December 31, 2024
#502
Gentle reader,
I had not planned upon writing another article so quickly after the last one, but, my daughter's HUGE SUV is parked outside of our house while her family and sister are on a Caribbean cruise.
My car, a 2005 Volvo V50 station wagon is on the left. It will be twenty years old next month. I bought it used, in 2014 and have been in love with it ever since. The truck on the right is a 2017 Ford Expedition. It was not (then) the largest Ford SUV, that was the Excursion. However it IS a three-row vehicle and now IS Ford's largest SUV.
These are our two cars. They are both compact cars. The Volvo you have met, if you are a long time reader, you have also met the Caddy. For new readers, it is a 2013 Cadillac ATS Performance 2.0T. Both cars have turbocharged engines with six-speed manual transmissions.
This is our truck. It is only the second truck we have owned in our almost thirty years being married. It is a 2022 Ford Maverick XLT AWD FV4. We bought it used about six months ago. It quickly became Nancy's and she has been customizing it. It too has a two-liter turbocharged engine, same size as the ATS. The V50's engine is a 2.5 liter FIVE cylinder, but shares the same 1/2 liter displacement per cylinder.
Our previous pickup was a 1997 Ford Ranger Super Cab, similar to the one below. We bought it in 2001 had it for many years, but undercarriage rust finally made it unable to pass the annual state safety inspection. So, we sold it as-is. I did see it on the road a couple months later, so I hope that it was properly repaired.
These are images of one which was for sale somewhere in Colorado. Ours was very similar to it. I had added a fiberglass cap to it.
Okay, so, I have established that we have and like, compact vehicles. I am certain, that if mid and full size pickup drivers would just test drove a Ford Maverick, they would trade in their behemoth trucks, having realized that all the size was truly wasted.
The drawing above has metric dimensions. Table below has US dimensions.
And below are the dimensions of my Volvo V50 wagon.
Length: Exp: 206 in. 17.16 feet. V50: 177.7 in. 14.75 feet. Diff: 28.3 in. Just over two feet in overall length.
Height: Exp: 77.2 in. V50: 57.2 in. Diff: Twenty inches or just under two feet in height.
Width: Exp: 78.8 in. V50: 69.7 in. Diff: Nine inches or 3/4 of a foot in width.
Interior Volume: Exp: 178.9 cu. ft. V50: 125 cu. ft. Diff: 54 cubic feet
Weight: Exp: 5,562 pounds V50: 3,058 pounds Diff: 2,504 pounds!
Okay, so now you may be thinking (or saying out loud) "Of course the bigger vehicle will be bigger in every way, it IS bigger!" And you are correct, but that is not my point.
Here you see my little V50 parked between two General Motors trucks. A Chevrolet SUV on the left and a GMC four-door pickup on the right. My car can carry the same number of people as the pickup truck can. And it slices through the air and gets WAY better fuel mileage.
Here is a Ford Motor Company image showing their various passenger pickup trucks. Starting with small on the right (Maverick) then larger (the new Ranger), then full size F150 gasoline, F150 Lightning (electric) and F250 4x4. ALL can and do do the same thing: Carry people and their stuff. Yet, the smallest one, the Maverick does so with up to 40 miles per gallon!
These are a series of late model full-size pick up trucks from various makers.
Notice
anything
similar about them? They are as aerodynamic as a brick! 
An excellent artist's rendering showing just how much larger pick up trucks have gotten since the 1970's. And how much smaller the beds have gotten.
I want you to look closely at these images from the 1950's and 1960's I want you to figure out what you are not seeing in each image.
Yes, traffic jams are nothing new.
What
is
This is a photo of the very first new car Mom and Dad bought. It is a 1958 Chevrolet Delray. The very bottom of the line (least expensive) of Chevrolet cars that year.
Dad, (with my middle sister) thought like advertisers as car makers wanted him to. They had drilled into people's minds for decades, that they should buy a new car EVERY year. It was the American way. US car makers spent hundreds of millions making each new model years cars look DIFFERENT than the previous years cars.
