Posted on 11/07/2017 2:28:56 AM PST by jjotto
Don’t worry, they aren’t suffering. As shown by the rise of pickup trucks as daily drivers and family haulers in North America, Europe’s burgeoning love affair with versatile light trucks isn’t hurting the owners. It’s traditional passengers car makers who must worry.
Sales stats arriving from the Continent show a marketplace that’s increasingly different from years gone by. The increasing popularity of SUVs and crossovers in the land of diesels, manual transmissions, and small displacements is nothing new, but the exploding popularity of honest-to-God pickups is.
According to JATO Dynamics data published by Automotive News Europe, midsize pickup sales in Europe rose 19 percent in the first half of 2017. While that only amounts to 80,300 pickups sold, a fraction of the 216,194 sold in the U.S. in Q1 2017, the segment’s just getting started. Some analysts expect volume to top 200,000 units next year.
What’s fueling the hunger for a vehicle type long associated with public works crews, laborers and nothing else? Choice, for one thing, but also — to some degree — government regulations.
With fuel economy and emissions standards growing ever stricter, the traditional body-on-frame SUVs used by the well-heeled to pull trailers and boats are dwindling from the marketplace. Crossovers, especially those with small-displacement turbocharged engines and multi-cog transmissions, can’t cut it. Enter the body-on-frame midsize truck and its often hefty towing capacity.
In the UK, by far the biggest truck-buying country in Europe, the demise of the revered Land Rover Defender made consumers take a second look at the Ford Ranger for such duties. Pickup sales rose 17 percent in the UK in the first half of 2017. In Germany, it was 15 percent. France saw pickup sales rise 20 percent, while sales in Sweden and Italy rose 24 and 20 percent, respectively.
So promising is the fledgling segment, automakers are scrambling to field European-market pickups. Volkswagen already sells its Amarok, while Nissan’s Navara, Mitsubishi’s L200/Triton, Fiat’s Fullback, Ford’s Ranger, and Toyota’s Hilux round out the available offerings. Catering to buyers in the luxury market, Mercedes-Benz’s X-Class appears this year.
Renault — hardly a name you associate with rugged, do-anything private vehicles — is now considering whether it should sell its overseas-market Alaskan pickup (based, like the X-Class, on the Navara) in Europe. Meanwhile, PSA Group, maker of Citroën and Peugeot cars, wonders whether it should enter the fray or risk being left behind. The French automaker announced a joint venture with China’s Changan Automobile in September for a midsize, Chinese-market pickup. Maybe Europeans would like it, too.
With the exception of the Ranger, which comes to America in 2019, there’s little Detroit presence in the European truck field. If you’ve got the cash to spend, importers like AEC Europe will get you behind the wheel of a Ram 1500, which is exactly what one French man did.
In a recent interview with Trucks.com, Philippe Leroy describes his purchase of a gas-guzzling, lane-hogging 1500 back in 2009. The French cards were stacked against the obese American vehicle, but he soon grew to love it. He’s bought a new one from a Paris importer every two years since.
“At first, they don’t understand why I’m driving such a car,” Leroy said of the naysayers. “But when I talk about the benefits for buying this car, they understand. It’s the perfect truck for everyday living.”
You hate pick ups but your heroes have always been cowboys??? Missing the sarcasm tag or forget your meds this morning?
I really liked the old pilots. The new ones a a lot smaller.
“I absolutely adore Texas, just like SUVs and hate pickups”
Just curious; why do you “hate” pickups?
Europeans adopting white supremacist pickups! - mainstream media
Try a Honda Ridgeline pickup. Very good fuel economy and very roomy.
Don’t forget to look at the waterproof trunk!
Had a 2003, 2005 (totalled) and 2007 Honda Pilot.
We are very happy with our 2016 Pilot - seats eight and the AWD system is superior to the ‘03-’15 Pilot AWD.
Check it out!
Best!
“I really liked the old pilots. The new ones a a lot smaller.”
The NEW (’16 on) Pilots are enormous inside and get very good fuel mileage, especially for a vehicle that seats eight.
For years, pickup trucks made a fine little two-passenger coupe, with a great deal more utility. The addition of a rear seat and extended-cab and four-door models greatly blurred the distinctions between what the pickup had become, and the common two and four door sedans, with a great deal of practicality in terms of handling tough situations and durability, as well as somewhat improved visibility for the driver.
More than anything else, pickup trucks project POWER.
Something to do with male sexual apparatus, I think.
And you can never find your car in the parking lot when it is next to a pickup or SUV.
So what the heck am I trying to project with a van? Besides the number of children I have to cart around in it.
It looks like a carnival ride car.
Wife was chossing between a 2017 crv and a pilot. The pilot was a crv extended enough to add a 3rd row of seats. She didn’t like. Chose the crv.
...and they have something dinky hitched to the back of it!
I love my Chevy Silverado LTZ. I've owned pickups most of my driving life.
It all depends on whether the van is a crossover from a passenger car model (most minivans fall into this category) or if it is based on a pickup truck, with body-on-frame, rather than unibody. At one time I had an Econoline Ford passenger van, and it was about as tricked out as Lincoln Town Car. My daughter did not mind going to the prom in that one, and it would haul a boat - it even had a ball hitch on the front bumper so the boat trailer could be driven down the ramp, rather than backed down.
And dual fuel tanks. The days of excess are long past.
This is the basic passenger van on the one ton truck body. Needs to be with the horrible roads here. It has been lifted so that we can go over most of the rocks and bad potholes. The V8 gets us up some really nasty hills also.
Not the smoothest ride in the world, but it has only been stopped once here in Freetown.
Only if there's a halftrack option.
Tag axle? That’s some mighty payload capacity.
It’s too bad VW screwed up so badly on diesels. Their 3.0 TDI V6 would have made for a great powerplant in an Amarok.
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