Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
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Notes -
Well just an example:
A set of Tacoma tires will set you back $500-700, compared to a set of Camry Tires being $320 on the high end.
That's pretty marginal though, unless you're getting lots of tire punctures.
This Source puts the maintenance costs for a Tacoma at $6,731 for the first ten years (most of that almost certainly after the first five, and a Camry at $4,455. So you're spending a least a few hundred extra bucks a year on average, on top of the up front costs.
On the full list, large pickups are listed as the most expensive for maintain, almost all of them requiring over $10k over the first 10 years.
Whether that is all worth it for the cargo capacity, towing, or extra performance, well, I dunno.
I think if I had my choice, I'd own both a smaller electric car for local commutes and have a mid-size pickup for long haul drives or moving cargo around.
Less than $3,000 over ten years on a $30,000-50,000 purchase is fairly unimportant. If you can't afford the maintenance on your Tacoma, it's unlikely that the extra $3k over ten years would save you.
It all comes down to style. People buy a car primarily for what they want to look like, not for what they need or want to do. You can tell, because minivans are a tiny segment of the market these days.
I've always been in a weird place with cars, I've always had multiple vehicles available to me. Having a truck available is the best, driving one everywhere all the time less so.
Probably.
But I'd bet a lot are getting in over their heads on payments up front, which is starting to show up in delinquency rates.
I think some people are just not good with money and they buy cars that make them look good but I really don't know how to translate the status and affirmation points having a really nice car gets you, into a dollar amount.
I've only ever driven Honda or Toyota for the last 15 years since their engines cannot be killed by conventional means and I do NOT like large unexpected expenses from my vehicles.
I definitely don't need to tow or tote stuff around on a regular basis, and its pretty trivial to rent a truck for a while for when I do, so it never made sense for me to buy a truck when I have other things I'd rather do with the spare money.
Absolutely, but this is a general financial intelligence/literacy/freedom of choice question, not one specific to pickup trucks. From long experience of trying to explain to Red-Tribe Pickup-Truck-Shoppers in my immediate circle that they don't need to spend all that money, they aren't cross-shopping with a Toyota Corolla or even a Rav4. If they didn't blow $50,000 they didn't have on a pickup, they would blow it on a Land Cruiser, or a Mercedes E Class, or a tarted out Jeep Wrangler. "Why do Americans like pickup trucks?" is mostly a separate question from "Why do Americans go into too much debt to buy vehicles they can't afford on loans that will bankrupt them?" The former is about the traits of the pickup truck, the latter is about the traits and cultural choices of individual Americans.
Or, generally, we can ask "Why do companies like Dodge Nissan and Land Rover continue to exist when they consistently sell inferior products?"
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