In my experience, many pick ups are designed and built with utalitarianism at heart.
Considering the average pick up is used as a workhorse, or as a company vehicle, and built to a price, so all the normal safety kit which adorns even your average car is missing.
Locally, we have some real shockers on the market - normally from companies with names like Great Wall Motors, Geelong, Chana etc.
Definitely cheap. But also definitely nasty, and I would not feel safe driving any of them.
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So Knock-downs rather than Pick-ups.
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If you look at the occupant scores you will see they are not very good at all!
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All chassis-built vehicles will perform badly on that particular test. There's no doubt; when you run into that 300 ton concrete block, that somebody's carelessly left in the middle of the motorway, then lots of rear mass and the lack of progressive crumple zones is going to tell.
Then again; if you T-bone a Panda, those factors will definitely work for you...
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This may be a thread hi-jack (forgive me) but why is it that, when sales of these pick-ups/trucks are reportedly plummetting in the USA, I see more and more of them on our roads? And why do they have to have such "aggressive" names? (Animal, Warrior, Outlaw, Invincible, etc) and why do all the drivers appear to have the standard uniform of white T-shirt/vest, number one haircut and a large number of tattoos. Oh, and I bet there is a very large/agressive dog at home (that's Doberman/Bull Terrier/Rottweiler etc rather than their partner).
Now, there's Dave down the road who has one - a Toyota something-or-other (it's good few years old) but he's a builder and the back is usually full of bricks, scaffolding, sand, bags of cement etc - fair enough, but why do others buy these things as a "family" car?
Be gentle with me - I'm a bigotted grumpy old man - and I can't see the point of these vehicles - except as with Dave - but most don't seem to be designed for use as a "pick-up".
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Now there's Dave down the road who has one - a Toyota something-or-other (it's >> good few years old) but he's a builder and the back is usually full of bricks scaffolding sand bags of cement etc - fair enough but why do others buy these things as a "family" car?
I seem to recall running one as a company car attracts a lower form of taxation.
If your annual mileage is not very high it could work out in your favour.
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A farmer friend, not a very kind person when it comes to automobiles, has a Ford double-cab pickup these days after a succession of grossly abused Mercs and a couple of Transits, as well as a heavily-restored Peugeot 203 re-imported (by someone else) from Africa.
I don't know what happened to the Peugeot, but the 280C stood up to his treatment quite well and the 500C not nearly so well. Nothing to say about the Transits. I doubt if this Ford pickup thing will last much longer than any of the others.
He really ought to have had those colossal American pickups, but probably would have destroyed them even faster than everything else and being a farmer of course was far to mean to risk their fuel consumption (the Mercs were different, he used them for rag trade hustling in Europe as well as cruising about in muddy fields shooting rabbits and getting straw wound tightly round the propshaft).
Safe? Who gives a tuppenny damn? All mechanically-propelled vehicles are terribly, unforgivably dangerous. If only their inventors were still alive we would be morally obliged to persecute them for their filthy obsession. My advice is to avoid them like the plague, or alternatively just forget it.
Edited by Lud on 01/07/2008 at 20:10
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This may be a thread hi-jack (forgive me) but why is it that when sales of these pick-ups/trucks are reportedly plummetting in the USA I see more and more of them on our roads? And why do they have to have such "aggressive" names? (Animal Warrior Outlaw Invincible etc)
I have wondered the exact same thing. They make even less sense here than they do there.
Always funny watching two Q7 (Or should that be QE2) drivers meet each other on the roads of the St. Georges Hills estate though. Who says money can't be class? (Or brains. Or originality.) ;-)
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I thought one reason a certain pick-up was rated poorly in EuroNCAP (the Nissan Navarra) was the airbags deployment and seat belt pre-tensioners were delayed. A dealer recall improved things and needs a retest and obviously all cars reprogrammed.
Still these vehicles are not as safe as some might assume. Neither are some huge 4x4's due to high centre of gravity - a more agile car might avoid the accident altogether, e.g. slow down easier and/or swerve.
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Still these vehicles are not as safe as some might assume. Neither are some huge 4x4's due to high centre of gravity - a more agile car might avoid the accident altogether e.g. slow down easier and/or swerve.
That's almost certainly true. As a Landcruiser driver I can certainly say that it isn't the most agile car. However, one point in it's defense is that you'll probably notice the accident a bit earlier due to the higher driving position. That should give you a little more time to react.
I once nearly had a head on collision with an elderly women driver coming round the wrong way on a tight righthand bend of a short stretch of dual carriageway. You couldn't see further than the apex due to overgrown hedges/shrubs in the reservation. I just caught a glimpse of the roof of her car through the gaps in the bushes a split second before she emerged into full view - couldn't believe my eyes! We would have "met" at the apex had I not managed to swerve round her. A collision was avoided and no one was hurt - though it certainly raised my blood pressure for a while!
Though had I been in SWMBO's Yaris, I wouldn't have seen her and I'd hate to think what might've happened.
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Sorry Phil, guilty as charged, swmbo's car is an invincible.
Luckily swmbo the last time i ogled..sorry, looked was a rather lovely femme inclined to dress rather nicely in much more pleasant garb than the usual drivers you describe, and not a single tattoo have i yet discovered.
If you want to buy a 4 x 4 the newer twin cabs do take a bit of beating value for money and running ownership cost wise too.
The top of range pick up is some 15K cheaper than the 4x4 it shares a stable with, same engine, very similar auto box, just as comfortable, and she who must etc thinks its one of the nicest cars she's ever driven, and she's right.
One of the benefits is the ved at approx 180 going up to 190, as against going up to whatever the govt of the day thinks a normal 4x4 should stump up.
Hers has a large hardtop fitted over the pick up body so its now basically a massive estate car, with two differences, obviously you can't drop the rear seats to put a long load in as you would an estate, but you can chuck anything you want in the back, as its completely separate from the cabin, but of course you can just drop the tailgate to gain an extra 2 feet of load platform without the weather coming into the cabin.
The big difference with the pick ups also is that they are as simple a vehicle as you can find these days, enough goodies to make the vehicle pleasant, air con, leccy windows, auto etc, but not too much else to go wrong...hopefully.
And a huge bonus, these motors take no notice whatsoever of the road surface/speed humps.
No dogs at home, but hopefully when we semi retire one day to the wilds of glorious Wales, there may well be a golden retriever or two again. (i probably would pass for a grey bulldog at a passing glance i suppose..:))
One of the posters was saying about the top heavy handling, well thats pretty obvious really, i don't suppose she'll be trying to outdo a westfield on the twisty bits, and taking swmbo's gear over the fields is possibly not what the westy was designed for either.:)
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Fair enough GB - I really know nowt about them - just seemed to me that many round here seem to be driven by a certain "type" - but then, as I say, "Dave down the road" has an excellent reason for having one, as your missus may well have.
Keep checking for the tattoos!
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