Real truck
For families, crew cab pickup trucks place children so far away from their parents that a thrown cheerio can’t be tossed into the front seat. For urban commuters, light-duty full-size trucks are becoming sufficiently efficient. Tonneau? That sounds like something you’d sling over your Peugeot 504 Cabriolet. Yet doesn’t that explain part of the modern pickup truck’s all-around appeal? It never crossed my father’s mind to replace his beat-up old truck and Audi 5000 with a lone pickup truck: fast and leather-lined, quiet, parkable downtown, bed covered with a waterproof tonneau.
REAL TRUCK ZIP
True, my father drove a crew cab pickup truck, but it was an early ’80s GMC three-quarter ton with a box that extended into the next zip code, a burgundy used primarily for towing our Jayco and thus parked for much of the winter. This wasn’t the pickup truck arena in which you or I grew up. Because it’s highly unlikely you can find one, because dealers know you don’t want one. You, by which we mean the truck buying collective, don’t want real trucks. They’re simply responding to the market’s demands. This is no slight on Ram or Fiat Chrysler Automobiles’ dealers. That’s right, of the roughly 8,000 Ram EcoDiesels and nearly 80,0s available in the United States, there are approximately 30 available in a traditional working pickup truck format: diesel power, two doors, long box, base trim, four-wheel drive. At this moment, according to AutoTrader and, there are fewer than three dozen new Ram 1500 EcoDiesel Tradesman 4×4 Regular Cab pickup trucks available in the United States.