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Dead on arrival. Not enough room for the kids and dogs.
Europeans do just fine with multipurpose vehicles and regular small cars. You dont need a Straßenpanzer to bring two wee kids and a few grocery bags around.
Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks
141–150 of 651 posts
Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks
#142I've seriously contemplated getting one of these. Street legal, fuel efficient, simple, but when I started researching them I started to see a pattern. It's hard to find anyone in rural areas willing to work on them and not all mini trucks are equal. Some are not shipped correctly and have frame rust issues. There are YouTuber's that cover some of the models and the gotchas and things to inspect. I would never buy on…
I cannot wait for EV drivetrains to invade side by sides, especially ones based on sodium ion or LMP or LFP.
Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
So only allow imports from countries with emissions and safety standards equal to or greater than American ones. I don't understand why the age of the vehicle should matter.
That's already the case. You can legally import a modern kei car if you can modify it to meet relevant safety and emissions standards. You can import any modern car. I imported a 2001 BMW from Canada a few years back and it was a breeze because it already had the EPA stickers and BMW NA signed off on the safety stuff. You can import a non-compliant car (e.g. some carburetted kei car with minimal safety equipment) if you bring it up to the US standards that were in effect at the time. Nobody wants to bother does not mean that nobody can.
The 25 (well I think DOT is 20 years and EPA is 25 or vice versa) means you can import shit without it having to meet relevant federal standards. States (e.g. California) will still want to see proof it doesn't pollute too much, and CARB tests are expensive. Sates like Washington will let you register pretty much anything with wheels which is how you see a lot of non-US. market cars for sale out here with Washington plates.
Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks
#144I've seriously contemplated getting one of these. Street legal, fuel efficient, simple, but when I started researching them I started to see a pattern. It's hard to find anyone in rural areas willing to work on them and not all mini trucks are equal. Some are not shipped correctly and have frame rust issues. There are YouTuber's that cover some of the models and the gotchas and things to inspect. I would never buy on…
I seriously miss compact trucks, like the Mazda B-series, Ford Courier, Ford Ranger (before it became a mid-size in 2019). These kinds of trucks might more to your liking. Sure they aren't as small and cute as the imports, but your local auto store can still get you parts for them. They are fun to drive, fairly fuel efficient, and are capable of hauling material from the home center. I learned to drive stick, and how…
You can get the Ford Maverick
Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks
#145I see these all over the place in asiapac, especially at resorts for staff and maintenance to get around on smaller pathways in lieu of golf carts or runabouts. It makes a lot of sense when you consider that they are easy to move around on a small boat/ferry and can be used on the roads. These places also have a much high percentage of motorbikes, scooters and ATVs and the same garages/shops that service those can se…
Yeah, the u.s market does not really support this variety of form factors and motor cars but I think EVs are going to change that because it's a lot easier to vary the size of a battery, the main primary component of an EV vehicle and just slap on any of a range of electric motors.
Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks
#146Earlier 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.
Seems better to just enforce the same emissions regulations on imported vehicles
I believe the point is that older vehicles are exempt from newer rules, regardless of where they are from. Is why I can legally drive my 2000 truck, despite it almost certainly being less than up to current standards.
I think there is a reasonable logic that scrapping the truck would probably be pretty bad for the environment, such that some of the standards are "water under the bridge", as it were. The rest of the logic almost certainly falls on the numbers just not mattering? I don't know.
Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks
#147The 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…
The 25-year import rule here, which bans Americans from importing vehicles
from other countries unless they're 25+ years old
Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks
#148One 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.
I would much, much rather have a new $70k Ford F150 Raptor than a tiny Japanese truck . Honestly a redditor - perhaps the most odious group on the Iternet - recommending the tiny Japanese truck over the F150 is a good enough reason to prefer the opposite; a redditor on "fuckcars" is a GREAT reason to prefer the opposite.
Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why? What do you care what he drives?
Cars much bigger, heavier, and with worse visibility than necessary, make the roads more dangerous for everyone else—motorists, bicyclists, pedestrians, everyone . The whole thing's turning into an expensive, dangerous game of prisoner's dilemma. It's best if everyone buys exactly as much car as they need, but anyone who "defects" and buys a bigger, heavier car is safer than everyone else, while making everyone else…
You need to rethink the incentives. Big, wasteful cars have no business being as cheap as a small family car. This was not accidental.
Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks
#150One 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.
Missing the point. Many people buying inefficient oversized pickup trucks don't care that there's smaller and more efficient options out there, but they do it for the status simbol and ego lifting, not to be utilitarian and efficient. I see these monster pick-up trucks more and more in European cities nowadays too, F-150s, Dodge Rams, with some fancy paintjob and big wheels but who's bed hasn't seen any actual use ca…
Not me.
I bought a F250 diesel to tow my 13,000 lb rv. Smaller vehicles can't do that.