David likes to call me up and ask about the old 1989 Ford F-150 he bought for me, because even if he decided he didn’t have the time/space/energy to deal with yet another old beater (well, we know how long that lasted) he can definitely enjoy it vicariously through me. So, he’ll call and just want to know how the truck is doing and when I drove it last and how it felt and speculate on the issues with the clutch and have me describe the feel of the vinyl seats in detail or the smell of the exhaust. If he could just say “hey, put the F-150 on the phone” and talk to it directly, I think he would, and I think it would end up in one of those “no, you hang up first” kind of situations.
Anyway, during one of these calls, David and I were talking about the truck and realized something significant about trucks and the culture we live in: when it comes to level of shittiness, cars and trucks are not judged the same way. Trucks get a pass for coolness in ways that cars simply don’t, and this is an idea worth exploring, because I’m not entirely certain what’s going on. In simplest terms, it’s this: a beat to shit car is embarrassing, but a beat to shit truck is cool. Why?
Just so we’re all on the same page here, let me break down exactly what I’m taking about, using my own truck as an example, a 1989 Ford F-150 with a lot of wear and a very clumsy and peeling hand-brushed purple paint job. Let’s just break down some basic facts about this truck: it’s rough in a lot of places, it has broken trim parts inside, it’s scratched up and dented and as I mentioned, the paint job was done by hand and is peeling so badly on parts of the hood it looks and feels like stucco.
This truck is also common as boogers in nostrils, a Ford F-150, the best-selling vehicle in America for years and years. It can make zero claims of exoticism or rarity. Everyone has seen these, all over the place, all the time. Seeing one is a non-event.
The transmission is agricultural and grinds going into reverse and first, and, let’s be honest, potentially any gear, of which there are only four. There are all kinds of evidence of weird fluids that have been spilled in the bed. It’s the opposite of elegant or refined or sleek, it doesn’t telegraph wealth or overt status or anything like that at all. Oh, and the muffler is currently banging around loose in the bed.
And yet, somehow, it’s cool.
Now, let’s compare this truck to another vehicle in Ford’s lineup from 1989, something non-truck but as close as we can get in other ways, another mass-market big-selling car, like the Taurus. The Taurus sold for a bit more than this F-150 did (the F-150 went for about $11,000 in 1989, while the Taurus started at about $15,000) but we’ll call that close enough. If you had a 1989 Ford Taurus in exactly the same condition as my F-150 – a common, non-exotic or inherently that interesting car, runs basically well, transmission makes awful grinding sounds sometimes, some interior trim broken off, dents, hand-brushed purple paintjob, muffler banging around in the trunk – and you pulled up somewhere and got out of that car, nobody would think you were cool at all. They would think look at that poor bastard, and they’d spend a moment imagining all of the miserable life decisions you’d made to get you to the point where you were rolling around in a sloppy purple Taurus with your muffler in the trunk.
Keep in mind, in this thought experiment everything else about these two vehicles is the basically the same – same manufacturer, same badges, same condition, same color, same everything, except one is a four-door sedan and one is a truck. And one immediately casts you as a loser who probably does weird shit like eating ketchup sandwiches or drinking beer through a straw while the other subtly implies you may be a cool sort of person who does interesting things in their spare time, possibly including chain-saw sculptures.
Still not convinced? Okay, look at this picture I took of my truck yesterday:
It’s just my shitty truck. But it looks kind of great out there in the verdant greenery, basking in the sun. How would this exact same photo look with that Taurus? Or a similarly-battered Honda Civic or a Nissan or Chevy or whatever non-truck? It wouldn’t be nearly as appealing, it’d just be some shitbox rusting in a field, as opposed to something that manages to evoke ideas of carefree summer nights and honest work and the occasionally intoxicating smell of sweat on skin any number of idealized, romanticized ideas about a life that we may never have even ever experienced.
This isn’t unique to Ford or any particular carmaker. Here’s another example: I went to Copart and looked for two late-1980s Toyotas, one a car and one a truck, and grabbed two of the first results I found. Here they are, a 1989 Toyota Camry and a 1987 Toyota Pickup, both in about equally shitty condition:
Which of those would you rather be seen in? The Camry feels like a car you’d be driving because you had no other choice, and the truck feels like something you might drive because it helps you do things you want to do. The truck feels intentional.
