Is Thin “In”?

I will admit it. When Motor Trend came out with their “truck of the year” announcement and Ford’s new aluminum F150 was third down the list, I was a little amused. It amused me because of all the hype the aluminum truck had gone to press with, and as the Motor Trend writers indicated, the performance didn't live up to the promise. The truck wasn't bad, but it wasn't exceptional either. Extensive redesign, bleeding-edge technology and new metallurgy aside, the truck fell in with its peers in actual performance.  So it appeared that the marketing department came out with the guns blazing, but they were shooting blanks.

When I read further, the fact that Chevy’s reintroduced mid-sized Colorado won the Truck of the Year award actually shocked me.

As I've said before, the American truck-buying public has seemed obsessed with bigger/tricker trucks, so they have grown both in size and options. In selecting full-sized test trucks, Motor Trend indicated that if all were optioned out heavily, they would all cost about the same, around $53,000.

I tend towards pragmatism, and to me a truck is a work vehicle. My last full-sized truck was a 1980 Chevy that was about 20 years old when I bought it. A little long in the tooth and all the gloss gone, it still ran great and did everything a truck needed to do. I paid $1000 for it, and it served me well for several years and then through a home remodeling.

In fact the $53K that these half-tons can cost today is about what I paid for the house which the Chevy helped remodel. I prefer to sleep in a bed, take hot showers and have a place to plug in a coffee pot, so I won’t be trading my mortgage for a truck payment anytime soon.

Maybe, just maybe, the Motor Trend selection of the Colorado speaks volumes on this topic of automotive excess. A couple of the test writers even mentioned the smaller size being more appropriate for many things. The fact that the little truck also cost about two-thirds what the big ones do was also noted. To no small degree, auto writers are editorialists. So if they are making these statements, they believe doing so will hit a public nerve, addressing some slightly contentious point that is making the rounds among their readers.

Certainly the automotive market has an earnest place for a full-size 4X4 short-bed truck with a 6” lift kit, but it could be we are realizing that this place isn't the parking spot at our 9-5.

© 2014 D.W. Williams. All rights reserved