Best Selling Vehicle
Posted on December 19th, 2008 by Tariq Nelson
With all the talk about the high (then dropping) gas prices one would think that hybrids would dominate sales. Not so. The Ford F-150 was the best selling vehicle in the US for the 27th straight year.
But keep in mind that many of those trucks are purchased in fleet by local, state and federal government agencies as well as by large construction companies. People on the left don’t like it, but the fact is that trucks are useful. Can’t haul many bricks, furniture or tow other cars with a tiny electric car. The solution: Make hybrid trucks.
Filed under: Practical Solutions
Not to be nitpicky, but that’s not an F-150. (I should know, I live in F-150 country, aka Texas, and deal with contractors all day long.)
My bad, that must be an F-250 or 350. I used to drive an F-250 similar to the one in the picture.
What would Amercia be without the pickup truck?
My Dad just bought a pickup truck and he couldn’t even lift anything into it (for a haul) if he wanted to. People just love their trucks….
A Muslimah friend of mine has a pickup and she just looks so fierce when she’s driving it….makes me want one too!
Salaams
There is an old episode of Top Gear, that shows a Toyota Hi-lux pickup going through all manner of hellish destructive tests, and each time the truck is fixed with nothing more than a hammer, a screwdriver and some WD40.
Pickups are cool - its just not Fardh that it has to be a Ford.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Lrk6vsb77xk
@ Fairuza
That’s so true Muslimahs in Hijab really do look cool in pick-ups. Though most of the time they are driving a mini-van ie the Muslim mobile LOL
@ Tariq
The irony about about southern Senators bombing on the Detroit big 3, is that their constiuents “rural southerners” are the main purchasers of the gas guzzling trucks.
Abu
Yeah, you can count me in as one of those mini van Moms…uggghhhh.
Once you have 3 kids, it’s almost like there are no other options!
Actually T. Boone Pickens (admittedly he does have a vested interest) mentioned that even if everyone in the US drove a hybrid, we’d still be dependent on foreign oil. Trucks (I’m talking about the trucks that haul everything you use from food to whatever) can’t be powered by a hybrid engine. A solution needs to be found for those and that will go a long way to curb foreign oil demand.
My favoured solution to the West’s dependence on Middle East oil would be nuclear-powered synthetic fuel plants.
All rail lines should also be electrified.
I’m Australian and we use ‘utes’, which is a hybrid of a car and a truck.
It has been a staple of Aussie culture for decades, and it is proof that you don’t need massive pickups to do the job well.
http://www.nextcar.com.au/rt.i.ford.falcon.xr6.turbo.ute.black.side.JPG
http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x222/noyes23/Lowfunkme.jpg
You yanks can do without utes. We have and our country is just as big as yours!
And the only use the F-250’s I’ve seen around here are for towing purposes exclusively, so it’s not driven by poseurs as the seppos often do haha
@Aussie
I’d once heard that there’s rarely any 4WD on the farms, there’s utes and all, but most of the bigger ‘SUV’ style vehicles are driven by the North Shore/Toorak Tractor set.
Still, if I had the time and money, I wouldn’t mind a hoon mobile like an older Monaro or Falcon :).
Living in the US now, I see some ridiculously large cars in the city. There is something about them that is kind of attractive, I’d rather be on the freeway in an F-250 than a Mini. Then again, good luck trying to find parking for an F-250 in a city like San Francisco.