How the truck has evolved over three decades
Today’s pickups are larger, with more emphasis placed on towing than payload
Years ago — longer than the 30 years Toronto Star Wheels has been a presence in the Saturday Star — I worked with very talented gentleman who was a macho man.
He ate steak and salad and drank scotch on the rocks. He liked to hunt and fish. He liked long guns and he liked to shoot them even more. Snow machines were becoming popular and he had a couple of them. He lived on 100 acres in north Pickering (it was farm country then) and he and his wife (who was kind of a tomboy) would ride those machines around to their heart’s content.
One time, he wrote a column in the paper he worked for about the joys of hunting. A letter to the editor called him a “pasty-faced, beadyeyed, killer.” Next Hallowe’en, he met the kids at the door with flour on his face and cake sparkles pasted around his eyes. He had a toy popgun slung over his shoulder with a toy tiger hanging down from it. When the children asked who he was supposed to be, he replied:
“A beady-eyed, pasty-faced, killer. Here’s your candy. Scram.” And they did. He owned several vehicles, but the one he drove the most, including into downtown Toronto to his place of business, was a 1977 Chevrolet Scottsdale K10 short bed pickup truck. He loved that truck. One day, I asked him about it.
“You can do so many things with it,” he said. “I use it a lot around the farm, and that’s why I usually have it when I come into town. I might go somewhere to pick up something and then, rather than go home and get a car, I’ll just head on downtown with the pickup.”
He then added something that’s stuck with me for years.
“Pickups are also becoming status symbols,” he said. “If you drive through any suburban subdivision, the second ‘car’ in every driveway is going to be a pickup.”
I don’t think he was wrong — and neither have the manufacturers. It helps explain why light trucks have been consistently strong sellers for years and years.
Having said that, the truck scene has changed considerably since Wheels first started. Back in 1986, you could buy “mini” pickups alongside those that were full-size. Ram still had Dodge in its name, Isuzu was sold in our market, and Nissan’s truck was called Datsun.
There was a Jeep pickup, and that company still belonged to American Motors. Chevrolet was on the second-to-last year of its El Camino, a car equipped with a pickup bed. Toyota’s Tundra and Nissan’s Titan were still to come, and imagine the reaction if you’d suggested Honda might one day build a pickup, too.
All vehicles have progressed considerably over the last three decades, but pickups really upped their fea- tures during that time. The trucks of 1986 were much better equipped than those that had come before them, but they were still primarily sold for work. You paid extra for such options as air conditioning, power locks and windows, intermittent wipers, cruise control and a radio.
Four-wheel drive and extendedlength cabs were available, but one of the more popular configurations was regular cab in two-wheel drive, almost always passed over by buyers today.
One of the biggest changes has been literally that: trucks have grown to huge proportions. The lightest 2016 Chevrolet Colorado outweighs the full-size 1986 version by about 260 kilograms.
That weight difference also had an effect on capacity ratings over the years. A truck’s total capacity is the weight of the vehicle plus what it’s towing or hauling, and the heavier the truck is, the less the load can be. In 1990, the highest available payload for a Dodge Ram half-ton was 1,021 kg. For 2016, it’s 857 kg.
Over the years, though, the importance of payload has dropped for most customers, replaced with the current emphasis on towing. Back in 1986, “getting away from it all” might have meant hooking up a small camper to a station wagon. Today, a pickup may often be the family’s primary vehicle, and it can be called upon to tow anything from snowmobiles to fifth-wheel RVs.
The power under the hood has grown, too. In 1990, Ford’s available diesel engine made 345 lb-ft of torque, while today, you can get diesel monsters churning out as much as 900.
But even as trucks grew more powerful over the last three decades, they also became more fuel-efficient. Cylinder deactivation, smalldisplacement turbocharged engines, multi-speed transmissions, aerodynamic styling and lightweight materials have all made their way into the segment.
The “Detroit Three” of Chrysler, Ford and General Motors ruled the truck world back when Wheels was new, and they still account for the majority of pickup sales — last year, the Ford F-150 alone outsold the two top-selling passenger cars combined, the Honda Civic and Hyundai Elantra, by more than 6,000 units.
But over the years, Wheels writers covered truck news from the Japanese automakers as well. Toyota had been selling them in North America since the 1960s, but in 1993, it introduced its T100, larger than its previous trucks but smaller than the full-size domestic models. Two years later, it debuted the compact Tacoma, and in 1999, its full-size Tundra.
Nissan, meanwhile, brought out its Frontier in 1999, which could boast being the first compact crew-cab pickup with four doors. Four years later, the Titan arrived.
The Frontier and Tacoma never went away, but overall buyer preference for larger trucks brought an end to smaller models like the Ford Ranger and its Mazda B-Series sibling, Dodge’s Dakota, and Chevrolet’s S10.
Poor sales also clamped down on such short-lived oddities as the ultraluxurious Lincoln Blackwood, the topless Dodge Dakota Sport Convertible, and the hot rod-styled Chevrolet SSR.
Our writers covered the introductions of SUV-based trucks, such as the Ford Explorer Sport Trac, Chevrolet Avalanche, and the newfor-2006 Honda Ridgeline. It was fitting since, after all, SUVs had originally started out as closed versions of pickup trucks.
And by hinting that it might actually build its tiny Santa Cruz concept, Hyundai may be bringing pickup practicality to the compact crossover crowd — a market that wasn’t ready for Subaru’s Legacybased Baja for 2003, but which might embrace the idea now.
One thing’s for sure: the current demand for pickup trucks isn’t going away any time soon, and it should be interesting to see what the next 30 years will bring.
And my old friend, who’s since died, undoubtedly would have been pleased by his prescience.