QOTD: What Would You Give Up to Save Your Truck?
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]
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@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.
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.