#Trucks

One of the most recent “truisms” kicked around regarding the automotive industry is that there are very few “bad” cars and trucks.

In other words, no matter what vehicle you buy, it’s likely to perform its intended purpose well, offer decent reliability, and not be too punishing to drive.

The flip side is that if almost every vehicle is “good,” then for one to stand out from its competitors, it needs to be even better.

That’s the problem Chevrolet faces with its redesigned 2019 Silverado. Being good won’t be enough, not in a segment in which the Ram 1500 garners accolades from keyboard warriors like myself for its interior design and the F-150 remains wildly popular (and just offered customers a diesel variant).

Figuring out how best to shave weight from the next-generation Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra wasn’t an easy task, with some General Motors engineers resorting to taking public tours of Ford’s Dearborn truck assembly plant just to see how their rival handled its all-aluminum body.

Ultimately, GM opted for a hybrid solution of sorts — some aluminum, backed up by varying grades of steel, to slim down its 2019 full-size pickups. But the obsession with Ford didn’t end with the plant tours.

Until an automaker comes along with something better, your cheapest bet for highway fuel economy in a pickup is the Duramax diesel-powered Chevrolet Colorado and its GMC Canyon twin. The full-size Ford F-150 with 3.0-liter diesel V6 matches it in economy, but not price.

Boasting a 30 mpg EPA rating for highway consumption, the oil-burning midsizers command a premium over their lesser siblings, but make up for it with thriftiness and heaps of torque. The 2.8-liter inline-four generates 369 lb-ft of twist — far more grunt than the 275 lb-ft on offer from GM’s 3.6-liter V6.

However, there’s a mystery afoot. The EPA ratings for the newest Colorado and Canyon diesels show a drop in city and combined efficiency for the 2019 model year, despite the powertrains being a carry-over.

It seemed like Ford Motor Company had answered prayers Tuesday, after an online configurator for the 2019 Ranger pickup finally appeared on the automaker’s consumer website. But, just as quickly as it appeared, Ford pulled it down. Apparently someone goofed up.

A company spokesman told Jalopnik that the posting “was a mistake,” adding that, “the pricing shown is inaccurate.” The build and price tool, the spokesman said, will appear next week.

It’s true that the configurator showed a regular cab selection, but clicking it only took you to the extended SuperCab bodystyle. A fleet or overseas option, maybe? We have to wonder just how different the actual pricing will be compared to what we just saw. So, for the sake of future comparison, here’s what Ford’s now-disappeared site told us (or didn’t) about the 2019 Ranger:

The introduction of Volkswagen’s well fleshed-out Tanoak concept at this spring’s New York Auto Show showed just how versatile the company sees its Atlas midsize crossover. Sporting a reasonably useable bed and a design that’s more butch than that of Honda’s unibody Ridgeline, the Tanoak was made to tease.

Would Americans gravitate towards it? Could VW add a full-on truck to its lineup, bolstering its SUV push? These are the questions VW wanted answered before committing extra dollars and Chattanooga assembly plant space to the project.

Apparently, the Tanoak’s still in the running.

In a market that shrunk 3.7 percent in July, Ford managed to escape the steep volume loss seen by some of its rivals. Still, the Ford brand saw a year-over-year U.S. sales drop of 2.7 percent last month, with its Lincoln division falling 11 percent. Over the first seven months of 2018, both brands posted a loss — 1.6 percent for Ford, 10.8 percent for Lincoln.

For the Blue Oval, at least, that’s in line with forecasters’ estimates of a slow industry decline in 2018. Lincoln’s another matter.

A peek at Ford’s sales figures shows why Dearborn hasn’t much love for cars. Minus the Fiesta, which you won’t have to worry about much longer, every other Ford passenger car model declined in both July and 2018 (with the niche exception of the GT). Try as they might, Ford’s truck sales couldn’t replace the lost passenger car volume, but they certainly dumped more cash in Ford coffers — on average — for each model sold.

It’s become a safe bet that no matter how Ford Motor Company fares at sales time, the F-Series will do just fine.

You won’t find three two-barrel carbs atop this Tripower mill. In fact, depending on the engine’s load, you might not even find three cylinders in operation.

