Posted on 10/12/2017 1:04:32 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Heated and cooled seats. Backup cameras. Panoramic glass roofs.
Not exactly what springs to mind when you think of a pickup. But that's what American truck buyers increasingly want, spending an average of $46,844 on a pickup, according to Kelley Blue Book. That's more than the starting price of luxury SUVs like the Mercedes GLC or the Lexus RX. In 2016, pickup trucks made up a little more than a third of all vehicles that sold for over $50,000.
At the State Fair of Texas this month, Ford Motor Co. is displaying its most expensive pickup yet: The F-Series Super Duty Limited, a luxury heavy-duty truck with a starting price of $80,835. It has custom two-tone leather seats, a heated steering wheel wrapped in hand-stitched leather and high-tech features like a 360-degree camera system that guides drivers when they're hitching up a trailer.
A fully-loaded F-450 — the biggest version of the Super Duty — will top out at $94,455. It's capable of towing an Air Force F-35 fighter plane, but it also has massaging seats.....
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
The Expedition is still a full frame vehicle, built on a modified F-150 frame. In fact, they finally updated it from being on the 1997 F-150 frame to the 2015 F-150 frame. You’re thinking of the Explorer, which is basically a Taurus now.
I have one. Barebones love it. cost around $17K in ‘08.
Aluminum frame though
“People are free to spend money as they wish. Not when car makers only make high-priced vehicles.”
That’s a rather liberal viewpoint that totally false. No one forces you to buy any vehicle, and there are plenty of trucks in the $20k range.
“Light, powerful, decent cloth seats, good tires and five on the floor, $25k and they would sell them all day.”
Why bother with a more expensive stick shift that costs more to maintain?? You can a better truck for under $30k all day long and not bother with roll-up windows or just an AM radio.
“You cannot find a ‘basic’ truck any more. No power windows, manual transmission, no electronic gadgets everywhere and no ‘leather’.....................”
Then why are they on the road?? My BIL has one. Paid $27k for it but got an auto trans, power windows, and Bluetooth.
Seems ignorant people always make the loudest and dumbest comments.
That’s not a ‘basic truck’.
Power windows, AT and BT?...............
I had a Ford F-100 in the 80’s that didn’t even have AC!
3 on the tree, plastic bench seat and hand cranked windows!
You can’t buy a truck like that any more!..............
It sounds like you know something I don't. Does King Ranch belong to someone other than Ford?
One of my life rules is never live anywhere with a population density high enough to make driving a stick suck. I did a week in San Fran with a stick and all that “move two car lengths idle” killed my left knee. After a couple of days of that I turned to my hosts and said “tell me about this mass transit system I hear is so good” did most of the rest of the trip on the bus/ subway.
I like old books, old guns, old pickups, and a woman with crow’s feet around the eyes.
And I like working a stick in a vehicle.
Why the Hell would you want to??
A three speed manual? That was a worthless transmission made in the days of mandatory 55mph speed limits, connected to worthless 120hp V-8 engines.
Are you just afraid of getting old and think if they would just being back lousy truck designs you’d find the fountain of youth??
I guess you’ve never been poor....................
Nope. The frame is steel, the body is aluminum.
King Ranch is an actual ranch in Texas, a very large one. The name is licensed to Ford. https://king-ranch.com/
Because nobody wants to buy a truck like that. Even in the 80s, column shift manual was an endangered species because it sucked and nobody wanted to buy it. :P
Power windows are now cheaper and lighter than manual. Automatic trans is demanded by the market and CAFE.
Bluetooth is not standard in a fleet truck but it may soon be legally mandated by most states so it’s not like the makers will get a choice.
There is a market for manual transmission trucks.
I was raised poor. A truck like that would have been like a Cadillac to me. Now I can afford what I want instead of what I have to buy. The mfrs have neglected the low end of the market for the high end. Henry Ford had the right idea, make a car that everyone can afford, but the company that bears his name has forgotten that.............
Even poor people today would refuse to buy a truck like that today. You’re not allowing for how government mandates and customer requirements have seriously changed the marketplace.
What you’re calling the “high end” of the marketplace is now the high-low or low-middle end. No, really. That’s what competition and mandates have done to the marketplace.
Not enough of one to continue production in the half ton class. The big three offered them at zero cost and the take rate was under 10%; in some cases it was under 1%. There was no business case that would justify continuing to produce them, particularly in the era of CAFE (manuals do worse on CAFE). If people wanted manuals they should have bought them in 2000-2010. They didn’t, so they’re gone now.
There is a huge market for a simple low end no frills pickup that will actually be used as a pickup.
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