but they’re incredible tools for hard-working folks who need them.
there's not a single hard-working person that can afford trucks like these.
That's the contractors probably, the workers tend to be driving older ones. Depends on the gig though
I'd make an exception for old-school trucks, or people who actually use them to haul stuff.
But these fancy tech suites are for rich people that want to pretend to be poor, because....cowboys or some shit.
They don't even really sell legitimate work trucks anymore. A pickup with an 8' bed, A/C, and a bluetooth radio should cost like 30k and get 25mpg but good fucking luck.
rich people that want to pretend to be poor
"social camouflage"
In addition to their imposing size and protective shells, SUVs also offer a useful aspect of social camouflage, enabling the well-to-do to ‘pass’ as regular working folk in urban settings. For example, an MTV executive who travels to ‘fringe neighborhoods’ in search of new talent admits that ‘he feels less conspicuous in a Jeep than in a Mercedes’ (Kuntz,1985: 266). In Hollywood, the early 1990s trend toward ‘downscale’ vehicles is reflected in the popularity of SUVs. Some entertainment executives cite the personal hazard of driving luxury cars, especially flashy sports cars, in ‘crime-vulnerable Los Angeles’ as an explanation for Hollywood’s attraction to Range Rovers with headlight ‘rhino-guards’
https://mypages.unh.edu/sites/default/files/jlauer/files/lauer_2005_driven_to_extremes.pdf (page 12)
Come to think of it, this kind of thinking can come in handy if we're doing any organizing out in rural America, assuming one is not rural.
As a leftist growing up in the middle of nowhere in a red state, I'll admit that I almost felt ashamed of being...a rural American and I stopped doing the shit that I really liked growing up doing. I don't dislike the US because I have a strange aversion to cowboys and peach cobblers, I just want the US to stop blowing up brown kids with my healthcare money and to be nicer to the rainbow people and women. No matter what the Bible says. I tend to get along with people better if I just embrace what I do growing up instead of trying to LARP as a Californian as I did growing up.
I drive a pickup truck because I have a side job where I install low voltage in new builds because my employer doesnt pay me enough so I have to work two jobs. Do you hate me?
That's like the average cost any new vehicle in the US. Even a used one from like 5 years back sells for more than 10k above what they would usually be.
Huh, am I out of touch with US vehicle prices? I feel like that's nearly double the average cost of a new car in the UK.
Depends on the car but pickups in the US are obnoxiously expensive for various reasons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax
Interesting. Also what's with the popularity of flat bed trucks over like white transit vans? You will basically not see these flatbeds outside of america, everyone uses vans.
If by flatbed you mean pickup trucks; My guess would be it's a holdover from when America was a lot more rural and much more of the economy was agricultural. Pickups are great for work here you need to move lots of heavy, dirty stuff like dirt or bricks or cinderblocks or whatever random construction materials. Just throw them in the back and go. Same goes for all kinds of heavy tools. Just shove them in the back. The open bed means you can access the cargo from any direction and there's no limit on how tall your cargo can be. You can fit it out with all kinds of accessory racks to carry different kinds of tools and equipment. And pick-up trucks, at least historically, were pretty rugged and well suited for operating on poorly maintained dirt or gravel roads.
A lot of people in the US who use trucks for work do use various kinds of transit vans, they're very common for all kinds of tradesmen. But pickup trucks have become sort of a luxury status vehicle so there are tons of wildly oversized pickups that don't actually get used for anything. A lot of them are made with a crew cab so you can seat 4-5 people, but they only have a 4 or 6 foot bed so you can barely haul anything.
Turns out that it's more because of dealer marking up the prices https://www.coxautoinc.com/market-insights/kbb-atp-january-2022/
I'm the one true leftist, the only person I dont hate is Carl Marcks.
Taking my bajillion dollar 3 ton hunk of metal on the road, running down literally every single pedestrian in sight, pumping enough emissions into the atmosphere to kill every person with asthma in a 50 km radius to show solidarity with the proletariat
Eagerly awaiting the day consumer vehicles pass the threshold where MPG becomes GPM
By the time these are old enough to be work trucks who will want them? A 4 door pickup? Wtf is that even for? Touch screens. Seat warmers. Tire pressure sensors. Wireless entry and startup. Aaaaaaaaaah who will maintain these minefields of useless breakable features?
