When our own David Tracy writes his op-ed pieces each week, the goal is never to create Jerry Springer-like turmoil amongst Autopians. Of course, it’s not like an online melee is ever going to erupt; our readers and commenters have to be some of the most polite and respectful among the entire internet. I read the all-caps insults on other sites and wonder what the hell is wrong with them; our standards are such that this kind of rude behavior will return you to pre-membership or ghost comment status.
Still, David does stir up some shit, does he not?
Last week’s post defending super-luxury trucks caused a rather intense 300 comment discourse on whether or not trucks with heated seats, power adjustable steering columns and twenty speaker “premium audio” are A Bad Thing:
Some commenters agreed with David’s let-bygones-be-bygones approach to the subject. Others were rather up in arms: this is a TRUCK, dammit! They cried out that not only are fancy pants pickups silly but they’re an affront to the symbol of hard work and productivity! In their opinion, it’s the equivalent of taking an (Anglo) American icon like a Shelby Cobra, painting it brown, and putting a 5.7 liter GM diesel in it with a three-speed automatic (actually, that sounds interesting…no, it doesn’t).
However, in dissecting these comments, it turns out that many readers might have missed David’s original point, or at least used the opportunity to belabor a different but common sticking point: trucks are too big.
Indeed, it seems like most of the ultra-luxury King Ranch/Harley Davidson Special Edition type glitzy trucks are in fact of the full-sized variety. So that’s what is pushing the buttons of people? Well, now we’re onto a totally different issue. If we could disassociate the “luxury” and “big” aspects of these things, would that help? Some people seem to think so:
So maybe a smaller or compact luxury truck could be the answer? What about a cushy something that isn’t a “King Ranch” but instead is, I don’t know, a “King Good-Sized Back Yard”? I’d say let’s take it a step further and not just add bells and whistles to a small pickup: have this smaller truck be sold under a luxury brand in the same way that a Cadillac Escalade or Lincoln Navigator SUV are. This idea seems to make a lot of sense, though as always there are detractors there as well:
Look, I get what the reader is saying about the Cimarron, the barely disguised Chevrolet Cavalier that Cadillac tried to pass off as a BMW competitor forty years ago. I can understand the sentiment, but we’ve come a long way since then. Honestly, I think that approach of today might be the answer here. Let’s at least give it a try.
Trading In Your Chevy For A Cadillac-ac-ac-ac-ac
That fact is that almost the entire model lineup of brands like Infiniti and Lexus is comprised of these “leveled up” lower-tier-brand cars and SUVs. Back in 1998, Toyota took the platform that what was to become the popular Highlander and gussied it up with Alteeza taillights and dashboard trim from the same suppliers that made the wood for Yamaha violins to create the Lexus RX300; it’s been a sales success from day one.
Why do people want these dressed-up things? Do they care about a badge and a fancier interior compared to just getting a fully loaded version of the Toyota car this Lexus is based on? Yes, they do, and honestly there’s nothing wrong with that at all. If you enjoy the extra niceties, slightly better refinement, and the posh nametag, there’s no reason to feel embarrassed that this makes you feel somehow more special than if you were driving something of a more working-class brand. Cars are just steel, plastic, and rubber, and the way they play with buyers’ emotions has little to do with the shared floorpans or the greasy bits underneath.
There’s another advantage to these up-branded things besides vestigial prestige if you’re buying a new or relatively late model example – the dealership. David recently wrote about his Lexus service experience and I certainly concur with his findings. He mentioned that people actually enjoyed going to the dealer, which is something that sadly many owners of more affordable branded cars cannot say. A friend of mine took his Toyota in for an oil change, and the dealer never checked records and replaced the timing belt on his car when they had already done that work only about seven thousand miles earlier. This is the same Toyota dealer that many years ago “lost” our Celica for nearly an hour when we went to pick it up after service; suffice it to say they didn’t make breakfast for us while we waited as they might do at a Lexus dealership. I’m not singling these guys out, since I’ve personally experienced that same thing when getting work done at a Ford dealership versus a Lincoln-Mercury store (yes, that’s what it was called then since I’m old – it’s not like I’m talking about a Packard franchise, geez). You’ll pay dearly for such a level of treatment but it’s a price many customers are willing to shell out the money.
