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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

#151

Post by nemo44x »

slackfan wrote: post #40
officeplant wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is the Maverick DOA? I see the all over my rural farm area and people are paying $8000 over sticker for the privilege of getting one of the few in stock.

Must be somewhere in the flatlands then. The small(er) truck market is dominated by Toyota, Nissan and Chevrolets and Ford Rangers. Mavericks are mostly city-dweller mom-mobiles at best.

I'd love a Maverick for a weekend automobile for things like going to the countryside for the day, hiking, and picking things up at Home Depot, etc. for the money it seems like a pretty cool thing. I hope to buy a used one in a couple years.

If I was in a rural area and had to do serious things with it and haul then I wouldn't be in the market.

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#153

Post by nicbou »

daxfohl wrote: post #50

Wow, my dad runs some apartments and he's always buzzing random stuff from one place to another. He complains all the time that pickup trucks keep getting bigger and harder to use for day-to-day tasks. Seems like something like this would be perfect.

What about a sprinter van, or whatever you would call a Renault Kangoo? This is what tradespeople use in Europe. They're absurdly practical.

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#154

Post by anigbrowl »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #45
pharmakom wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please buy a minivan if this is your situation.

Why? What do you care what he drives?

Because we have to share the road with other people's vehicles, and bad drivers in giant pickups are a hazard to others' health.

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#155

Post by LinuxBender »

lastofthemojito wrote: post #27
falcolas wrote: post #10

> And unlike a side-by-side, it can also be driven legally on local roads Side by sides can, with a few accessories (horn, license plate lights, turn signals, etc), be driven legally on roads. Most dealers are happy to sell and attach these high profit items for you.

If you're talking about the US, state laws vary widely: https://outdoortroop.com/in-what-states-are-side-by-sides-st...

Adding for completeness sake, that site is out of date for my state. Street legal UTV's and mini-trucks are called "Multipurpose vehicles" in Wyoming and can be registered to operate on streets and highways. They even issue these nifty little Wyoming license plates that are UTV sized. The requirements are in the linked PDF.

Funny side note, my state even has a picture of one of the Japanese mini-trucks in the PDF. [1]

I think people should look up the DoT website for their state to get the current legal requirements for street legal UTV's and mini-trucks.

[1] - https://www.dot.state.wy.us/files/live/sites/wydot/files/sha...

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#156

Post by Glawen »

moltar wrote: post #106
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.

It is just cargo cult. The value of these old Toyota and Honda makes no sense. I was looking to buy an old Toyota because of the hype on internet, but there are not a lot of them being in Europe, and 70% of them had an engine issue (threads holding head gasket were missing, common issue on aluminium engine).

At one point, I pondered buying a Toyota previa with this head gasket issue for 3K and planed to repair it myself. Fortunately I got my sense back and bought a Renault Scenic with no issue at all, 2K and I managed to have also the timing belt replaced. Yes, internet thinks that because it is a French car, it will crumble. Well internet, so far it had no issue and its head gasket is intact.

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#157

Post by cvwright »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #53
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.

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 sure why you’re being downvoted. I live in Dallas and this is 100% true.

What’s fun is when you notice that the biggest, flashiest trucks are all concentrated in the fanciest suburbs. Once you get out in the country, off the main roads like where I’m from, suddenly (1) pickup trucks make up a lower percentage of the traffic, and (2) they are generally* smaller, more utilitarian and more beat up.

* except for the occasional F350 dually pulling an actual horse trailer

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#158

Post by jdmichal »

asciimov wrote: post #128
LinuxBender wrote: post #4

I'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…

The MY2022 Maverick is what the new Ranger should have been. And the Hyundai Santa Cruz also was introduced in MY2022. Finally some steps in the right direction, at least.

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#159

Post by inferiorhuman »

gorbypark wrote: post #80
duncan-donuts wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are they illegal?

Someone has to pay to have a vehicle certified (crash tests, emissions, figure out what’s needs modified to meet US regulations, etc). If the vehicle was never sold in the US to begin with, then they can’t be registered until they are 25+ years old. Even then, it’s hard/impossible in some states. My memory is a bit hazy, but at one point in time an importer company paid the large sums (hundreds of thousands I’m sure)…

  My memory is a bit hazy, but at one point in time an importer company paid the
  large sums (hundreds of thousands I’m sure) to have a certain GT-R model go
  through the safety/emission procedures so they could be imported before they
  were 25 years old. That’s the only case I can think of.
If memory serves, there were a couple people importing R32 Skylines. The one shop stopped doing the necessary work and got caught. Nobody wants to do the work because it's extremely expensive and bureaucratic. The problem with relaxing the rules is that you're either going to accept more pollution or heavily restrict the number of vehicles that can be imported creating an unfair lottery type situation. Keep in mind that other countries, especially Japan, were a lot slower to require pollution controls. IIRC California and Germany were pretty quick to phase out leaded gasoline, but most other countries (e.g. France) were much slower. The safety stuff should be easier to harmonize for imports, but there's still a lot of bullshit in DOT regulations (e.g. everything about US spec headlights).

IMO a step in the right direction would be to carve out some exceptions for EV conversions.

Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

#160

Post by robocat »

LinuxBender wrote: post #4

I'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…

Perhaps consider a visit to New Zealand and buying one there if you can’t import one from Japan (keyword “direct import”), although your total costs would be high. We are friendly buggers over here, so you are not likely to get ripped off unless you are a numpty. Buy an unregistered spare one for parts - used farm ones without plates get sold much cheaper.

https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/cars/suzuki/carry/search — all used imports from Japan. Note prices are in NZD, reduce prices by 1/3 to get to USD. You can get GST (sales tax) refunded on exports but it might not be much money because second hand goods are zero-rated?

I really wanted a 1.3 litre 4WD Suzuki Carry a few years ago, but they really hold their value so they were not cheap enough for me. USD8000 for a 20 year old ute! They are in high demand in NZ.

I personally would avoid the Subaru mini-truck: I think mechanical issues and access to parts are problems. I also looked at the equivalent Hyundai mini-truck, but the Suzuki is probably the best bet.

Japan has regulations that make old vehicles expensive to keep, so they export them before they get really old. New Zealand buys a lot of second hand car stock from Japan. If you need something 25 years old, then New Zealand might have more stock.

We don’t salt our roads. Anything that has spent all its life in dry areas like the Canterbury Plains would be best - don’t buy if it has been long periods in wet climates. Avoid anything that has been on the coast - avoid sea-spray rust damage (don’t buy from my local area, New Brighton).

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