I understand the Luxo-truck thing, with the High Country Silverados and Limited F series, but personally, I think the trucks kinda ugly. Just looks like a Navara with a different front clip and nicer interior. You shouldn't buy the navara, you should just get a HiLux. HiLuxws are the best vehicle ever made.
The Tribute (The Escape re-badge) isn't a truck, it's clearly a SUV. (There was never a pick-up version of the Tribute, but the Escape did have one, called the Sport Trac.)
No, the Sport Trac was based on the Explorer chassis, which was a body on frame, where as the Escape is a unibody, totally different, and he wasn't referring to the Tribute only, but, Both that, and rebadged Ranger, which of course is called the B series.
I know a guy who owns one of those in black and purple, and it's pretty meh. I mean you're not going to use it as a truck at all, but it's a good car with less seats and get worse MPG.
Dear Hater, It is fully acceptable to call an SUV a truck, as a truck is a vehicle designed to carry and transport large or heave objects, and both a pickup truck and an SUV can do that, further, the classification slang term 'truck' for pickup truck is wrongly used, although a pickup truck is a truck, there are more than pickup trucks that are trucks, such as Semi Trucks (semi referring to it being half, and the cargo being detachable) pickup truck (referring to likely being able to pick up the cargo out of the truck, not sliding it out, and certain SUVs, which can have respectable cargo capacities
A unibody SUV is certainly not a truck. By your logic, this is also a truck since it shares the platform with Tribute and Escape.
I did not say that unibodies are SUVs, I sad that a SUV could be classified as a truck because it can carry cargo, not once, did I ever mention anything about unibody suvs
If this pick-up ("truck") was targeted to the European market I would say that's it's a rather disappointing attempt to rival the VW Amarok but it's clearly not. Fun Fact: It shares its platform with the Nissan Navara and the Renault Alaskan..... Alaskan? What the hell?
Alaskan is just a rebadged Navara. And belive or not... the x-class or navara are clasified as quite big pickups of course in europe only. Mercedes has used Renault's designs in the past already... look at the Citan which is actually a renault kangoo, but of course an overpriced kangoo as it is with german stuff.
This has real frame and long bed, can haul lot of stuff, I doubt those expensive ones are really that much better as their price tag indicates:
Actually the EU pickups can haul about 1 ton in most cases, they aren't good for towing, but they can haul about the same as a standard van.
I shock you a little: It is really Isuzu KB25, made in Japan, so this re-badging of trucks is not a new thing. Those had even crew cab and 4wd in Asia. Mighty 50hp in diesel version. For the size and price those did perform well, you could load almost as much as what truck did weight, fits to small spaces and loading was easy as bed was not too tall. Hard to find anything from the market that can perform as well when you consider the weight.
It isn't that popular, as people who buy cars like that (for work) most likely have a bit more brain than their dog and they actually think about what they are buying instead of going: "Oh my god this is german! it is indestructible! TDI POWERRRR!". Instead they actually look at the prices and build quality and that's why for example renault traffic is more popular than the opel vivaro or the Kangoo or now Dacia dokker is more popular than the citan. Let's face it... Germans overprice their stuff like crazy. So most of the people buying them are either people who know shit about cars and think that just because it is german it won't break after 150k km, or people who don't know what to do with their money and just want to show of. If I'd want to buy a luxury truck for whatever reason I'd most likely go for the ne F150 3.0 Powerstroke or the Ram 1500 Ecodiesel in the top trim options. When it comes to pickups in general, they have a very hard time staying on the market over here in EU because: 1. Basically noone tows anything due to the requirement of special truck license if the combined weight is over 3.5 tonnes. 2. Vans are more practical 3. Noone uses their work vehicle as a personal vehicle. 4. It is rare for anyone to actually go off the pavement. 5. Fuel prices want to murder you. 6. Eco friendly goverments also want to kill you if you're driving anything with over 2.0 liters of displacement