American car companies will eventually offer lines of monster trucks and SUVs that are effectively APC-sized vehicles for civilians.
the United States is in some ways becoming a medieval society, in which people live and work in the modern equivalent of castles – gated communities, apartment buildings with doormen and office buildings with guards – and try to shield themselves while traveling between them. They do this by riding in sport utility vehicles, which look armored, and by trying to appear as intimidating as possible to potential attackers.
Bradsher, 2000: 5
Modeled on the US Army jeep and the British Land Rover, the SUV is self-consciously styled as a modified military vehicle. In some cases, the name of the SUV itself evokes conquest and imperialism: Trooper, Blazer, Pathfinder, Range Rover, 4Runner (gun-runner?), Bravada. During the early 1980s, car makers realized that these rugged, boxy vehicles could be sold in even greater numbers by simply upgrading the upholstery and adding air-conditioning, radios, and power features. The interiors required updating but the basic aesthetic of the vehicles remained a key selling point.
‘While every passenger car in the world pays homage to aerodynamics, utes continue to be as square-cut and straightforward as building blocks. SUV owners like them that way’ ( Popular Mechanics,1988: 94, italics in original).
The SUV’s association with American military might is duly noted by Hal Sperlick, president of Chrysler, who said of the jeep, ‘It’s awesome. I mean, Jeep won the war. It’s like Ike. It’s America’ (Hoyt, 1987: 83).
This barebones aesthetic that lends the SUV its utilitarian aura did become more streamlined and curvaceous by the 1990s. However, even sleek SUVs retained their four-wheel-drive capabilities and could be outfitted with tubular steel grates and permanent roof racks that, though mostly unnecessary, suggest military-grade protection and versatility. As Rapaille notes, the interiors of new SUVs may exude luxury and comfort – feminine warmth and procreation – but the exteriors remain masculine, intimidating, and warlike (Bradsher, 2002). The headline of an ad for the Mitsubishi Montero essentially confirms this: ‘The ideal vehicle for “type A” personalities. Aggressive on the outside, uncompromising on the inside’ (New Yorker, 31 October 1994).
Commenting on the SUV phenomenon in 1987, one observer writes: Four-by-fours suggest rangeland or combat. Mothers wheeling into the school parking lot in their four-by-fours resemble a flanking maneuver by Rommel’s Afrika Korps . . . many four-by-fours seem to have been designed for two or three close friends, their rifles, and a medium-sized dog. (Maynard, 1987: 16)
Despite its image as a macho, masculine vehicle, growing numbers of women began to opt for SUVs over cars or minivans for similar reasons as men – their ruggedness and brawn rather than their practicality. A Vogue article notes that the new SUVs recall the jeep as a ‘lively, even poignant reminder of war’s elemental state’ (Thomas, 1989: 248). By 1989 women already represented one-third of the primary drivers of SUVs (Bagot,1989). As a female SUV driver, quoted in Time, explains: ‘For years men drove around in big cars and trucks and looked down at women, at their legs. Now I think a lot of women are enjoying riding around and looking down on the little men’ (Greenwald, 1994: 57).
Worth a read if your not familiar with this work from 2005. I recall reading this in my nascent 'liberaltarian' days when I was first examining America's car culture and SUV obsession. It was a pretty good bridge into Critical Theory that ultimately brought me to real Marxism and the rest.
