Don’t you love it when an automaker comes out with a survey? Served up with a huge grain of salt, such surveys are only published when they reinforce a conclusion the OEM already wishes to make, and always in the service of marketing.
There’s a Ford F-150 coming on June 25th, and it seems the Blue Oval now wants to talk to you about sex and booze.
Right on, this writer says, as he’d much rather hear about vice than green-signalling virtue. Seems truck owners surveyed by the company’s hired polling firm would sooner hand over a lot of things than give up their ride.
Ford doesn’t say whether the 2,000 American truck owners surveyed online in March were allowed to keep or drive a non-truck vehicle in this exercise; instead, we’re just told what the average American truck driver would give up in exchange for keeping their truck. Alright.
Seems that 79 percent of those polled would sooner give up booze for a year than hand over the keys. If this truck was a person’s sole mode of personal transportation, and essential to their lifestyle and job, you’d think the figure would be higher. “Hand over the keys” can mean a number of things, Ford. God, this is dumb.
Moving down the list, 71 percent of respondents would sooner give up coffee for a year, 44 percent would give up meat, and 38 percent would give up sex (both inside Ford vehicles and elsewhere, one assumes). Clearly, Ford surveyed a fairly progressive, young, and urban crowd, and not, say, a collective of Southwestern ranchers approaching retirement age.
Having already given this survey more attention than it deserves, we’ll put the question to you, dear reader. With the caveat that “giving up your keys” only means swapping to another, non-truck vehicle for a year, what of those four vices would you give up to keep that big engine up front and a bed in the back?
[Image: © 2019 Matthew Guy/TTAC]
If new: a truck load of money. Money is the 5th vice.
Wait, before I commit to this stupid poll what is the alt-vehicle I would be given in place of the truck?
Yeah that’s important.
I could reluctantly handle my towing and hauling needs with a full sized truck based SUV, but without assurances I would get something like that instead of a Versa I can’t answer.
Yea. Like I’d give up sex if you made me drive a recent nonturbo Subaru.
May you find an automotive website where you can really stand out from the crowd, and which will not offend you. Perhaps Yahoo Autos.
Perhaps that would be a good choice for you, because you seem very unhappy here and you might get along better with the mods at Yahoo
Ok, so I’m old and my sex life is limited anyway…yeah, I’d do that for awhile…
I don’t need to know the alt vehicle to know that I would definitely give up the truck before booze or coffee. And you would save enough on gas to buy a lot more booze and coffee. Unless the alt vehicle is an M1 Abrams.
I need ground clearance and 4×4 for the road I live on, and carrying capacity and the lumber rack for life. It’d have to be a boat load of money to pay someone else for those last two, and something equally good at getting me home.
So I’d say a new pickemup would fit the bill, and the money to pay for it.
@Scarecrow – I’d love to see hard data on the amount of pickup buyers who actually need them for work. I have my strong suspicion that it’s substantially below 50%, but does anyone know the actual numbers?
That would have been a far more interesting survey question than this feel-good drivel, which is no doubt intended to be part of a marketing campaign and is the intellectual equivalent of a pizza race on the big digital scoreboard at an MLB game.
How many supercar owners take them to the track?
How many Wrangler owners go offroad?
How many sedan owners have 5 people in the vehicle at all times?
Why is it only truck owners who have to face questions of whether they “really need it” WTF happened to “just buy what you like and let others buy what they like”?
WAHHHHHHHH WHY DOESN’T EVERYONE LIKE THE SAME THINGS I LIKE AND BUY WHAT I WANT THEM TO BUY??!!!
Sports cars do not block my view of the road, tailgate my smaller car which can stop way faster should there be an emergency, or kill measurably higher numbers of pedestrians. Nor do they consume as much of our natural resources as trucks do. Sports cars tend to be smaller, more fuel efficient, and sold in much smaller quantities even ignoring that.
Anyway, I’m not saying take your truck away. I’m about the free market and if people like you want to spend $50k or more for a vehicle that has low engineering and manufacturing costs because it is based on a body-on-frame work vehicle, and this keeps Americans employed, more power to you. Of course, while you have a right to drive it, we also have a right to mock it, LOL! Sorry.
“Sports cars do not block my view of the road”
Have you tried one of those little seat cushions they sell at Walmart? Might help :)
Your sports car ain’t low enough or else you’d be looking UNDER the big scary trucks, Nancy.
