The demand for older compact S-10 and the old compact rangers is sky high. Make them legal again.
Wouldn't the Ford Maverick be the modern version of these? It comes in two different forms as far as I can tell - the "truck shaped car" (FWD, hybrid powertrain), and the "small truck" form (4WD, no hybrid, rather lower fuel economy), depending on what you need it to do. And in a small truck, I think FWD vs the 2WD/RWD Rangers is probably the right option - some of those were pretty tail happy in the slick.
I've been keeping my eye out for a Ridgeline also, something in that "I do enough on my land to need a hauler but I'm more ex-urban than rural, and don't load the whole bed with projects but once a year"
I was pointed to the article from the just-posted Not Just Bikes video "These Stupid Trucks are Literally Killing Us", which does go over those things:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo
The point of the Axios article, which comes up at the 25m25s point in the NJB video, goes towards the point that the pickup truck has actually become less practical over the decades. And to the idea that most folks would be better served with a station wagon or perhaps a minivan.
Trucks have gone from the cargo bed being >60% of the usable length (ignoring the engine), to the (crew) cab being >60% of the useable length. Pickup trucks gone from thing-haulers to people-haulers, in which case, why bother with that form factor?
The bed was always a mixed-use people hauler. Then they made that illegal. Go to Mexico, Iraq, Philippines and other places where it's still tolerated or legal in most places and the bed continues to be a people hauler. It's in part the cab got bigger because you couldn't put the people in the bed anymore, not because more people started riding in the trucks.
If you want more bed and less cab again, make it legal for the passengers, kids, etc to ride in the bed again. Like we did when I was a kid. If not, don't be surprised when you make something illegal people adapt the vehicle to deal with it.
Ah yes: let's drive down the interstate at ≥60 mph (100kph) to grandma's house with all the kids in the bed. Great idea. Would you like to also bring back leaded gasoline?
Or perhaps non-farmers / non-construction workers can stop pretending they regularly need a cargo bed and get a station wagon or minivan.
The top-selling car in 2022 was the Ford F-150, the top selling car in 1982 was Ford Escort: I'm having a hard time believing that people's hauling needs have changed in the intervening decades to rationally justify the sales figures.
1) You're in favor of better safety for passengers, which would mean better to put them in cab than bed.
2) You're against "pretending" need for carge bed, which would mean reducing or eliminating bed as fraction of full size of vehicle.
Put the two together and we see increasing fractional (%) cab sizes and decreasing fractional (%) bed size. which means we're getting exactly what you asked for. And you act surprised that when people get what they ask for, sales are better?
If you actually read the article, you'll see that—going by usable length—pickup trucks are generally no longer thing-haulers but people-haulers, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of their form factor.
If you want general hauling space/volume, your best best seems to be a (mini)van.
Making the cab longer isn't to ruin people's nostalgia. It's to deal with the legal requirements for transporting passengers. You're illustrating my point. We shouldn't be outraged when you make something illegal and the vehicle is adapted to deal with that.
Why would we be upset about fewer people getting dead, shouldn't we be happy about bigger cabs if that's the case?
In 1982 the top selling vehicle in the US was the Ford Escort. In 2022 it was the Ford F-150.
People were hauled in the Escort just fine (and probably more comfortably in the rain and winter). The F-150 wasn't adapted to better haul people because changes to safety laws: it was adapted do help profit margins.
I've helped friends haul some of those things as well since they knew my dad had a minivan (Caravan, later Sienna), and would ask if I could (in my late-teens, early-20s) help them out.
Nothing made them illegal. The Tacoma got quite a lot bigger, and the S-10 was replaced by the Colorado, because consumers wanted larger trucks.
I think there is some demand for small trucks, but not enough to get the automakers to manufacture them again. The Ford Courier seems to be doing alright, but I'm not seeing any of the other automakers copying it.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/01/general-motors-is-inves...
The number of farmers I know who are running 20+ year old pickups because they can't find any suitable replacement at all is too darn high