The 'insanely oversized "trucks"' are necessary for reasons probably not evident if you grew up in a country like NT. I'm from a small town in rural Ontario, Canada where most people drive a 4WD vehicle largely because they'd never get out of their snow-filled driveway in a tiny European style car. Lots of country roads are literally impassable without a large machine; having a truck of some kind is more or less a necessity for plenty of rural folks.
Yeah but thirty years ago they were all little 2WD Nissans and Toyotas with a few bales of hay in the back. The trucks you're talking about were kind of family tractors and would rarely be used for distance. They all got like 9mpg and just needed to run when something got stuck.
Hardly anyone is making compact pickups anymore. Even models that used to be in that class (e.g. Tacoma, Ranger) seem to have gotten a lot bigger over the past 10 years. I find it disappointing, I always thought they were a great compromise between fuel efficiency while still retaining most of the utility of a regular truck.
Huh? 30 years ago Nissans and Toyotas had negligible pickup marketshare (at least in the US, not sure about Canada?). Anyway, the average retail price of gas back then was ~$1/gallon, so 9mpg wasn't a major deal (considerably cheaper than a 30mpg sedan today).
This was soon enough after the oil embargo that mpg was still on everyone's mind, and people didn't really use 4WD vehicles for general transportation at that point.
Just big, uncomfortable, expensive to maintain and operate vehicles that you'd generally use for a specific purpose.
> I don't see why trucks are one of things people can't buy just because they prefer it.
I was responding to GP who said trucks are necessary in rural areas with snow and rough roads. Obviously people can buy what they want, and other people can judge them for their choices as they want.
> I'm sure everyone owns something that another person would consider frivolous.
Definitely. I'm sure there are people who judge my purchases - I wish them well. But most frivolous purchases don't kill pedestrians at alarming rates, or guzzle absurd amounts of gas pointlessly. Pickup trucks are the pit bulls of car ownership.