A much more fun survey would be polling 2000 people who dont drive pickup trucks to find out what they would be willing to give up not to have to see another pickup truck blighting the road in front of them. I am thinking maybe pinky finger up to first knuckle? Definitely booze and coffee. Probably all three.
New PIG UP trucks (as sized NOW) are an evil blight upon the earth.
Jack up the gas tax by $1-2 / gallon.
And Watch Sanity return to truck size.
A la 1978 C 10. (with a modern powertrain -obviously. )
Any 2 lane road I m on, going 5 mph over the speed limit.
Bam
There s a F 250 on my bumper.
All 5 foot 6 of him.
+10 redapple. I have no problem with trucks and the people who need them and like them. But the vehicles being offered to us now are distorted cartoons.
Steve Thank you. I was beginning to think I was the only 1.
-ever notice the % of PIG UPs with glass packs / loud exhaust? Something going on in the brain there.
C&D Magazine’s. latest long term test update. New Ram – real world they saw 15 MPG.
If PIG UPs were the same size of a GM 1978 C10 with modern powertrains you could be at 25-28MPG. Sane Diesels and you d be at 35+ !!!
High Gas tax encourages conservation. Gas is the cheapest all time with inflation now . Come on man!
We should conserve oil like the vital resource it is. NOT ENCOURAGE WASTE. OIL/ gas should be conserved because:
– it enriches our enemies.
– it is a finite resource.
– it pollutes.
Cheap prices encourage WASTE
I hate how modern pickups have gotten taller (because they’re impossible to see around without having to buy one yourself), but C&D drives like a family of spider monkeys hopped up on bath salts, and their fuel economy findings are pretty much worthless.
Plus, like Mike said, mid-sized trucks are reasonably sized and still don’t get much better fuel economy (IIRC, even the I4 diesel Colorado is right about the same as the trio of full size 6-cyl diesels).
In the US, demand for fuel is largely price inelastic. Consumers respond only to price shocks, not gradual increases.
Raising the gas price by your suggested amount would only take the price to where it was when the best-seller was… the F-150.
IMO,Americans will pay *anything* for a gallon of gas. I don’t think even $8-10 gas would change much.
$8-10 gas would make me take the Volt out a lot more, sitting at nearly 200 MPG-equivalent lifetime average as it is.
’78 F-250s aren’t as small as you think and current 1/2 ton regular cabs aren’t as big as you hope.
The biggest difference is rows of seating offered. The ’78 C10 was reg cab only, so aren’t you really just butt sore about choices and those that have them?
Small businesses still employ the majority Americans, so jacking with fuel prices would be real stupid, never mind urban sprawl.
I was reading something like 75% of american households live paycheck to paycheck. I believe such a huge shock would definitely change behavior. In such a price conscious environment, things you dont need are the first to go.
I say this in all honesty and seriousness. A gas tax to such a high degree is not a bad idea simply for the reason we need serious investment in our infrastructure. I wouldn’t support it simply to get pickup trucks off the road, though I might enjoy that outcome. I would however fully support a rewrite of CAFE rules that eliminate exceptions for pickups. Trucks are so firmly rooted as a commuter vehicle now, they should be treated the exact same way as any other passenger car. Anything else is simply requiring all taxpayers in this country to subsidize the Detroit 3 automakers and the people who buy trucks as their daily driver.
“I believe such a huge shock would definitely change behavior. In such a price conscious environment, things you don’t need are the first to go. ”
I think people would still buy trucks. They may buy more mid-size ones, or more diesel ones or more hybrid ones. But the form factor is beloved for the foreseeable future.
I’d be against a $10 fuel tax. I would not be as against something like a “flat CAFE” regulation that gets rid of all the footprint rules and does not completely exclude “heavy duty” vehicles from the calculation. However I still think there are better ways than using a CAFE-style system.
End all CAFE and gas-guzzler taxes.
End all federally mandated emissions testing and restrictions. States and localities can continue if desired.
End all ethanol mandates, E10, and E15. Leave E85 as an (unsubsidized) option.