Of course, this isn’t really rational, though we can come up with some reasons why it may be the case: trucks are, ideally, designed to do rugged, hard work that can have the side effect of taking a toll, visually, with scraped and dents and other evidence of use and wear. Our idea of a truck is one that can accept physical imperfections and consider them character, while our idea of conventional cars like sedans or hatchbacks or even SUVs and Crossovers is one that regards any wear or visible damage as an actual flaw, something that only devalues instead of adding charm or character.
If you need more evidence that this double standard is real, think about fashion shoots you may have seen with cars, in catalogs or on billboards or wherever. Cars do show up in these shoots as backgrounds or props, and those cars are either charming, interesting, usually vintage cars like classic Minis or Beetles or Fiat 500s or Citroën 2CVs, and those can sometimes be in rough condition, but their unusual, appealing looks and relative rarity give them a pass.
There is also plenty of fashion photography that uses lovingly-maintained vintage cars, or even rougher ones, but only if they’re old enough or interesting enough to have a following. If it’s a mainstream, common vehicle in fair to crappy condition, no fashion photographer is going to use it. Nobody is draping a model over the hood of a 1991 Chevy Lumina with surface rust and mismatched door.
But they might get a model to perch on the open tailgate of a slightly rusty 1991 Chevy C/K 1500 truck with t-shirts for seat covers, and that would be just fine.
Whatever is going on here says a lot about our society, because it doesn’t stand up to a lot of empirical scrutiny. A beat-to-shit hatchback or sedan can have accomplished as much tireless, important work as a pickup truck, and there are plenty of pickup trucks that have spent lives hauling nothing more rugged than grocery bags. But the truth doesn’t matter here, it’s all about perception, because cars and trucks aren’t really rational things.
The fact is that wear and tear and evidence of hard living turn into character and dignity on a mainstream, common truck, and shame and disgrace on mainstream, common car. One suggests a life of honest, gritty work that ends with the driver squinting into a sunset, satisfied and at peace, and the other suggests a life of poorly-paid jobs, indignities, and a day that ends drunk and asleep face-down in a bag of Cheetos. I’m not saying it’s fair, I’m just saying that’s how it seems to be.
So, the take away here is that if you don’t have a lot of money but are sensitive to how your car makes people perceive you, you can get away with a hell of a lot more with a shitty truck than a shitty car. And all it costs is more gas money and everyone asking you to move their couches.
Not the worst deal.
Hell yes. A truck is always the answer. Except when it’s not? Actually have always preferred trucks til the last 20 model years. Just because most of us are obese does not make it a requirement for our trucks. We need decent small (think 1990s Toyota) sized truck again. Body on frame. A real honest type of vehicle.
Boils down to what you park in a garage (or under cover):
Nice cars live in garages and only seen when driving. Crappy cars don’t live in garages so they don’t get any respect because they are seen as crap.
Pickup trucks can’t fit or aren’t expected to live in garages. So crappy trucks are used to being seen outdoors and expected to be roughing it in the elements.
I can see this in my driveway, the 2002 F150 with minor scrapes and a banged up bed is much cooler than the 2003 LeSabre with assorted dents. Oddly the truck is a comparative cream puff with only 118,000 miles despite being owned by a business for most of its life. Then again the tool value of the truck is much higher since it can tow and haul and spent most of May doing one or the other.
Hearty laugh at the thought of DT talking to his beaters and saying “no, you hang up first.”
It’s pretty simple – if my Suburban gets dinged it’s likely because it was doing something useful like hauling gear and people, going off-road, etc. If my Fiesta ST gets dinged it’s because I done screwed up and for no other reason. The Suburban wears its battle scars with pride while anything wrong with the FiST is a source for shame and regret.
It’s because old trucks have blue-collar credibility, and old sedans don’t.
This whole thing makes sense when you bring pants into the picture.
Think of these vehicles as pants.
You can get pants anywhere. Any time.
Buy a pair of jeans. Work in them. Watch them fade. Wear holes in them. Do you still wear them? Yep. Do people dig them? Yep. Because you earned those wear marks doing honest labor. And when you didn’t, people either still dig it or they can tell.
Now go buy a pair of Khakis. Same year. Same store. Wear them to work at the office every day for a decade. When they finally fade and become threadbare, wear them out. People will think you are too cheap to buy a new pair of pants or you’re down on hard times and don’t have the means to work your way out.
Old Khakis suck. Old jeans rule.
See? Everything can be understood better when you look into someone’s pants.
