They’re every inconvenience rolled in to one. A pain to get in. A pain to park. Use heaps of fuel. Don’t fit in garages, and to top it off are expensive AF. I’m confident in saying unless you tow like, horse floats on the regular, if you own one you’re a fucking idiot.
They're also way more dangerous. They do more damage if they hit something, and because of the terrible visibility they're more likely to hit something.
That said, if they do hit something, the people inside the tank might be ok.
They are more likely to roll than normal cars (SUVs excluded), and when they roll they're generally more likely to crush the roof due to their weight. So yeah, while they're better off than the car they hit, they're still not amazing safety wise.
They're not actually that bad on fuel. Don't get me wrong, I'd never own one but a few of our major players at work have them as some sort of status symbol. Cruising in overdrive at 100km/h they can go as low as 6L/100km, but average is around 12L/100km unless you are doing lots of hunting through the gearbox or driving like a dick, then you can see some truly disturbing fuel usage figures.
To put it in perspective, this is on par with a modern hilux, and WORLDS better than the 2022 79 series landcruiser even with all the fuel efficiency gains they made.
To be clear I still don't think anyone should be driving one here - our roads and car parks are simply not built for them. They aren't that great offroad either. Really the only genuine use case is towing an enormous caravan down the hwy, in which case I hate you anyway because that's TWO symbols of you being an inconsiderate prick that doesn't care about anyone else.
My wife's Suzuki Grand vitara gets 9.5L/100km no matter how you drive it. It's insane to me, but facts are facts. Raptor might be a different beast but the rest of them are all pretty well in line.
I call BS on those numbers. Real world driving conditions would pump them up. And I highly doubt the people spending 100k on these are selecting eco mode and driving like a grandma.
I used to give them all shit about hooking their wallets directly up to the fuel tank to save time, but it seems I was wrong on that one. There's a RAM something or other, an F150 and a Chevy Silverado in the circle of super ultra power megablokes. They all get pretty similar figures: 12-13L/100km average.
I was pretty miffed because that's actually better than my comparatively tiny japanese 4x4 gets sometimes. They must have put some serious work in to achieving those figures with such a massive vehicle and massive engine.
European here. Japanese cars just have bad fuel economy tbh.
In the America-centric culture we have here on the Internet, they're touted as highly efficient because the comparison is usually Prius vs F250, but really you can often get better fuel economy from German cars than Japanese. German diesels in particular. Average driver will probably get the same highway fuel economy out of an E-Class or a Civic.
Pain to get in? The hell are you talking about. It's much easier getting in and out of a truck than a normal car with the seat a feet from the ground. Especially for tall/old people.
Depends which truck I guess. I've been in a couple that were so big that the step up was uncomfortable, and I'm 6'3 so that just shouldn't ever happen.
Yeah well those huge lifted american trucks are a different story. Typical european truck is much smaller. Nissan Frontier for example though it's called Navara here.