hemisphere has been brainwashed.
For a little while my mentality was that vehicles were getting so big here that my family was better off in the biggest thing on the road. We bought a GMC Yukon XL Denali.
I wised up and downsized twice. First to a minivan then a smaller SUV.
You're not wrong. But the other commenter is equally right. I was never given a poll or survey for preferred vehicle size, it's just what the market is, not selected by commuters. It's an industry thing.
Most people are like you. We look around us and get what seems normal. Unfortunately, marketing and constant push to get the bigger(and more expensive) vehicle changes what the normal would be if we just humbly choose the simpler cost-effective option.
A $65,000 luxury SUV is not "normal"
Well the customer definitely isn't given a choice of a smaller model year new truck, but that is more on the manufacturer than the salesman
There's "smaller" trucks available, they're just the same size as an early '00s full size
And basically the same price as the full size, but you have to special order.
"Got it, we'll make the full sizes even bigger and more expensive"
-Car Manufacturers
But not as capable in terms of payload and towing capacity, if you need that.
People who don't use their car professionally hardly need to tow anything in their day to day lives. And payload, the most cargo that they haul would be luggage for family vacations or the weeks groceries, and then, protected cargo space is more important, because you don't want your luggage or groceries to be lost or stolen. These trucks have this cover that can be placed on top of the truck bed, but that limits cargo space to less than a stationwagon.
Except they don't have the same bed size as those early '00s full size trucks.
Bullshit, you can get a maverick, Ridgeline, etc. They sell like shit because they don't tow as much and offer less around large bulky items that folks like a truck bed for. Small trucks are rarely a suitable use case outside smaller tradesman and for most of them an actual van is more efficient and better business use case.
The Merrick sales spiked as a new model selling 75k of them to pent up demand. They sold 150k vans. They sold nearly 700k f150s.
Small pickups are a dumb class of vehicle which will always be a niche class. SUVs tow as much. Vans offer a better vehicle for less cost than a 1/4 ton pickup.
The problem with modern "small trucks" is the bed size is smaller than a truck from 30 years ago the maverick has a bed size of 54" while a 1990 chevy 1500 has a smaller wheelbase and a 78" bed that's over a foot of more cargo space on a smaller frame! The truck is useless because it's designed that way.
That's not a small truck, it's a large truck with a small bed. This is a small truck. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kei_truck
No, that's a kei truck which are utility vehicles designed for a very specific application that America does not have
Aka a small truck. Unlike oversized American pickup trucks which are designed for no application other that to make their owner's dick feel bigger as they drive to the grocery store.
Show me a single kei truck that can haul a full crew, 3,000lbs, and go 70mph on the highway without frying its transmission.
pro tip: you can't.
You do know they have full size pickup trucks in Japan, right? Kei trucks are pretty much only used for extremely light duty in the cities and within jobsites (as in, between two warehouses on the same site) because they're so small and underpowered. They're cool, but completely impractical in America
Again, it's a small truck, with the advantages and limitations that come with that.
But let's ignore the size, since a kei style truck can be sized up or down to fit. There's a different conversation to be had here. American pickup trucks are focused on being fashion accessories for insecure suburbanites, which involves creating these theoretical numbers and making those numbers as big as possible. Is carrying 5 people and towing however many tons at 112 km/h a common use case? No, and I'm terrified that it's legal to travel that fast while towing a trailer in some places. In inflating these pointless numbers, it neglects being a practical working vehicle, because that was never the goal.
A simple flatbed like the kei truck is so much more practical. It's low to the ground so it's easy to chuck things in and out of, the bed is easily replaceable when it gets damaged, the bed is much bigger for the size of the vehicle.
There are plenty of small trucks running around in the US. A 2023 Ford Maverick is just 1" longer than a 90s Nissan Hardbody and much safer with better fuel economy.
but let's ignore the size, since a kei style truck can he sized up or down to fit.
You don't know what you're talking about. "Kei" is a strict legal term in Japan, for keijidōsha or "light duty" and are regulated in size (no longer than 3.4m / 134in) and displacement. What you're describing is a cab-over design, which we have plenty of in the US but are known for being fuel inefficient and unsafe.
American pickup trucks are focused on being fashion accessories for insecure suburbanites, which involves creating these theoretical numbers and making those numbers as big as possible
Truck larpers have always been a thing. It still doesn't change the fact that when you need to haul things (like millions of people do every single day), a truck is the only vehicle platform that can do it.
Is carrying 5 people and towing however many tons at 112 km/h a common use case?
I do it 5 days a week. You've also just given out the fact that you don't live in the US, so I'm not even sure why you entered into this conversation about the American car market.
At that point you want a Mitsubishi Fuso or something, they're up to the task of doing real work while a US style pickup truck is for posing.
Hell, even a little Ute with a flathead is more practical for actually loading up with stuff
This comic is 38 years old and still relevant. My friend just bought a new car and got absolutely ripped off at 26% interest. Sure he can refinance later, but he bought more vehicle than he needed at a high price.
He could have paid for it on a credit card and made out better. Damn.
And I feel ripped off at getting a 4% interest rate on my new truck earlier this year.
Booster seats are 200.
Cars are too dangerous to be getting bigger
#SalesFails
Based Gary
Hello fellow Far Side fans!
About this community and how I post the comic strip… Many moons ago, I would ask my Dad to save the newspaper for me everyday so I could read my favorite comic strips and one of those was The Far Side. These days of course you find just about anything online including www.thefarside.com where they post several comics a day and I repost them here. Just to note, the date you see in my posts is not the initial release date, but the date they were posted on the website.
The Far Side is a single-panel comic created by Gary Larson and syndicated by Chronicle Features and then Universal Press Syndicate, which ran from December 31, 1979, to January 1, 1995 (when Larson retired as a cartoonist). Its surrealistic humor is often based on uncomfortable social situations, improbable events, an anthropomorphic view of the world, logical fallacies, impending bizarre disasters, (often twisted) references to proverbs, or the search for meaning in life… Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Far_Side
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