This is perhaps the most concise and complete answer I have ever heard to explain why trucks are cool. It’s all about getting into somebody’s pants.
Actual chuckle out loud there: well done, DoctorNine!
This really only applies to 80s or later economy/commuter car shitboxes and 80s pickups. Doesn’t apply to clapped out muscle cars, like the cars on the show Roadkill for example. Take the General Mayhem 1968 Dodge Charger, and David Freiburger’s 1974 Chevy C10 muscle truck for example. Just about every body panel on both is a different color, aside from the windshield the Charger has no glass and no interior. Both are fan favorites on the show.
This is why every beat-to-hell old car should be turned into a ute. Immediate appeal and S T A T U S.
Pickup trucks are useful, doesn’t matter what brand, or how new or old they are, their ability to provide utility never goes away.
1980’s domestic crap boxes were never useful.
Even wider than the social divide between shitty old cars and shitty old trucks is the gap between shitty old trucks and vintage trucks with a “lived-in patina” used to sell kombucha on Instagram.
Torch, just wait until DT starts sending the truck mixed tapes.
I think that we put more stock into taking car of one’s own car more than we do one’s own truck. As you said, trucks were made to be banged around and take the abuse. Cars, which can be just as utilitarian, are considered more of a reflection of the people who drive them. If you can’t keep it neat and clean, then you’re probably a bad person who kicks puppies and launches cats from a slingshot. You got a beat up truck? Well, you’re probably a hard worker and the kinda guy I’d like to get a beer with. Never mind your meth addiction and always loaded hair trigger gun collection.
Years ago, I went to visit a friend that I had not seen for a while. He’d started his own house painting business. We got into his 90’s era Firebird to go grab a drink and meet another friend. I was horrified to see that he was using a sports car as his company vehicle. There were paint splotches everywhere and paint cans in the back. Outside of the obvious bad choice to put paint cans in an enclosed space where you’re operating a moving vehicle, it just seemed abusive to me to use that particular vehicle in such a manner. He didn’t care. He got the car for a cheap price, so it didn’t bother him that he was totally ruining it.
Now I’m picturing David standing outside a garage holding a boom-box over his head, playing a tape of engine noises…
Because a truck isn’t meant to be “pretty” to begin with. It is meant for work, meant to be beat up. When it is beat up and 25 years old, it is “job well done”.
The beat up Taurus is just a beat up car that no one cared for.
Oh no, now I also want a pick up truck!
It would be perfect, since we usually only drive 3 maximum three people, scratches from small street parking booths would be a non issue, and transporting boat cradles or sofas or scrap bicycles or pianos would be a lot easier.
“transporting boat cradles or sofas or scrap bicycles or pianos would be a lot easier. ”
What, use a truck as a TRUCK?!
Heresy I say!
Comes down to looks…no matter what trucks will all stay relatively the same forever… A cab followed by a bed. Where as cars from the same era can be all over the board boxy land barges, swoopy sedans with a sea of grey plastic and fabric. Wedgy sports cars that if you lined them up would eclipse each other…
Yet the truck remains the same for the most part. Easy to visualize fixed up and modify… Once again cars sometimes of the same era just look like shit… I mean I can’t look at a 1990 cutlas ciera and think ” man this thing would be awesome fixed up” it allready looks like garbage….
Trucks will always get a pass.
That’s a big part. They styling of cars varies a lot more than trucks. No one wants the ugly jelly bean cars that make up most of the shitboxes we are talking about. Trucks can’t have a bad style if you don’t have any.
Of course that’s changing now, I doubt in 20 years anyone is going to look too fondly on a beat to shit 2022 Silverado.
Trucks can also be ugly and drive like crap, but be perfectly fine for doing their job.
The 1990 Olds Cutlass Ciera is a passenger car. Its purpose is to look good and drive well. They are supposed to be a pleasure to be operating; either through performance, comfort, or some combo of the two. The Olds arguably failed at that in 1990, but it certainly fails compared to all the other options out there.
Going even further on this, imagine you had an equally rough ’89 Ford Econoline. Odds are pretty good that the condition was earned through exactly the same hard work as the F-150, but ride around in the van, and mothers pull their children closer, old people give you dirty looks, and the police run your plates and trail you for a few minutes before they even realize what they’re doing.
I’m also not sure this will hold up for more modern trucks – the early 2000’s Rams just look like they’re driven by the “That thing got a Hemi?” guys who lusted after them in the early ads, rather than a truck that’s done any serious work. The jellybean F-150’s don’t seem to be aging much better.