After the Delray, they bought one of those new fangled Volkswagen Beetles (official model name was "Type 1") since it was only my older sister and I at that point. 
As more of us came along, one new baby every two years, the Beetle would not do. So, they moved up to the VW Type 2, more commonly known as: Bus, Microbus or Station Wagon. The bus was barely larger than the Beetle, yet all seven of us had plenty of room inside. The VW engines back then were in the rear of the cars and they produced only around forty horsepower. Yes, forty whole ponies. Torque (the force which makes vehicles accelerate) was closer to seventy pound-feet. Oh, and no air conditioning either. Were they speed demons? No way! However, EVERY August, the Robb family piled into their trusty VW bus and drove over mountain ranges to get to Phoenix, Arizona to visit the grandparents. We always made it and Dad enjoyed way better fuel mileage than a comparable American station wagon with it's six cylinder, and more likely large V8 engines gulped.
...missing from all of these photos? Pick up trucks. And no vans either.
(Okay, there is ONE pick up truck in the B&W image above. And it is a WORK truck. Also in the same image is a VW Beetle and a Jaguar sports car.)
Just why is that so? Because back then, almost ALL trucks of any kind or size were work vehicles, not personal transportation. Not something one wanted to show off to their buddies. Sedans and if one needed the room, station wagons were what almost everyone drove. And, most families only had ONE car.
CARS were what people bought when it was time for a new vehicle. Also note that almost EVERY vehicle in these images was made in the USA. See any Volvos? Well, yes, the green car in between the two white cars, above is a Volvo. There is also an Alfa Romeo behind the red and white Chevrolet station wagon in the in the far left lane. But, look at the other images, good luck finding anything but cars made in the good old U.S. of A. Also no SUVs (they didn't exist) nor minivans, same reason, why? No full size vans either. Because they were work vehicles. If your family was growing, your Mom and Dad traded in their old and tired sedan and bought a STATION WAGON.
Are you aware that the Ford Motor company in North America only makes one car? Yep, it's called Mustang. Every other vehicle they make is a truck. Even their smallest crossover is called a truck. Why? Two reasons: trucks were what advertisers convinced people to buy and the EPA, in the beginning, did not saddle car makers with the same emissions requirements as they did for passenger cars. And looser safety regulations for trucks as well. Why? Trucks were work vehicles back then. Far fewer trucks of any kind were made back then. Ordinary people bought cars: Sedans, station wagons and convertibles. Sports cars were "those low down foreign jobs" with the Chevrolet Corvette, being the lone American sports car.
To sum up my beef, and I feel I am crying to the wilderness here, please ask yourself this: Do I need a large truck or SUV or do I want one? If so, why? How often do I USE that huge bed back there? Can a smaller, more economical vehicle take me every where I need to go? Do I enjoy spending a hundred dollars filling the enormous gas tank of my vehicle? Or would I like all that freed up cash to buy things that do NOT burn up into the atmosphere?
Thank you for putting up with my ranting. I know that America will never return to simpler times when sedans were everywhere station wagons were kings of the roads. However, if you look at Europe, over there large vehicles, except work ones, are few and far between. Even their commercial vehicles tend to be way smaller than ones the US produces. Yes, the roads are smaller and more narrow, but, most of the time any large vehicle one sees is still a work vehicle over there.
This morning, the YouTube video below showed up in my feed. Watching it, I realized that the enormity of American vehicles is nothing new. Large Cars of the Early 1960s - YouTube Watch this and pay attention to the car's lengths (always in inches 200 inches = 16.6 feet) and curb weights. The main difference between now and then are the type of vehicles cars then, trucks now and the HEIGHT of the vehicles. We are all much safer in vehicular crashes than ever before, unless one is in a small vehicle impacted by an enormous pick up truck or SUV, that is, then, well, just pray it never happens. Stay safe, my friends.
Feel free to comment below or on Facebook.
Scott Robb
December 31, 2024
#502
Happy New Year!
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