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Americans love pickups and SUVs.
We can't get enough of these vehicles, but why are they just so frigging popular?
Especially these days well there are many reasons for this phenomenon.
So keep watching and i'll tell you all about it.
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Our addiction to these vehicles which combined are classified as trucks is kind of a curious thing.
Think about it.
Traditional sedans for instance, tend to be more comfortable, efficient, and much better to drive.
So logically you wouldn't think their sales would be declining, but they are and have been for decades in 2000 sedan deliveries accounted for more than 40% of new vehicle sales in the U S.
Over the following two decades though, demand plummeted and this year it's estimated they'll only come in around 18%.
And deliveries of other vehicles, things like minivans and sport cars have been falling too.
As the fortunes of sedans weigh, suv's where on the raised and again taking the place of family 4 doors They're expected to account for more than 50% of new vehicle sales in America this year.
When you combine them with pickup trucks, that figure is in the 70s, which is nuts.
But it's even more extreme with the Detroit three which have largely exited the traditional car market.
For better or worse GM Ford and FCA are heavily invested in pickups and utilities.
combined sales of trucks and SUVs are projected to make up around 84% of these company's overall deliveries in 2020.
sedans on the other hand, are expected to clock in at a mere five and a half percent.
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This really got started back in the 1980s, when something called corporate average fuel economy cafe for short became a thing and basically it was an effort by the government to improve the fuel efficiency of cars but that in turn forced automakers to build smaller vehicles which A lot of drivers really didn't want
But the cafe on the truck side allowed you to build more trucks and bigger engines and the standard for the fuel economy on trucks I was lower.
So that allowed a skew to the truck side And allow the growth of pickup trucks and sport utilities.
All of you auto enthusiasts out there may not like the decline of traditional cars but automakers, particularly the Detroit three are just building vehicles their customers want products they can make money selling.
Trucks are very profitable, especially pickup trucks.
The method of building a truck, is body on frame it is old school, and cars are safer because of the unibody.
But it takes a lot of work to build a unibody construction around a vehicle.
So when, you build a truck and you can build them in components now so, you can build the cab and the bed, and the frame and you can piece them together.
At the end of the assembly line, it allows for more interchangeability between trucks.
So now I have different bed lengths, different cab lengths, different chassis lengths, four wheel drive and two wheel drive.
It allows for a lot of changing through the vehicle itself, but it also makes the vehicle less expensive to build
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Obviously lower manufacturing costs can mean higher profits for automakers but that's not all.
Car companies can also charge more for pickups because no drivers are willing to pay for them.
You know when you want to, you know aspire to to doing more outdoor stuff or if you're using a pickup truck for work my brother in law has a part time farm.
He uses a pickup truck.
You know when you want to use pickup trucks for for those kinds of things, even if it ends up only being five or 10% of your life activities is tends to be what you care about and you're willing to invest that into a truck.
Simply put pickups and SUVs are just more fun.
Not only can they easily tow a boat or a couple snowmobiles, they're great to go camping in or haul kayaks or even go off roading.
And if you tried most of that with your typical sedan or hatchback, well, you're probably not going to get very far and beyond all of that.
These vehicles typically have very rugged styling, which also appeals to driver's vanity.
Your neighbor is buying a sport utility or buying a pickup truck.
Suddenly that's the cool thing to have and suddenly you're you're sitting on is passes and I shouldn't be driving a sedan because that's uncool.>> Trucks really started getting more stylish and premium in the mid 1990s when the Dodge Ram was completely redesigned.
Remember when dad used to make pickups.
There's a new pickup that breaks all the rules.
And it's.
Before that trucks were pretty much just utilitarian work tools.
That ram kicked off our revolution, paving the way for today's super premium pickups.
Which offer luxury car interiors oodles of refinement and the latest tech.
Of course they give you all that with no sacrifice and towing and hauling capability.
As these vehicles and the SUVs based on them got nicer and came with more features.
People that normally drove cars had to give up less and less if they switched to a truck.
But there are other benefits, too.
Now crossover is a car.
It just is sold as a truck.
And so it now has all the features you had in your car.
It has pretty much the same gas mileage as you had in your car.
It has more utility than you had in your car.
It has the higher ride height, and in most cases it has all will always drive at least available.
So It's a better car.
It is the modern car.
This blend of characteristics in addition to rugged styling and overall popularity has really made the crossover and absolute blockbuster.
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But what does all of this mean for drivers that still want a more traditional car?
Well, both Stephanie and Sam tell me that they do not see sedan sales increasing least not in the near term.
Now that decline should level off, but growth is very likely off the table.
If you are a four door fanboy or fan girl this sounds like terrible news but Paradoxically it may actually be a blessing in disguise.
You've got opportunity to take a sit down and really play up the things that it's good at which are designed which are handling.
And ride and comfort and, and all of those things you can really then stop trying to make a stand be a jack of all trades and and let it be a sedan.
She said Examples of this include the new Hyundai Sonata, which is really expressively designed as well as the Audi A seven, which is also quite avant garde.
So there you go.
That's the story on trucks and SUVs and why they become so popular.
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