I think it applies to other stuff. Old worn jeans or a worn out hat? Cool. Worn out suit? Not cool.
Rusty and worn out tool box? Cool. Worn out suitcase? What are you, a hobo?
Beat up fridge in a garage? Cool. Beat up fridge in your kitchen? Gross.
Maybe some sort of romanticized viewpoint of manual labor.
I meant to post that not as a reply but it lives forever now.
I was also going to say that the jellybean F150 has graduated to work cool, I think it might be because the look is dated now so it doesn’t look like it’s being trendy anymore.
The 2006-2008 Rams might not be at that point and I’m not sure why. Like later Rams – especially with the cheap black plastic grilles – are completely there, as are the older ones. The facelift with the bigger headlights though, it just doesn’t have any cool.
It’s 100% this. It’s fetishization of the ‘working man’ earning a living with his own two hands, hard work and sweat. His beat up jeans, truck, tools and garage fridge just show how HARD he works. When it’s a worn out ill fitting suit and suit case, you’re clearly a lazy poor trying to pretend you’re a white collar worker.
Great observations! I think you hit the nail on the head. I think that most of us live our lives in a sanitized world where we don’t do much of any manual work.
Since the industrial revolution, we have been romanticizing the agrarian life of the past. Tolkien pitted the simple, pastoral hobbits and elves against the industrial(ish) orcs with their mass produced weaponry.
I have lived both lives, I grew up on a small farm and then moved to the city to work in a lab then as a manager. There is something nostalgic about going back to the farm and helping out. A few weeks ago my wife and I were at the farm and she got to meet a calf that was about 4 hours old. Of course, the mother was there munching on the placenta.
For every good moment, there are equally bad ones. Watching corn wither for lack of rain, or not being able to plant because there’s too much rain. Having a tractor break down far from the shop in the middle of winter.
Anyways, I’m rambling at this point.
100% true, but the dynamic extends further. The signifiers of a workin’ man’s life (truck/jeans/etc) become luxury/status goods. See designer jeans, $80k luxury trucks, $1k cowboy boots.
Reminds me of that line from that Bo Burnham parody Country song:
“I walk and talk like a field hand;
but the boots I’m wearin’ cost 3 grand;”
This is a pretty good addition to the question – I would wager that a van (like an Econoline) is actually MORE likely to have worked than an F-150. But, maybe it’s the fact that it’s doing paid work rather than ‘leisure activity’ work? The vans tend to be used by ‘low-class’ tradespeople, but, the pickup is seen as a rancher driving around their property, a farmer moving stuff around the farm, etc. Wait – is it that people connote pickup trucks with horses?
I also think the newer trucks are just too new. Any of them that are in that category are just extremely used, trashed, and beat up, rather than just ‘old’. Even ‘cool’ old trucks can cross a line into ‘just a piece of crap’ if they’re in poor enough shape.
Pickups have fewer secrets. The beat-up old windowless van has uncomfortable “Free Candy” associations and the same is true with once-plush conversion vans, which lead one to now assume there’s something like a meth lab behind those velour curtains.
It’s not whether a vehicle did any actual work that matters. That’s not why white-collar middle-class suburban dads buy Ford F-150 Raptors. It’s all about the image. And in contemporary America, a pickup truck is associated with tough, tanned, muscular, burly men doing work outdoors under the sunshine. It’s more or less the old romanticized cowboy trope, updated to replace the horse with a pickup.
The Econoline doesn’t get the same treatment, because you don’t see ads featuring ranchers driving their vans out on the range. Counter-intuitively, the classic van might be TOO much of a working vehicle, associated with delivery guys and repairmen and plumbers and mobile dog-groomers. It’s too common and utilitarian for us to develop a romanticized image of it and the people who drive it. If a pickup is the modern version of a cowboy’s horse, then the van is like the modern update of a cart – much more useful, and definitely a common vehicle for workers out in the old West, but we don’t make movies in which John Wayne rides off into the glorious sunset on a wooden cart drawn by a couple of mules, as the orchestra plays.
It doesn’t matter whether or not an F-150 pickup was ever actually used for real work, or if the owner ever carries anything in the bed besides a cooler for family picnics. That’s not what makes the F-150 “cool.” What makes it “cool” is that when the owner of the vehicle is cruising down the highway with the window rolled down, he’s imagining himself out on the open plains or working under the beating hot sun. And when he pulls up next to an old Taurus in a parking lot, he looks at that thing and imagines the repressed, unsatisfied, 9-to-5 white-collar working stiff suburban dad driving that vehicle looking at him with envy and awe.
