#Pickups

Stellantis has officially confirmed that 2024 will be the very last model year of the Ram 1500 Classic. But it had quite the run, entering production way back in 2008 as the “Dodge Ram 1500.”

We took a look at a Mitsubishi small pickup with Dodge badges last month, and now it's the turn of a Mazda small pickup with Ford badges. I spotted this Courier at a self-service boneyard in Carson City, Nevada, last month.

Ford Motor Co. is recalling 552,188 F-Series trucks sold in the United States over a transmission issue that can force the vehicle to downshift into first gear unexpectedly. Based on documentation from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the issue only pertains to vehicles from the 2014 model year F-150 pickups and mimics and earlier recall impacting 1.5 million trucks.

As I search for interesting pieces of automotive history in the car graveyards of the land, I look for odometers showing impressively high final readings. My definition of "impressive" varies by manufacturer, so Honda and Toyota products now need at least 400,000 miles to meet that threshold.

As a junkyard historian, I find the era of Detroit's transition from selling rebadged Japanese small pickups to selling their own homegrown versions especially interesting. The problem is that the Chevrolet S-10 was the first of those all-American 1980s minitrucks, and discarded early-production examples are damnably hard to find today.

A British friend of mine recently asked my opinion on several vehicle models, saying he was browsing company cars. What I assumed would be a quick chat quickly devolved into my being educated on British tax codes, especially the benefit-in-kind (BIK) taxes applied to any items of value provided to employees. While familiar with the concept, I was not ready to traverse the graphs and tables required to determine how much you’re on the hook for depending upon what type of vehicle you’ve chosen.

There are certain categories of discarded vehicles that I search for before all others during my junkyard travels. French cars and extreme-high-mile machinery are on my list, of course, plus Sawzall roadsters/ pickups, art cars and oddball special editions. But my favorite Junkyard Finds are obscure examples of what-could-they-have-been-thinking badge engineering, and today's truck has lived atop my wish list for nearly 15 years.

Despite Toyota having revealed the redesigned mid-sized Tacoma pickup for the 2024 model year last spring, the company has waited until now to announce pricing. That may have been because the brand’s best-selling truck is accompanied by some unhappy price increases. Though the pickup has also been modernized, potentially softening the blow for some who liked the vehicle’s reputation for reliability and simply thought it was a little rough around the edges.

The 2024 Mitsubishi Triton has made its global debut and everyone is already talking about how the midsize pickup might perform in our truck-heavy market. Though it could be argued that the vehicle was never intended to accommodate our needs and therefore has no business coming here.

Assembly of the Triton (also known as the L200) has been focused on Thailand and Brazil for over a decade because those are its most important markets. That was kept in mind when developing the new model, as it comes with a 2.4-liter diesel engine and drum brakes at the rear.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) believes that the rear-seat passengers of modestly sized pickups could be better protected after running a few through its updated moderate overlap frontal crash test.

While the group rated the Nissan Frontier as “acceptable,” crew-cabbed versions of the Ford Ranger only garnered a “marginal” classification. That left four-door versions of the Chevrolet Colorado, Jeep Gladiator, and Toyota Tacoma with “poor” ratings. No pickup managed to receive a “good” safety score, with the IIHS highlighting concerns about the possibility of chest, head, and neck injuries.

While Ford has been shipping all trims of its all-new 2023 Super Duty pickup line to customers since May, production issues have delayed things and you’ll be hard-pressed to find someone that’s actually driven one. Fortunately, the Blue Oval invited us to take a gander at the new trucks at the Ford Michigan Proving Grounds earlier this month.

As first impressions go, the Super Duty led off with a firm handshake and proved that it can be slotted into a myriad of roles. Ford offered up an impressive resume and a sound business plan and allowed us to beat on a few examples to prove its rigs were the correct vehicle for any job.

Chevrolet has announced that the all-electric Silverado will boast a much-higher maximum range than anyone had anticipated. Rory Harvey, General Motors' incoming president for North America, has stated that the Silverado EV Work Truck (WT) will have an EPA-estimated 450 miles of range 450 miles on a full charge. That’s far better than what its rivals are currently offering and exceeds earlier assumptions made by those watching the industry.

While some may be perturbed by the premise that Toyota is adding complexity to the next-generation Tacoma via hybridization, the current model has been around since 2015 and is arguably due for an update. To pave the way for the new truck, the manufacturer recently sought to assuage fears that there will be no manual option by issuing a press release vowing be-clutched variants would remain available.

Toyota executives are rumored to be considering the possibility of launching a smaller pickup to slot beneath the global phenomenon that is the Hilux, as well as the North American Tacoma.

Ford Performance has confirmed that the Raptor won’t be electrified, with its chief engineer explaining the reasons why in the most direct manner possible. The resulting automobile would be less fun to drive and too heavy to take onto certain terrains. Deep sand would be particularly objectionable, as hulking vehicles that aren’t using tank treads have a tendency to sink into loose surfaces.