General Motors plans to bring back a performance-focused name for its new 2.7-liter turbocharged four, Automotive News reports, giving the automaker a ballsy moniker for the engine it doesn’t want to admit is a four-cylinder.

Spend a little time in the gentrified corners of your fair city, and in between all the Audi Q5s and Subaru Outbacks jockeying for spots outside the artisan cupcake shoppe, you’ll spy a right-sized pickup that doesn’t conjure up images of dreaded rural riff-raff. It’s the model that can’t help but post sales increases with each passing month, and it doesn’t come in an opulent western/ranch-themed trim.

Now, aside from a low-range uphill excursion in an old college buddy’s extended cab 4×4 in Nova Scotia, my impression of the Toyota Tacoma was — perhaps unfairly — that it, like the protagonist in the Glenn Frey song, was something that belonged to the city. It’s hard not to notice its popularity with the type of urbanite who probably jogs, but only on weekends. And only with a female companion.

With these shallow stereotypes in mind, I accepted the keys to what seemed to be the most urban-friendly Tacoma in existence: the 4×4 Double Cab V6 TRD Sport model. What would I become after a week behind the wheel?

Yes, you’re right – the Raptor is as far from a base truck as The Onion is from real news. However, there’s an argument to be made that the Raptor is as much of an individual model as the Focus RS is a model separate from the workaday hatchback. That is the argument I am making here today.

Raptor pickups can quickly climb into pricing’s nosebleed section, stretching bank accounts of off-road fans and vacuuming their wallets clean. Is a no-options Raptor worth their time? Given that the majority of add-ons augment the truck’s performance not one whit, I think it is.

Uber is shutting down its self-driving trucks unit due to a lack of progress and the controversy surrounding its multi-million dollar acquisition of Otto in 2016. The firm was purchased with the intent of developing self-driving cargo haulers, potentially saving the trucking company a fortune by outsourcing driving jobs to robots. But it was slow to reach that goal and ran head-on with a serious distraction almost immediately.

Initially, things looked promising. Otto was famous for engineering a truck that hauled a trailer full of beer across 120 miles of Colorado highway without human intervention. But it found a different sort of fame after its founder, Anthony Levandowski, took over as head of Uber’s self-driving car research and Waymo faulted him with handing over trade secrets.

As a former engineer for Google’s autonomous vehicle project (which would later evolve into Waymo), Levandowski was privy to sensitive information he was later accused of selling as part of the Otto buyout.

I’d like to think of myself as a reasonably enlightened being. Despite living my entire life in the cultural wasteland known to coastal elites as “flyover country,” I’ve somehow avoided marrying kin and sought to broaden my views on any number of subjects.

However, some of my neighbors are doing their best to keep the stereotypes alive, at least in the automotive realm.

As any self-respecting automotive journalist does when handed the keys to a truck, I headed to the home center to haul things I didn’t want to subject my usual ride to. In this case, bags of mulch. When I handed my receipt for 20 bags of mulch to the young man tasked with loading, he genuinely seemed concerned that the 2018 Toyota Tundra would need at least 10 trips to handle the load, and that even two bags would cause the bumper to drag. Xenophobic jokes like this are getting old.

It was one of those make or break moments. A company teetering on the financial verge which threw a Hail Mary at the right time — and at the right target. The company in question was Chrysler, and the Hail Mary was the K-car platform.

Today we ask you: What was peak K?

Future archeologists will recognize this period in man’s history by the thick layer of Ford F-150s covering the entire planet, pointing to an era where one vehicle could seemingly do no wrong.

As the world’s best-selling vehicle line for what seems like forever, the F-Series’ sales performance over the first half of 2018 points to an impending record for the hard-working and increasingly plush lineup. Ford can be expected to push for it.

The year is 2000, and a whole bunch of people have just recovered from an unnecessary panic over how computers worldwide would tackle the date change from ’99 to ’00. Crisis averted, and with Nokia candy bar phone in pocket, they headed to dealerships to buy midsize luxury SUVs with their newfound Dot Com cash.

Which millennium-mobile gets the Buy?