Market tyranny limits choices — consider pickup trucks

© 2018 Peter Free

 

24 April 2018

 

 

Today, I return to the subject of the American car and trailer market

 

But in a slightly different way.

 

 

Limited market choices affect one's perspective, don't they?

 

I noticed this, after returning to the United States from being stationed in Germany for three years. Europe, having preserved a variety of cultures, satisfies niche tastes and needs generally better than we do Stateside.

 

With regard to my topic, vehicle choices (except as to expensively huge American pickup trucks) are plentiful there. If you have a requirement, somebody produces or sells a car to meet it.

 

This is not true in the US. Frugality and niche-appropriate practicality seem to be less prized on this side of the Great Water.

 

Pertinently, I am writing in south Texas. Where having the biggest pickup truck is symbolically important.

 

If you look around these parts, it is impossible not have your eyes bounce off herds of massively large personal use trucks wherever you look. Getting the toddlers to town evidently requires boatloads of steel and gallons of fuel.

 

I do not particularly intend to demean. The intercontinental difference is just one in prevailing conditions and cultural perspective. (You can read more about the American side of the "why own a truck" question, here.)

 

 

What happens, when one brings a European vehicle sense to Texas?

 

The American vehicle market, and its limitations, directly affect me now.

 

I have to figure out what to do about replacing the truck that I had to sell before going to the German assignment. That no frills regular cab long bed was uncomfortably too big for Europe's narrow twisty roads and streets. Not to mention the continent's dinky parking spaces.

 

Pertinent to the pending decision process, I have been off the farm so long that I have trouble justifying another truck. Especially so, given the foolishly large size of today's models.

 

These American motoring vessels are clearly not designed for people who actually use them for manual labor. Their unnecessary height irritated me last year — after days of loading heavy objects into an overly high Chevy. I share Canadian automotive writer, Jil McIntosh's perspective regarding modernity's large, high overkill.

 

I miss the variety of small trucks (like Couriers, Luvs, Toyotas, Nissans and Mazdas) that used to be cheap and plentiful in the States. The base trim 1979 Courier that I once owned averaged 30 miles per gallon and never got stuck in snow. Unless I high centered it. It uncomplainingly hauled loads larger and heavier than it was designed to. And it could fit into a garage (if I needed it to) without a problem. Try that today.

 

If you to read more about today's North American absence of these mini-trucks, read McIntosh's "chicken tax" tariff explanation.

 

 

Vanished common sense and financial acumen?

 

Here, I'm addressing the practical aspects of vehicle size, ergonomic utility, and family finances.

 

Our sales market has evolved away from providing pickup trucks that "manually labor" in affordable ways. This defeats their once prime purpose.

 

I am not hostile to crew-cab, people-moving trucks' appeal. Just wondering how the numerically declining laboring class got almost completely left out of being supplied with cheaper and more ergonomically useful stuff-movers.

 

 

The take-away?

 

Just like the perspective limitations imposed by our Internet search engines, the American Market constrains our world view in ways that most of us probably do not recognize.

 

If one has not lived abroad, he and she may not recognize the myriad range of practical and efficient vehicles that dominate many of those markets.

 

In Europe alone, you can find a spectrum of micro-micro vans to super-giant ones that seem to exceed even our largest American behemoths in size. The range of car and trailer choices is similarly vast. It is comparatively easy to find what you want, including Jeep Wranglers. Perhaps the only exception is coming across gigantic American pickup trucks. These, Europeans think, are weather-impractical, gas-guzzling, overly expensive space-wasters.

 

For most people and most purposes (both here and there) I tend to agree with them. Self-image — at practicality's expense — arguably dominates too much of the American market.

 

 

As an aside — consider the limitations of Ford's soon arriving new Ranger truck

 

I read today that Ford is reportedly not going to produce its regular cab Ranger for the American market.

 

The regular cab model will only be for sale in southeast Asia. Where, we can intuit, people will use these trucks to do what pickups were originally designed to do.

 

On our (mostly paper-shuffling) side of the Great Water, the crewish version is probably aimed at macho soccer dads and moms. A truck designed for ferrying dogs, groceries and carpooling. In muscular style, of course.

 

There is nothing wrong with this. But it does mean that the Ranger's American bed will be too short and too high for efficient stuff-carting. Which is what I would want it for. Just like its 1979 Courier predecessor.

 

The American Ranger's cab will be too large for someone who does not need a truck to move multiple people around. And the truck will be heavier, more expensive and fuel-gobbling than it needs to be for most work purposes.

 

 

Limited choices like these — is what I mean by "market tyranny"

 

We keep getting more of the same too large and too expensive pickups that abandoned laboring people's work and financial needs.

 

From a farmer and construction workers point of view, most full-sized pickups (and all compacts) come with 5.5 to 6.5 foot beds.

 

Now what am I going to do with 5.5 foot bed on an enormous (13-17 mpg) truck?

 

 

Carry the St. Bernard and his lunch pail?

 

The beach umbrella and a giant Yeti beer cooler?

 

Two bags of steer manure and a shovel?

 

 

I exaggerate. But not by a whole lot.

 

These short-shortbed vehicles are not pickup trucks. They're raised buses with room for a few suitcases and a bicycle.

 

I remember when American pickup people laughed at Honda's Ridgeline "truck". Now those "manly" critics are imitating it in overkill form.

 

 

Do minivans demonstrate women's superior practical sense?

 

One can haul plywood and sheetrock in a Dodge, Chrysler or Honda minivan. Unlike shortbed trucks, these 2 to 3 sheets will not stick out beyond the minivan's taillights. Lift heights are lower. And minivans will pull sensibly sized work trailers.

 

Does this utility demonstrate that minivan-buying women are smarter than the majority of pickup-buying men? Meaning the ones who are never going to repetitively haul heavy messes and volumes?

 

I tell my wife so. She smiles in relaxed superiority.

 

"But, of course."

 

 

The moral? — Who really leads the Market?

 

A wastefully inclined public?

 

"Greedy" manufacturers?

 

Does the market really turn out what sizeable groups of differently inclined people want?

 

Consider these geographic contrasts:

 

 

In Europe, the 2366 pound Fiat 500 is rated to tow 400 kilograms (880 pounds).

 

In the United States, the 500 is not rated to tow at all.

 

 

In Europe, the Mini Cooper clan is rated to tow a range of 650 kilograms to 1500 kg (1430 to 3300 pounds).

 

In the United States, Minis are not rated to tow anything. If you come across a list of Mini tow capacity ratings over here, it will have come from Europe and European legal conditions.

 

 

If you are still not persuaded that an "against economic practicality" cultural trait might exist in North America, mull this last example:

 

 

In the United States, Buick's 3237 pound Encore is not rated to tow anything.

 

In Europe, 1852 pound Smart ForTwos tow decently sized trailers.

 

 

We Americans like big.

 

We like waste.

 

And we don't mind generating unnecessary pollution.

 

Our American market constrains more environmentally efficient choices that some would like to make. Even in so minor a thing as affording us choices among space-saving, sturdy but lightweight trailers, the US marketplace is unimaginatively limiting.

 

To understand why these constraints exist, in the forms that they do, follow the money.

 

Most sources indicate that building big cars and trucks is much more profitable for American businesses than manufacturing small ones. The oil industry would take a hit, if all of us bought motor vehicles as efficient as the ones that Europeans drive.

 

Community-blind self-interest is everywhere in the United States. Its excesses grate. Those excesses own the three branches of American government.