What would be the best thing to use as a basis for a small luxury truck? On Slack, we discussed this and the answer seemed to be pretty obvious. With 94,000 units in sales last year, the compact Ford Maverick pickup is the best-selling hybrid pickup on the market, and sales were up 98 percent in the month of January. It’s an unqualified smash.
The Maverick is based on the Ford Escape and Bronco Sport, an SUV that Lincoln offers a luxury version of as the Corsair. Could it be as easy as making a pickup version of Lincoln’s small dressed-up ute?
Think Blackwood But Smaller And Not Stupid
Lincolnizing the Maverick is so simple that you wonder why nobody has done it yet (or there isn’t something like a Genesis Santa Cruz). Here’s the Lincoln Sceptre concept (like Interceptor, the famous Panther body police car) below the light grey Ford Maverick; at the bottom is the Lincoln Corsair on which the Sceptre is based so you can see where the wheelbase, length, and rear overhang were added.
The biggest challenge with the conversion seems to be the back of the cab. The Maverick chops the back straight like an F-150 but to follow the Lincoln brand language I don’t see that as an answer. However, we don’t want a sloping backlight to kill the bed space. The solution is to incorporate “sail” panels as on an old El Camino (or the Santa Cruz) to carry the line down but keep an upright rear window. This will give us all of the space you’d find in the lower market Maverick (I did change the grille slightly to give a different identity from the Corsair.
Since the Sceptre is a luxury truck, I don’t see nattily-clad people folding down the tailgate to put items in the bed, which would typically be enclosed by the rollaway cover on top. It’s a pain to reach into the truck bed with the folded tailgate blocking your reach. To solve this, I’d like to bring back the old Ford gadget of the two-way “magic” tailgate that can open sideways like a door or down like a traditional gate. This gives you the flexibility of doing either Real Truck Things or Luxury Car Tasks. You can roll back the cargo cover, fold the tailgate down for a football parking lot party, or add an extender “cage” to the opened tailgate to increase your cargo space and carry even more bags of mulch and topsoil. After that, you can hose out the bed, let it dry, close the cargo cover and then open the tailgate like a regular door and put in your bags from Whole Foods and the Lululemon store as if it were a car trunk.
No Survival Of The Thickest
Regardless of your thoughts, it seems like fancy pickup are here to stay. On Slack, some of the staff equated these giant gilded work machines as the modern equivalent of seventies personal luxury coupes with two painfully long doors; vehicles with a style that people have latched on to regardless of the fact that they don’t make practical sense for daily use. Like the dinosaurs, they eventually die out. Ah, but what happened in the eighties? Those Chevy Monte Carlos and Pontiac Grand Prix transmogrified into smaller, sportier coupes like the Honda Prelude, Toyota Celica, Chevy Beretta and Mitsubishi Eclipse that flourished on the market.
If the little Maverick is finding a market niche, it’s only a matter of time before that market moves to small trucks for the higher rent districts. Many of us are ready for these products that won’t blind you with their headlamps at night and take up two spaces in the Walgreens parking lot. We’ll need to find something else to hate.
A Pickup That Turns Into An SUV Via Your Phone: Our Daydreaming Designer Imagines How – The Autopian
What If Mazda Built A Pickup To Compete With The Ford Maverick? Sketches From Our Daydreaming Designer – The Autopian
Our Daydreaming Designer Imagines A Rivian With A Ram Revolution-Style Third Row, Except Bigger – The Autopian
Our Daydreaming Designer Imagines The Perfect Little Escape Pod-Car For Your Big Truck – The Autopian
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