$3/gallon flat tax on gasoline and diesel. Half the proceeds are returned equally to citizens as a dividend. This will minimize the regressive nature of the tax, especially for poorer people who drive less. The other half is to be used for road infrastructure only. No mass transit boondoggles, no high speed rail farces etc. Repair or rebuild every structurally deficient bridge in the country. Repave, expand and modernize our crumbling highways. Make our highway system the envy of the world again.
Pickup owners already pay substantially more for roads and infrastructure at the DMV and gas pump.
The intent of the CAFE exemption for light trucks was because small businesses are the backbone of the US economy.
Yes no one expected so much pickup mainstream appeal. But where the exemption was bastardized is the inclusion of SUVs, minivans and such (early ’90s forward).
Also midsize pickups see about zero appreciable gains in MPG. Sometimes worse. And far worse, pound for pound.
A high fuel tax is what Europe went with and look how well that clusterfuk, man-made disaster turned out.
“New PIG UP trucks (as sized NOW) are an evil blight upon the earth.
Jack up the gas tax by $1-2 / gallon.”
What a unique idea! Now if you’ll just share a list of things which you enjoy in your life, we’ll add them to the list of ‘evil blights’ to be taxed to death and Utopia can finally begin.
Can’t believe we didn’t think of this before.
I’ve owned one pickup truck, it was nice but my lifestyle doesn’t really require one.
A vehicle with a tow rating of roughly 3500 lbs and a small trailer would handle Home Depot just fine for me.
God, what a stupid survey. If they said “What would it take to give up your truck for a sedan?” that might be interesting. But sheesh; I live in the ‘burbs, and a motor vehicle of some sort is 100% essential, even if I’m not super-picky on the exact form-factor.
I’d certainly give up my CR-V for a sedan, or Tesla, or whatever, given sufficient incentive, but *never* “car vs. no-car”. I’d have to move somewhere else to give up a vehicle entirely.
It should be a 4 cylinder/auto Altima of the same year and mileage of the pickup you’re surrendering.
As The Simpsons Fat Tony once said:
“What’s a truck?”
Hard to believe that 38% of F-150 owners would give up sex when Ford just went to the trouble of developing a lie-flat seat for the F-150.
No problem giving up something you never had in the first place HAHA
Yeah, the 38% doesn’t surprise me either if the old adage about the size of the truck is directly proportional to the size of… the 38%
I’d give up sex before booze, I’m in my late 40s and feel like the remainder of my life contains a lot more booze than sex anyway :)
I’d also give up my F250 for a new Ram but I doubt they wanna hear that.
“I’m in my late 40s and feel like the remainder of my life contains a lot more booze than sex anyway”
It does :(
I love my truck so much that I would replace the evaporator, heater core, three blend doors, three actuators, blower motor and control module with the ‘HVAC box’ sitting in the middle of my living room floor.
(On a tarp I got free from Harbor Freight, because I hate America. /S [Gotta try the Snap-On tarp next time.])
I do like coffee though…
The REAL MOTIVE behind the survey is that Ford is trying to figure out if they are going to be a VIABLE COMPANY 5 years down the road-since they are a one product company (read pickups) basically anyway.
I would give up my current truck to have one the size of the old S-10 with comparable power to weight ratio as my current truck. I expect it would increase my fuel mileage by 50% or better as a result.
@Vulpine–I might actually give up my low mileage crew cab Isuzu for a real compact pickup. My nephew’s wife wants it. My only concern is that all the new compact pickups such as the Hyundai Santa Cruz, Ford Maverick, and possible Ram based on the Fiat Strata are all going to be crew cabs but I might just get the Maverick especially since the Santa Cruz is going to start at around 30k and the Maverick at just below 20k. I would like a truck lower to the ground where I can reach in the side of the bed and craw in the back without a ladder. At the present time I could give up a truck even though I use the bed especially with the CRV.
@Jeff S: Apparently you’ve been getting some news I haven’t heard or read yet. I thought the working name for Ford’s “compact” truck in ’23 was Courier. Oh, I like the Maverick name but it brings to mind the Falcon-sized coupe/sedan from the early ’70s rather than a small pickup. Guess they intend to use a steer logo of some sort to identify it.
I would give up the rear seat and rear doors of my truck if it meant saving the rest of it.
Like most urban cowboys with two vehicles I only “need” a truck on rare occasions, and when I do it’s the space for stuff that counts more than the space for people.