I live in DFW also and you are correct. I'd take a guess that 80% of F150 owners live in a quiet suburban neighborhood and have never used the truck bed. What really is insane is the folks like a neighbor down the street who has an F250 Diesel Monster truck that has never seen any off road action except the time he drove on his grass backing out of the driveway. Same with all the Jeeps with oversized tires and 12k in tricked out off road gear, driven by soccer moms. I suppose it's some kind of status symbol like all the old farts buying Harley's and pretending they are some kind of bikers...shame they destroyed the brand.
You are correct. This very entertaining 11 minute video from Fortnine (still one of the best channels on YouTube) does a great job explaining exactly how HD wound up where they are today: https://youtu.be/EOwxxsPaogY
Sounds kind of like Leica to me: orthodontists running around Africa or Asia pretending to be Steve McCurry with $11,000 'Safari' cameras destroyed the brand for me. Yeah, sure, the company is still technically alive, but at what cost?
Are the cameras not good anymore? Or is it that the “wrong people“ are using their products that bothers you? If it is the latter, then you are just trying to buy an identity through brands, and you are as much part of the problem.
Leica glass is great. Leica cameras are great. I wish the company would focus on turning out high quality products that are meant to be used to create photographs, as opposed to turning out the camera equivalent of a Birkin bag.
And I say this as someone who has previously owned and shot with a Leica M6 and currently owns and shoots with a Leica IIIf.
The only good thing about Leica cameras is the handling, arguably and subjectively. They are behind in every single other respect. Leica lenses are good, though.
Couple being sub-par with being much more expensive and you get something that is moreso useful for image than as a tool.
The only upside with the rediculious "Live to Ride", or whatever rediculious marketing slogans they use is most used Harley's are bringing 1/2 of what they were in the nineties.
>Actually, they kept the brand alive by buying the product.
>Without those people they'd have died long ago.
I disagree, the Company was founded in 1903 and was did well into the 90's and then the 50 plus crowd decided to be some kind of poser biker gang type and destroyed the brand. Not very different than what happened to the Corvette and all the 6o plus folks buying them the last 20 years.
Wrong, the brand hung on and is dying out with boomers.
Everyone knows that the younger kids get crotch rockets.
It wasn’t the hold people that ruined the brand, it was the brand marketing to Boomers for shortsighted gains.
Harleys are for Boomers. Harley made sure that was the message.
Now they pay for it.
Harley's were synonymous with Motorcycle Gangs (Ex: Hells Angels, etc) or with young cool men (18+).
All of a sudden in the 90's a lot of these 40-60 year olds started to try and recapture their youth or that coolness they never had. They started buying Harley's and dressing in Leather and making these ridiculous club patches and driving around revving their motorcycles everywhere. It was so cringe that you actually felt ashamed for them.
Here is a good clip from South Park that kind of sums it all up.
I agree with you, but the problem is, there is no suitable replacement. When someone says, "soccer mom", you know exactly what they mean. And there is no phrase like it.
Just like the phrase "Indian giver". That one is just straight up racist and I will never use it, but sadly I haven't found a substitute for it either. "Someone who gives a gift and then takes it back" just doesn't roll off the tongue...
Isn't that insanely inconvenient? It takes so much more space, needs so much more fuel, is so much more bulky to drive .. is that bit of "status" actually worth it?
Besides, even if you haul sth bigger 2x a year, renting a little trailer of the right size is really a no-brainer. That's what I do.
> Isn't that insanely inconvenient? It takes so much more space, needs so much more fuel, is so much more bulky to drive .. is that bit of "status" actually worth it?
I'm wondering the same thing, especially since I see more and more of those trucks in Paris, France. Now I've never been to the US, but one thing with European cities is that there are a lot of old, small streets. We also never really had big cars like in the US, so parking spots, etc, are tiny for those cars. Hell, I have an older C-class coupé and it barely fits in street parking spots.
We also have our share of off-road vehicles that have probably never left Paris, seeing how they have huge rims with low tires. But I guess since the streets are in a horrible shape and getting worse, an off-road vehicle may make some sense.
However, I guess that's the whole point of "status". Something that's practical and affordable (financially or otherwise) for everyone can't confer status.
So when it comes to status-seeking, those metrics being outrageous is actually a feature, not a bug.
>especially since I see more and more of those trucks in Paris, France
Yep, this trend exploded almost everywhere in Europe and I think I found the answer to why. Lots of my male colleagues at work (devs in Europe) are married and have kids on the way and when discussions came at lunchtime about buying a new family car for taking the kids places it seemed like the choice is always a SUV. Whenever I ask them why a SUV, even though they usually prefer sleek sedans, the answer is always "my wife/girlfriend says she feels safer in a big, tall car", which mostly makes sense as throughout history, females' reproductive and nesting choices have had a major impact on shaping male behavior and various aspects of society like real-estate and now car choices.
It's sad that this kickstarted what is basically an arms race on the road since nobody feels safe anymore driving their kids in the traditional European compact car when everyone else is now in big heavy SUVs with poor visibility and easily distracted by their phones or infotainment touch-screens so this fear drives them to one-up their "competition" with bigger and heavier cars to make sure their kids have a perceived higher safety in case on an accident.
Another thing is today's compact cars are getting ridiculously low. I don't want SUV, but I want to drive on crappy gravel roads with confidence and park close to curb without scratching bottom of the bumper. Regular cars used to allow that 2 decades ago. Now I'll need a „raised“ car for that :(
That's for fuel efficiency reasons. Cars lower to the ground get much better mileage at highway speeds since they have less aerodynamic drag.
And it's not just compact cars, modern SUVs, except the ones destined for workhorse off-roading, are also lower to the ground than they were 20 or so years ago since they never leave the city/highway anyway.
Large utility vehicles like pickups are, by dint of their mass, their high centres, and their poorer visibility, dangerous to other people on the road.
They also release a large amount of carbon into the air.
So yes, their use as a recreational or status symbol should be discouraged.
I have an older Ford Ranger. It is only 300 lbs heavier than the heaviest Prius models. Put a pair of super sized Americans in there and their gross weight is more than my dangerously heavy vehicle.
My point is the discussion should be entirely about carbon footprint, not whether CO2 emitting processes or machines (in this case large vehicles) are truly "needed".
