The engines rev, the guitars thrum and a gruff narrator lays out why the vehicle occupying the driveway is more than just a machine. “A truck is a tool,” he says, “but a Ram – a Ram is life.”
So begins an advert for the Ram 1500, a pickup truck slightly bigger than the Panzer I tanks of Nazi Germany and almost as heavy. It is growing in popularity in Europe, with the number of Rams arriving on the continent up 20% in 2023 from the year before, according to registration data from the European Environment Agency. Road safety and environmental campaigners in the UK and Europe are aghast as the latest, most extreme cases of North American car bloat – giant pickup trucks – are increasingly crossing the Atlantic.
“Europe should ban the Ram,” said Dudley Curtis from the European Transport Safety Council. “This type of vehicle is excessively heavy, tall and powerful, making it lethal in collisions with normal-sized vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists.”
A truck is a tool
Nah, that’s usually the person driving it.
The thing is, a truck is a tool, or used to be at least. I had an old little Toyota truck. Two seats and could haul as much construction materials or debris as any one person could manage.
These trucks are impossible to work with. Massive cabs that shorten the bed, lifted frames with beds that break your back loading stuff, terrible fuel economy. They’re as much about utility as lacy underwear.
Oh yeah, to be clear, no disrespect to people who use trucks routinely for their intended purpose.
Up to you if you want to adopt this, but I’ve taken to calling those tiny, useless afterthoughts tacked onto modern trucks “vestigial beds”.
Vestigial beds that’s hilarious
But t of course the tarifs are for Chinese electric cars, not for those waste of space, enormous polluters, dangerous for the other road users “cars”.
Ram 1500, a pickup truck slightly bigger than the Panzer I tanks of Nazi Germany and almost as heavy
That sounded like bs, so I went searching, but apparently it’s correct. Panzer I is only slightly wider (by about 5 cm) and smaller in other regards. Eff me
This will not go well.
Europe is not designed for oversized cars. As soon as you are off the “A” roads, it is goat tracks in every direction. And, you can forget about parking. Regular cars have enormous trouble already. Every new car gets panel damage within a couple of weeks. Put those monster US vehicles in the villages it will be carnage.
Europe is not designed for oversized cars.
Too many drivers are selfish morons and will manage to cram their oversized vehicles into any space without consideration for the safety of anyone outside their own bubble. Doesnt matter if the city was “designed” for it or not.
I was just in Bellagio Italy last week. For some reason, cars are allowed to drive through the medieval city center through extremely narrow roads packed with pedestrians… Which is OK if you’re driving a fiat 500… But this oversized jeep cherokee drive right through town, with barely any space for pedestrians to move aside. I’m not sure if it was a lost tourist or a local resident, but drivers should not be trusted to pilot such a vehicle through crowds with so little margin for error.
Really, I don’t get the appeal, that’s the weirdest thing about this. If this was an article about impractical and irresponsible racing cars getting popular and the objection was that they consume too much fuel, they drive too fast increasing safety risks and they only have 2 seats meaning less people moved per car, I’d lament the trend in the same way, but it’d be a story of how we tragically can’t stop ourselves from stupid but understandable excess. It’s easy to understand for example why obesity is hard to combat because at a basic level and all other nuance aside, generally, we like eating, and typically the foods that most lead to obesity are easily the most liked by people in general too.
But these fucking American truck things are bad for all the same anti social reasons as a sports car might be and more but they’re also not appealing in the slightest, they look awful, they don’t go fast and all the dubious “utility” value, even taken at its word, is such a weird thing to try to appeal to the masses with. Selling things like this to people who don’t need them used to rely on a kind of “sex appeal”, if it was a sports car your customer might never be able to actually drive it as fast as it can go but the idea that they theoretically could is sexy and it has those lines designed to feel like it goes fast, who the fuck thinks “ooh I could fit so much lumber in that thing” and gets a weak at the knees? It sounds about as exciting as selling something on fuel efficiency isn’t. Somehow though, not only Americans apparently, but like everyone wants these things? I am baffled. Did we all go to some mass brain washing event and I slept in that day? What is this?
Have you driven one? If not, try it out and you may understand the appeal.
I would never buy one myself, but their comfy as all hell to drive, it’s like driving a lazy boy. You are really high up, so other than the blind spots you feel like you can see really well. Any road bumps are essentially negligible. Curbs or other things that you might have to worry about in a small car, you can just drive right over. If you want to bring something somewhere, it’s super convenient to just toss it in the bed.
I grew up in rural farm type life, and a pickup truck was just a given.
As long as you don’t care about other people or the environment, it’s a nice vehicle.
I guess that’s making a bit more sense. Strange though, seems like you have to experience it first to want it.
But you’re talking about rural life, which is almost non existant in Europe. If you go to the countryside roads are small. So maybe small size pickup could make sense. But I see them all the time in city center, and they look like some kind of masculinity statement.
They are defintly becoming more in Germany thanks to the fucking Amarok.
And I understand that there might be valid reasons to buy an Amarok, but I’ve never seen them used by anyone, but suburbanites who use them as a personal ca4.
Yea I see more and more of them. And it’s always the same kind of dickhead. Driving alone with no load, parking in the handycapped spot and taking the right of way.
The truck in the photo is absolutely hilarious and all the wrong ways.
It’s got early 2000s fast and furious rims.
It’s got that 1980s camper thing on the back.
The driver is like sitting halfway back the vehicle. I don’t think the front side of that entire truck could fit in the bed.
That vehicle doesn’t know if it wants to be an SUV, a van, or a truck. Really I think it got them all wrong. Slightly less awful than the Tesla truck.
I think the demand here isn’t driven by soccer mums picking up their 1 grocery from sainsbury’s. I think it’s driven by people who can’t afford a house, and can’t afford rent and will settle at least for a portable tank that they have space to sleep in.
Homeless people aren’t buying new trucks.
Let’s just say the definition of “homeless” people has expanded quite a bit in the last decade. Plenty of homeless people work 9-5 jobs.
