Comparison left vs right for a craftsman who doesnt know which one he should buy:
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l/r same bed size
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r lower bed for way easier loading/unloading
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r less likely to crash
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r less fuel consumption and costs
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r less expensive to repair
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r easy to park
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r easy to get around in narrow places like crowded construction sites or towns
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r not participating in road arms race
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l You get taken serious by your fellow carbrained americans because ““trucks”” are normalized and small handy cars are ridiculed.
So unless you are a fragile piece of human, choose the right one.
Since it’s become legal to import these Kei trucks and vans, I’ve been loving the pictures of them all over the place. I have no need to haul cargo around, but I’d definitely love one of these things if I did in the future. I just don’t like that you’re only allowed to buy 20-year-old vehicles like this due to import laws.
My mom is disabled and uses a power chair (that does not fold. Medicare won’t pay for sensible things like that). Our choices were saving up to buy a wheelchair van, which is so far outside of our means that it may as well cost a million dollars, or buy a pick up truck and a set of ramps. We searched for months and months for anything small, and could not find it. Eventually went with a Nissan frontier, a 2012, so the larger model. I’d kill for one of these little things. Would be perfect for us.
I bet a micro van like a Delica or Sambar would fit your needs pretty well. Compact, but large enough to fit like 8 people total and the seats are fully removable so you could totally fit a wheelchair in there. Seen people fit a whole motorcycle in them before.
There’s one guy around town I see sometimes who has some sort of thing that goes on the hitch receiver of his minivan. If I see him around I might be able to ask him where he got that if I remember to. Saw him use it and it too was a non-folding power chair. He pulled up to it with the power chair, pulled ramps down, drove up onto it, pulled himself to his feet using the rear windshield wiper, stowed the ramps and leaned against the van to get to the driver’s door. I’m guessing he has some sort of spinal injury.
I miss mini-trucks badly and wish there was an American market for them.
Or even what used to be regular size would be fine. My work just got a behemoth and it’s technically a “small”. I have to literally climb in by jumping to catch the roof (no handle on the basic model) and doing part of a pull-up. I’m short but not a little person.
It’s not about consumer markets really. The CAFE emissions regulations essentially allow vehicles with larger dimensions to get lower mileage. So instead of the regulations ostensibly intended to lower emissions forcing better mileage, manufacturers just make bigger cars with the same or worse mileage than before. I used to have an S10 that got almost 20mpg, could park anywhere, could haul full sheets of plywood, and was surprisingly capable of road (came with the ZR2 package).
People still want this, they just aren’t built because of asinine laws that get created through massive amounts of lobbying.
Neat!
Who benefits from keeping these trucks out of american makets?
a) the consumers
b) existing auto manufacturers
Who chooses to keep these trucks out of american markets?
a) the consumers
b) the governments/lawmakers
Edit american not western.
How do american consumers keep trucks like this out?
I mean by not buying the imports, but at the same time it’s hard to ignore the impact of not having them visible/available for purchase, decades of cultural engineering related to the auto industry here, etc.
Not sure they belong on this list next to entities that actively craft market conditions to benefit american auto makers (and themselves) financially.
