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‘Seismic shift’: driving unaffordable for many in US amid push toward SUVs
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2024
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I had to use a unit converter, but I've lived in places housing up to seven people that weren't that big. Comfortably.
This is a conversation I had here recently as well when I pointed out to a car thread that for the money Americans pay for pickup trucks you can also buy a hatchback and a proper van, cover most use cases and not drive a tank to take kids to school. They did NOT like that.
Hatchbacks and vans are enclosed and not fun to haul stinky stuff and aren't conducive to hosing out after.
The main problem in the US is companies not making Coupe utility sized vehicles like the Subaru Brat or the El Camino. Small and light vehicles with beds. I would love a small AWD electric or hybrid truck that size that has good mileage for commuting and just enough convenience for moving cumbersome and stinky things around. The Ford Maverick is a move in the right direction, but is almost a midsized truck instead of going full on compact.
AAAAAAH, it's happening again!
Let me speedrun through this: I've never seen a pickup truck and I am in a rural place where people move stinky stuff all the time. Vans can be purchased with sealed off cabins, and with all doors open can be hosed down easily. It's fine. Nobody here has pickups. I haven't seen a pickup or known anybody to have one and everybody is fine. This is a strictly American thing and the US isn't the moon, there really isn't a unique need to use a truck bed for school runs.
You're doing the thing the man said: drive a tank to buy groceries in case you have to haul manure once a year.
If by "American" you mean North American, then yeah, you are correct, because pickups are also super popular in Canada and Mexico. But I don't think that's what you mean. I think you mean to specify the US which again, is incorrect. The fact that pickups are so popular in Canada and Mexico as well tells us that contrary to what I suspect you're trying to imply, there isn't some kind of special innate idiotic pickup truck gene that's unique to Americans and that instead, it's all about marketing.
After all, if marketing and advertising didn't work, it wouldn't be a multi-billion dollar industry. What the big American car companies have done with amazing effectiveness is to make owning a pickup truck an intimate part of a lot of people's self-image. That's what you are arguing against and that's why it's nearly impossible to change anyone's mind about it.
That's all fair enough. And let me just include the first part about North America in there and not also pick the fight about Canada being mostly in that same cultural bundle because this thread is already trolly and angry enough.
I think if this thread wasn't such a hassle it'd be interesting to pick some of that apart, because I do think the marketing is culturally bound, not arbitrary (if it was arbitrary it would have worked in the places where it didn't). I do think it's obviously hard to argue about the identitarian bit you mention, though, because... well, look around this thread.