The engines rev, the guitars thrum and a gruff narrator lays out why the vehicle occupying the driveway is more than just a machine. “A truck is a tool,” he says, “but a Ram – a Ram is life.”
So begins an advert for the Ram 1500, a pickup truck slightly bigger than the Panzer I tanks of Nazi Germany and almost as heavy. It is growing in popularity in Europe, with the number of Rams arriving on the continent up 20% in 2023 from the year before, according to registration data from the European Environment Agency. Road safety and environmental campaigners in the UK and Europe are aghast as the latest, most extreme cases of North American car bloat – giant pickup trucks – are increasingly crossing the Atlantic.
“Europe should ban the Ram,” said Dudley Curtis from the European Transport Safety Council. “This type of vehicle is excessively heavy, tall and powerful, making it lethal in collisions with normal-sized vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists.”
As an American, I’m so so so sorry in advance. These things come with some sort of feature that requires them to drive 30cm behind you, no matter how many kph over the speed limit you’re going.
A truck is a tool
Nah, that’s usually the person driving it.
The thing is, a truck is a tool, or used to be at least. I had an old little Toyota truck. Two seats and could haul as much construction materials or debris as any one person could manage.
These trucks are impossible to work with. Massive cabs that shorten the bed, lifted frames with beds that break your back loading stuff, terrible fuel economy. They’re as much about utility as lacy underwear.
But t of course the tarifs are for Chinese electric cars, not for those waste of space, enormous polluters, dangerous for the other road users “cars”.
They are defintly becoming more in Germany thanks to the fucking Amarok.
And I understand that there might be valid reasons to buy an Amarok, but I’ve never seen them used by anyone, but suburbanites who use them as a personal ca4.
I think the demand here isn’t driven by soccer mums picking up their 1 grocery from sainsbury’s. I think it’s driven by people who can’t afford a house, and can’t afford rent and will settle at least for a portable tank that they have space to sleep in.
Homeless people aren’t buying new trucks.
Let’s just say the definition of “homeless” people has expanded quite a bit in the last decade. Plenty of homeless people work 9-5 jobs.
But are they buying expensive trucks? Still doubtful.
There are people working at Google living in their Tesla because they can’t afford rent in Silicon Valley
Ford also famously runs ads (in the US) boasting about their lie-flat drivers seats in their trucks because so many people can afford a truck payment but not a rent payment.
Beats being on the streets which is almost impossible to come back from.
The collapse of Western society is being witnessed by hearing anecdotes on forums until you’re the one in the anecdote.
The disadvantaged are simply swept into the streets to die, and washed into the gutters afterwards (Newsom, anyone?).
Ironic, considering how often people lose their shit over fabricated Tiananmen propaganda.
Care to expand on the Tiananmen propaganda comment?
There are a lot of western narratives about the June 4th incident that are atrocity propaganda contradicted by western reporting at the time of the incident