Then he rushes inside because he’s only got his lunch hour to pick up the kids and take them to soccer practice and Karen’s busy with her friends or something I dunno I don’t ask these days what your mother is up to, I just leave her to it, maybe we should give marriage therapy a try again – son, did I ever tell you I wanted to be a cowboy
“he looks at that thing and imagines the repressed, unsatisfied, 9-to-5 white-collar working stiff suburban dad driving that vehicle looking at him with envy and awe.
Then he rushes inside because he’s only got his lunch hour to pick up the kids and take them to soccer practice and Karen’s busy with her friends or something I dunno I don’t ask these days what your mother is up to, I just leave her to it, maybe we should give marriage therapy a try again – son, did I ever tell you I wanted to be a cowboy”
THIS!
So much need for even imagined envy and awe coupled with the frantic desire to somehow be *better* than the exact same guy in the beat up Taurus the 12-15 mpg and shitty ride quality of an older truck is totally worth it.
The 2000’s trucks have yet to climb out of the valley of “just a crappy old truck” too new to be vintage cool and too old to be seen as “nice”, the GMT 800 Chevy’s (both the soap bar and cat eye trucks) are the same, as is the ’04-’08 F-150. I’m not that old but as an avid truck enthusiast all my life I’ve noticed this happen to plenty of other trucks. Not more than 5-10 years ago Bricknose Fords like Jason’s were one of the least desirable Ford trucks ever, I remember when a half decent Squarebody could be had for pennies, Dentside Fords were nothing but farm trucks and the Second Gen Dodges were just unreliable junk no-one would touch with a 10′ pole. Every one of these has come around to being popular to the point that even crappy ones are expensive, the same will happen to newer trucks as well.
Also, as a fan of the Jellybean F-150’s I’m obligated to defend them. The styling certainly stands out, not modern, or even the foundation of modern design, nor is it blocky and square like traditional trucks (which I’ll argue aren’t even fact traditional, just recently popular/trendy, there are loads and loads of rounded style trucks) but I’d argue that it has aged very well, far better than the generation that proceeded it, and they actually have quite a following. On top of that they’re really good trucks overall and quite reliable.
As someone who commutes 80 miles a day, I can assure you- the Taurus is “cooler”.
This has to be the most existential question posted on a contemporary automotive site to date. I personally know 6 people who have had both of these cars and I am sure, wholeheartedly, that every single reader of this site knows at least 1-9 people that have had any vintage Taurus or F150, bravo, Mr. Torch for getting our juices flowing. Bravo.
went looking for Taurus Overlanding wagons, discovered Ford Santa Fe Concept
https://www.ford-taurus.org/taurusinfo/Concepts/SantaFe.php
Dude it had a V8 in it? Thats sick hahaha
I hate you for making me look at this – I was thinking this body style but wagonized, not a giant jelly bean with offroad bumpers.
How about this: Lets compare them to people. I think most would agree that trucks are masculine, and cars are feminine. Or, at least, that’s how most people see them. Now, which gender is allowed to age, and which one is constantly chastised for each passing year? Yep. Of course, it’s commonly written as ‘men age better’, but, that isn’t true – they get the same wrinkles and saggy shit that women do, but, for some reason, society doesn’t have a problem with it. And, yeah, I think the old truck thing is that trucks are seen as ‘manly’, and thus, like men, are allowed to age. Sure, there are exceptions – just like some older women are seen as ‘hot’, some older sedans are still seen as relatively desirable. But, on the whole, sedans, like women, are seen as washed-up and useless when they’ve got just a little bit of age/wear on them.
Wow, I hope your wife doesn’t read this.
What does my comment on popular US culture have to do with a potential spouse?
Just a joke, one would assume. My wife knows that you speak the truth.
I think you are confusing cars with sailboats.
It’s not a schooner, it’s a sailboat!
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Completely disagree. I think it is as others have said: a beat up truck is a reflection of work well done. It’s a farmer or a construction worker or a outdoors person who used a truck as intended. It isn’t pretty because it wasn’t meant to be pretty. It was intended to haul stuff and pull trailers and go off road and to work.
