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Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

economist.com

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Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#101

Post by joshspankit »

nostromo wrote: post #82
nyx wrote: post #29

The 25-year import rule here, which bans Americans from importing vehicles from other countries unless they're 25+ years old, is just awful for those of us who would be interested in driving small, efficient foreign cars. It would be great to live completely car-free, but absent major changes to how we plan our cities, it's just a sad reality that cars are a necessary ingredient to life in the vast majority of Americ…

What would be the point of safety and emissions regulations if we let everyone bypass them by importing vehicles from abroad? The vehicles meeting the requirements wouldn't be competitive on price because they'd be playing by a different set of rules.

Seems better to just enforce the same emissions regulations on imported vehicles

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#102

Post by aae42 »

boredumb wrote: post #59
porphyra wrote: post #37

One of the most highly upvoted Reddit posts on /r/fuckcars mocks large pickups compared to the utility of a kei truck. https://reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/sdrgv3/japanese_truck... A kei truck has about 90% the bed length of a pickup while being a lot more nimble. The lower bed is more ergonomic to load and unload too.

Where I live the hills would stall that kei out before you got to any real hills, with nothing at all added to the bed.

Gear ratios, you might just not be getting up the hills very quickly

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#103

Post by macinjosh »

Big American trucks are like denim jeans.

Jeans started out as super useful and economical clothing worn by miners, cowboys, etc. fast forward n years and people are paying hundreds of dollars for exclusive denim and designs with pre-worn holes and other artificial wear patterns.

Trucks today look like they could be utilitarian and used for work but are really just an overpriced fashion statement.

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#104

Post by nostromo »

triceratops wrote: post #89
nostromo wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be the point of safety and emissions regulations if we let everyone bypass them by importing vehicles from abroad? The vehicles meeting the requirements wouldn't be competitive on price because they'd be playing by a different set of rules.

It's even less likely that a 25 year old vehicle will meet current safety and emissions regulations.

The amount of those vehicles will obviously be limited.

Removing it would allow people to buy cheap cars in places like Mexico, that have loose emissions standards, and drive them around California, which has some of the most stringent emissions standards in the world. Not to mention the safety requirements issues...

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#105

Post by 7speter »

ke88y wrote: post #76
camhenlin wrote: post #13

I’ve looked into one of these and they’re completely illegal in my state, no way to register them without gaming different dmv stations and getting a clueless dmv rep who doesn’t know what they’re looking at, to register it. This is Oregon. Really unfortunate situation as these fit a lot of use cases that would previously require something as big as a gas guzzling Ford F150 otherwise.

> Really unfortunate situation as these fit a lot of use cases that would previously require something as big as a gas guzzling Ford F150 otherwise. What about the Ford Maverick? The only issue is that the bed is fairly small, but it looks like these minis have small beds and low towing capacities as well? And Ford makes a hybrid version. (Don't misunderstand: I'm not arguing against relaxing the rules in Oregon.)

I thought the whole appeal for the maverick was that it was a hybrid truck that you’d be able to drive around a city (Ford marketing, itll be fine to drive anywhere probably)?

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#106

Post by moltar »

nyx wrote: post #29

The 25-year import rule here, which bans Americans from importing vehicles from other countries unless they're 25+ years old, is just awful for those of us who would be interested in driving small, efficient foreign cars. It would be great to live completely car-free, but absent major changes to how we plan our cities, it's just a sad reality that cars are a necessary ingredient to life in the vast majority of Americ…

You can still find plenty of amazing vehicles, in great condition in the South of Europe. The weather there is great and cars don’t deteriorate as much. I see plenty of Toyotas and Hondas from pre 97 models. They still cost around 3-4 K EUR probably because they are such an easy maintenance that they will still drive for another decade and that’s priced in.

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#107

Post by klyrs »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #30
joewhale wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's easy to throw rocks when you personally don't have 3-4 kids.

So what did people do when they had 3-4 kids in the 80s? I see families of 4 with huge SUVs these days. If anything they want a kei van right? It maximises the size of the vehicle, cuboid on wheels, and minimises the cost for that volume.

We didn't use seatbelts or booster seats. We rode in the bed of the pickup, we rode sitting backwards in the trunk of a hatchback, we crammed in 5-wide in the bench seat in the back of a sedan.

Also, there were proto-SUVs like the Chevy Suburban.

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#108

Post by thesuitonym »

boredumb wrote: post #59
porphyra wrote: post #37

One of the most highly upvoted Reddit posts on /r/fuckcars mocks large pickups compared to the utility of a kei truck. https://reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/sdrgv3/japanese_truck... A kei truck has about 90% the bed length of a pickup while being a lot more nimble. The lower bed is more ergonomic to load and unload too.

Where I live the hills would stall that kei out before you got to any real hills, with nothing at all added to the bed.

Why do you believe that?

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#110

Post by piperswe »

cdchn wrote: post #33
kubectl_h wrote: post #20

I've seen a few of these in Maine in driveways and yards/fields, but only recently have I seen a couple on the road. I was surprised to see them. I believe JDM vans cannot be registered here but perhaps that's changed recently. If made illegal to drive on the roads it's not clear why these would be preferable to side-by-sides, other than novelty or for folks that really like to wrench.

Has to be 25+ years old then you can import/register it no problem.

Registering it does depend on the state: I've heard some states will prevent you from registering them due for emissions or safety reasons, even though they're federally legal to import
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