https://mypages.unh.edu/sites/default/files/jlauer/files/lauer_2005_driven_to_extremes.pdf
:astronaut-2: :astronaut-1:
As an embodiment of physical safety and privileged social space, the Hummer certainly stands alone. However, its relationship to public perception of crime and social danger is uncertain. The Hummer belongs to a second generation of SUVs, one that emerged during the mid-to-late 1990s and distinguished by increasingly exaggerated dimensions and aggressive styling, as exemplified by the Cadillac Escalade and Dodge Durango, both introduced in 1998. But even more, as a vehicle whose fuel economy is less than 10 miles per gallon (23.5 liters/100 km), the Hummer conflates rationalized risk management with conspicuous consumption. Unlike the first generation, which drew upon the diminutive, Spartan jeep and notions of practicality, the Hummer and its near relatives are decidedly oversized, over-equipped, and impractical. The Hummer itself has become the military model for the second generation of SUVs. Such outsized late-1990s models convey a cavalier egotism that is less indicative of heightened risk consciousness than of overt class consciousness. The Hummer demands to be noticed and admired as an exclusionary status symbol. The protective features of second generation SUVs seem gratuitously aesthetic in comparison to earlier models; like Renaissance codpieces, their progressive ostentation has effaced their utilitarian origins.
One recent Hummer commercial, consisting of a kaleidoscopic montage of the vehicle’s chrome rims, headlights, grille, and tires, concludes with the flippant tagline, ‘Acces- sorize.’ Gone are the associations with working-class authenticity or rural gentility. The Hummer is marketed as high-end automotive jewelry, reflecting the way in which risk management is commodified and placed within a hierarchy of competitive consumption.
:I-was-saying: "hello? I'd like your most ham-fisted dystopia please."
:I-was-saying: "no, that's too ham-fisted."
Borrowed one of these to pick up some furniture and holy hell you can't see a goddamn thing. Literally couldn't see car-sized cars signaling, let alone any small critters or pedestrians or cyclists that hypothetically could've been in the road. To make matters worse the side windows were tinted so dark I has to roll them down as soon as the sun set. Felt extremely dangerous for everyone, especially for anyone around me. Fucking nightmare, don't know who'd do that willingly.
https://twitter.com/ajlatrace/status/1495124630868213764?s=21&t=IubAnqc0DTHRAhxvgOR93Q
The beds in these trucks are rapidly turning into vestigial organs.
When I was a boy - these were the average pickups on the road: 1960s and 1970s pickups. They are big. There's no need for these recent monsters that get yet more monstrous every year.
The beds in these probably averaged twice the size of modern pickups
This comment says it all - https://hexbear.net/post/192450/comment/2411351
I remember being young and sitting in my uncle's pickup's tiny-ass sideways backseat, and I was born at the tail end of the 80s. Wild how huge those trucks have gotten in recent years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax
The reason there are not light trucks in America is the stupidest fucking trade war bullshit imaginable.
I thought I read somewhere these things will start getting cameras on the grill to prevent them from killing children. Instead of making them smaller.
Trucks and SUVs are somehow excluded from pedestrian safety rules, or rules that would prevent them from destroying a small car in a head-on collision. Same with fuel economy standards. Sigh.
Trucks and SUVs are somehow excluded from pedestrian safety rules
Are you questioning the right of American males to definitely not overcompensate by wheeling around in baby APCs?
I mean with the way fleet fuel economy regulations are companies have to either make electric card or trucks, and we all know what hogs will want
NHTSA changed their side collision test to include the same impact as a modern pickup truck and a lot lf vehicles scored very poorly.
🎸 this machine kills fascists :gui-trans: this machine kills terfs
2022 Chevrolet Siveraldo HD with HDR machine kills pedestrians
You can go to a dealer and drive that off the lot but if you added a dozen seats and drive in a loop with predictable stops then you're committing a crime.
Why the fuck are the headlights so high up? If you're driving a hatchback, sedan or even a small crossover in front of this monstrosity, there is absolutely no way you won't get blinded by the normal beam. High beams will just shoot right above your head.
It definitely says something that car manufacturers are allowed to install laser searchlights directly at the eye level of 85% of cars, which makes driving at night a fucking hazard for everyone not in a giant truck, and there are no regulations against it.
bringing back the medieval tradition of needing servants to help you climb
onto your horseinto your car100% guarantee one could market a winch that just juts out above the door for that purpose. The less aerodynamic the better
decapitating bikers and pedestrians who get too close for their own good
