Australians are taking the lead off Americans in our penchant for monster pick-up trucks, while some Europeans move in the opposite direction.
Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.It’s a sunny winter morning in the southern suburbs of Sydney, and at the Tynan Motors car yard there are six monster US pick-ups in a row. They make even the nearby Jeeps, SUVs and regular utes look tiny. Most are RAM 1500s, which are huge enough, but to the right is an even bigger bopper, a RAM 2500. It’s well over six metres long, has a stonking great diesel V8 engine and weighs more than twice as much as a typical family SUV.
But it’s not only people who need to cart farm equipment or tow a four-horse float that are buying such vehicles. Edwards turns to his screen and reads out some figures: 31 per cent of American pick-up owners never tow, 30 per cent never go off road and 11 per cent never put anything in the tray. For many who do, it might be just once a year. He says buyer motivation in the US breaks roughly into thirds: those who need the capabilities, those who are buying on image and those who are in between.
Pick-ups might be the most extreme example, but Australians are opting for bigger and bigger vehicles, year by year. The Toyota HiLux and Ford Ranger utes regularly top our bestseller lists; indeed, more than three-quarters of new vehicles we buy are SUVs or utes, making the traditional sedans and wagons bit players. But US-built pick-up trucks are on a different scale, literally.
Newman, professor of sustainability at Perth’s Curtin University, says big SUVs and pick-up trucks often block the vision of other drivers and waste space and resources, and that’s before climate change is even considered with their fuel use. “They’re just so big,” he says, joking, “I can fit in the back with my Toyota Prius.” He adds, “And there’s always one male in it, and that’s it.”
The emergence of the pick-up as something other than a work vehicle can be traced to 1964 and a 25 per cent tariff imposed on “light trucks” imported into the US, most notably the top-selling van and pick-up versions of Germany’s VW Kombi. This was the then US President Lyndon B. Johnson’s revenge for a European impost on US poultry, but the “chicken tax” stayed and the US automotive industry gravitated towards producing pick-ups with passenger comforts and marketing them to regular consumers.
The Fiat Topolino, top speed 45 kilometres per hour, is creating excitement in Europe but like other electric quadricycles is banned from Australian streets.
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