On the other hand, a Taurus was designed to comfortably carry a family. It’s supposed to be the “nice” vehicle to carry the kids to school and extracurricular activities. It’s the one you jump in and go on a summer vacation. It’s the one you meticulously maintain to ensure everyone who travels in it is safe and comfortable. It’s the desirable one to drive while the truck is the one with busted A/C, an AM radio, and odd smells from chainsaw oil to lawn mower gas.
To see a ratty truck is to see a vehicle that has lived a rough life yet still soldiers faithfully on, while to see a ratty family sedan is to see a vehicle that has worn out it’s welcome and is being neglected. The truck has been around while the family sedan has likely been replaced twice over by new SUVs.
This is a terrible take. You’re just projecting your personal gender roles onto a situation that doesn’t call for them. I don’t think you’re even right when it comes to gender roles (other than you’re parroting a stupid and generally incorrect stereotype). But it definitely has nothing to do with a truck.
As a society we – IMO rightly – hold expectations for things and people when there are faults of choice and tolerate and accept things and people when there are faults outside of people’s control. Able bodied but oblivious teenager screwing around and getting in the way of you doing some work? You’re pissed off. Same delay because there’s an elderly person with a cane taking a long time to get out of your way? You might even help!
The truck may or may not look the way it does because that’s what happens to a truck when it is doing the job it has to do. But the car looks like that because the owner didn’t give a shit and didn’t take care of it. End of story.
Easy with the terrible takes. Read what was written and think about why this elicited such a strong response from you.
I think this is a commentary on society, and it has interesting parallels to society’s take on gender roles and vehicles.
I also think Mthew_m shares your view on stupid and generally incorrect stereotypes. (one good indicator of this is the quote “Of course, it’s commonly written as ‘men age better’, but, that isn’t true – they get the same wrinkles and saggy shit that women do, but, for some reason, society doesn’t have a problem with it”).
The reality is this is a somewhat illogical double standard for both the vehicles and the gender roles and your last paragraph kind of reiterates that and misses the question being asked and discussed in the article: why is that? Interesting how expectations get ingrained in us and we try to retroactively assign logic to them (behavioral psychology and economics shows some interesting irregularities when it comes to views on policy, herd mentality and especially us vs. them mentality in a two party system. I remember reference to a study where people had a view, then changed it based on an article about their party endorsing the opposing view, and the follow up interview the same people had directly opposite views to before and were coming up with a logic behind it, despite the only change being a statement of where their party stood on it. The takeaway being they changed their view on a policy to align with their ‘in’ group. Fascinating stuff…)
I have been waiting for another article about this truck. It inspired me to go get my own shitty truck. I picked up an 86 F150 last week. Its a 351w with a 4spd and known bad alternator. Its probably somewhat shittier than Jason’s truck.
I picked it up from a town about 20 miles way. Made it two miles back before it sputtered and died and wouldn’t restart. Guy a bought it from is awesome and came and towed me to the next exit and we got it running again and followed me home. Took a different way home so we could get off the highway sooner and promptly got pulled over for no tags. We both pulled over and produced the paper work and the officer was pretty cool about it. I left the car running. As soon as the officer handed my license back, literally his hand on it and my hand on it, the truck died again. We tried to jump it for about 15min with the cop blocking traffic before he told us we could tow it up the road to a parking lot. Got it running and made it the rest of the way home with out issue.
The truck came with a new alternator, and I went to put it on the next morning only to find out it had a cracked housing. Called the guy I bought it from to see if he still had the receipt and he’s getting it swapped out for me. (again, really good dude).
So now I have a rusty truck out in front of my house in a decently nice neighborhood that I can’t really do anything with and so far, three people have stopped to tell me how cool they think it is.
The HOA is currently drafting documents; this vehicle is not allowed to be parked within a visible location on your property.
No HOA. Double edge sword for everyone…. My neighbors lawn is 95% dandelions and they blow in to my yard BUT he has to look at my shitty truck now.
When the dandelions really get to you, just remember that they’re often the first food bees get coming out of winter and therefore justified.
Plus, what do you care what ol’ man Jones thinks?
David Tracy and Jason Torchinski! You read that reply above and think of what you did! With all the stories and reflections about Paos, Yugos, Changlis, VWs, XJs, ZJs, and everything else. What vehicle did npg latch onto? The Marshal. Not the easy to park/economical stuff. Not the kinda economical and kinda compact SUVs. The full sized, gas slugging pickup truck. I hope you are happy with yourself.
