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How the heck did we get here? Most best selling "cars" are now superzied pickups and SUVs.
(www.caranddriver.com)
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this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
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Fuck Cars
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I dunno. I had to drive a truck over the weekend, to move 3 cords of wood. I rented an F250, which is a big truck. It was useful to have; there's no way that I would have been able to move that much wood with a smaller truck and trailer, and, if my driveway wasn't so tight, it would have been nicer to rent a larger dump trailer (I'm pretty sure that I was over the maximum load rating on the trailer for each trip).
...But it's not a fun truck to drive. Power is slow compared to the compact car I usually drive, and very slow compared to my motorcycle, steering feels sloppy, brakes are feel mushy, fuel economy is terrible, and it was so goddamn big that I had to drive very carefully to be sure that it wasn't over any of the lines on the road. Aside from the ability to move a very heavy load--greater than a ton--it really doesn't have much of anything going for it. I can't imagine why most people would want one, compared to a vehicle that allows them to react quickly.
...Or compared to functioning public transit.
Two things: First of course is one simply must have a nicer, bigger, more powerful truck than that guy.
The second thing is no, that F250 you rented wasn't comfortable. You most likely rented an F250 XL. The XL trim is the lowest, meanest, least comfortable version of Ford's trucks. The people who need their brodozer status symbol drive the fancy versions that have the soft carpet, power windows, leather seats, and a bed cover because lets be realistic, that truck bed will never carry anything more than groceries.
I have an F150 XL that I bought used. It was a rental truck from some hardware store called "Menards". It has no carpet, no power windows, no tint, steel wheels, no extended cab, no crew cab, no CD player, just a bench seat and an 8ft bed.
OMG, Menards is fantastic, and I wish we had them in the state I live in now. :(
But yeah, base model truck. But even without the being a base model, the things that make it shitty to drive are still going to be shitty.
When I worked at a bank not too long ago I got to drive the company car once and its one of those van sized 3 row SUVs with a truck bed's worth of space (probably a full 8 feet!) when the third row is folded down and holy cow that thing handled like a boat, accelerated poorly, breaked really hard and had a super disconcerting glide to the suspension.
I had to go pick up some packages for my department that the post office had said were a lot, but it turned out to just be like one seat's worth of boxes, so i couldve just driven my own car and expensed the miles, so it was a waste of a trip for that giant boat