this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2025
649 points (95.1% liked)
Fuck Cars
12210 readers
1473 users here now
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
Rules
1. Be Civil
You may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.
2. No hate speech
Don't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.
3. Don't harass people
Don't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.
4. Stay on topic
This community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.
5. No reposts
Do not repost content that has already been posted in this community.
Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.
Posting Guidelines
In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
- [meta] for discussions/suggestions about this community itself
- [article] for news articles
- [blog] for any blog-style content
- [video] for video resources
- [academic] for academic studies and sources
- [discussion] for text post questions, rants, and/or discussions
- [meme] for memes
- [image] for any non-meme images
- [misc] for anything that doesn’t fall cleanly into any of the other categories
Recommended communities:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I mean these are also two different types of cars. But it is actually so weird to see even two cars of the same type made in different times next to each other. It’s like somebody messed with the scale slider in the level editor. It’s uncanny.
I don't want to defend the overly supersized truck too much, but I do want to point out that even these are two different class of vehicles. Sure, you can cram 4 smallish people into that old Ford Ranger, but nobody is going to be comfortable or happy about it. Also, that small ranger has far less cargo and towing capacity.
Of course, a good chunk of truck owners do not need that much capacity and big trucks are just a toy/status symbol to them. Which is stupid. But there are use cases where those trucks are actually needed, and a small Ford Ranger won't cut it.
That said, I do wish we could get more small pickup trucks again. The maverick is a good start.
For these kinds of comparisons people have to cherry pick and cannot compare similar class trucks because similar class trucks haven't really changed in 30 years
If you compare the size of a base 1990 F150 https://www.edmunds.com/ford/f-150/1990/features-specs/
To a base 2025 F150 https://www.edmunds.com/ford/f-150/2025/features-specs/
The 2025 is 6 inches shorter, barely an inch taller, and barely an inch wider. Or in terms of percentages: -3.1%, +1.1%, +1.2% respectively
What has changed in 30 years is it was common back then for an average consumer to buy a "regular" cab two door truck with a 6 foot box, four door behemoths were rare. If you wanted a 4 door truck you had to get the F350
Today it's the other way around, it's rare to see a single cab F150 and now you can get a 4 door F150
Yeah, the problem isn't that the big trucks exist. There is a place for them, always will be. But they shouldn't be a commuter vehicle, the majority of owners never use them for their intended purpose, and even those that do need a truck rarely need one of the size they get.
Most definitely. The fact that the four door 5 foot box exists is hilarious to me in a sad kind of way.
I occasionally get made fun of for owning a 22 two door Ranger, that I bought a "tiny" truck. Honestly I hate how big it is, but I wanted a truck that would be my single vehicle, something I can use for DIY house projects, commute in, go camping/off roading, and take on cross country road trips. Custom ordered it with the specific features I wanted all for ~40k, meanwhile the guys giving me shit for it are paying just as much for a truck with less features, it never leaves the city, and waaaaay more expensive at the pump.
Morons
I tried to compare to a '90s F-150, but that site doesn't have one.
Also FWIW, anecdotally around here small trucks seem more likely to be used as work trucks than [now greater than] full-size ones. My '90s single-cab Ranger was pretty clearly a former work truck (given how beat up the bed was and the fact that it came with a toolbox), for example, and I use it mainly for hauling and towing. Small trucks can, in fact, "cut it" in a lot more situations than people give them credit for.
Yeah my Uncle owned a irrigation company so he need to haul not uiat lots of pipes but pumps and even a ford truck could hold pipes that long so he need a trailer. Then for several years i lived out in the country and we needed a truck to haul teash to the dump. Nothing big just the smallest Toyota truck will do. But it also had to haul a family around so we needed a back seat that hold a 6 ft teenager
in australia, i make sure to kick and dent every yank tank i see. its not often - we have more of the smaller pickups (though we call them utes)