I am because it’s a great article, full of insights and deep thoughts. (Plus, I’ve owned five pickups throughout my life as well.)
This post does beg to ask which vehicles you own do have the most influence with us readers.
Hmmm.
Well, neither of those Fords looks cool to me. They’re both tired, worn-out vehicles. Maybe because I come from a time when you bought a truck to do work, not as a daily driver, but I don’t find worn-out trucks to be any cooler than worn-out cars.
Eh, I’ve bought trucks to put to work my whole life. I think you’re hitting on something with the grocery getter aspect but I feel the opposite: a truck that’s clearly put in hard hours and hard miles has my respect and gets my “cool” points way faster than new and shiny.
My current truck is an 05 F250 V10 with 250k on the odometer. It’s been through hell and back with me and I love it, despite the fact that it’s a rusty, gas guzzling dented up monster. My old man just bought a 22 F250 and I just… Don’t like it? No character. Unproven. Looks an awful lot like he could be using it for Costco runs.
Nothing gets to the age Torch’s truck is without it’s knocks, and that’s what gives old trucks their cool factor.
There are a few cars that can match an old truck for the scruffy-cool factor. Volvo 240s look pretty good with some wear and tear, as do ’70s American land yachts. And anything British, Italian, or French driven daily gets a pass. But typical ’80s-90s plastic-bumpered snoozefests, yeah, they don’t age well at all.
Maybe that’s part of it: all the plastic. Trucks have metal bumpers that acquire character with some dents and scratches. Plastic that’s beat-up just looks like junk.
Eh, I see battered American land yacht, and it’s either this sketch or Uncle Buck.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giAkz5BcxkQ
I would argue old side curtain Triumphs rival trucks in the shoddy chic vehicle category. A scruffy TR3 still looks like a lot of fun. Similar to an old truck, they seem to have an essence of raw mechanical purpose.
Man I loved that 1st paragraph had me loling. It’s an interesting topic and I’ll post a few different possibilities.
1. Trucks are popular right now, cars much less so. So used trucks benefit from this millieu.
2. As you stated trucks are work vehicles. Cars are transportation. So some patina on a truck is proof of a life well lived doing what you are supposed to do. A car is not purchased for a life like that so it showing a rough life is like a $20 hooker rode hard and put away wet.
3. Perhaps a 3rd example trucks are seen as masculine, therefore cars feminine in comparison. Why do we expect women to shave 90% of their body, wear high heels, dress fancy, smell nice and behave politely? And men can grow hair anywhere dress down, fart on public, and take pride in silver hair and scars?
That’s just the way it’s always been.
Number 3 is an interesting theory. It does make sense.
“That’s just the way it’s always been.” – at least ‘recently’ after men stopped wearing tights, wigs, makeup, couture jackets, and frilly-everything to establish status and social acumen. And after every man had a tight, waxed haircut and wore a 3-piece suit everyday.
You’re correct in that our social construct establishes what is deemed fit for the sexes, but incorrect that Western cultures always have set a very low standard for men’s physical appearance and behavior.
The powdered wig era was extraordinarily weird. The tights and knee length pants combo does look rather comfy. And who wouldn’t want to wear a greatcoat?
I know, right?!
There are scars in the paint on the bed of my truck that I can point to and say “in 2005 my buddy Brandon borrowed my truck for a weekend to haul some band gear across the state for a gig because his broke down. Right there is where the guitarist didn’t lift high enough and one of the feet on an amp dragged the top of the bed. He offered to pay to fix it and I laughed and said it was no big deal.”
I can also point to my wife’s CX-5 that I’ve been driving for 4 months since it gets so much better MPG than the truck (and she is working at home) and honestly say “Other than the armadillo mark on the front valence, I have no clue where any of these dings or dents came from.”
Part of it is that the truck isn’t an appliance to me, but there’s something more to it as well.
I’m here for this:
“If he could just say “hey, put the F-150 on the phone” and talk to it directly, I think he would, and I think it would end up in one of those “no, you hang up first” kind of situations.”
I’m not sure if I have greater appreciation for the fact that one of you would plausibly do this or that the other knows that’s exactly how it’d go down.
An old, worn truck looks like it EARNED that finish.. an old, worn Taurus looks like it was subjected to it.
My ‘73 Dodge has rusty patches, sagging door seals and a bit of a DIY paint job but it gets a bunch of comments for the same reason, it looks like the automotive equivalent of John Wayne; grizzled, confident and just a little dusty.