Hacker News Reader

Yeah but thirty years ago they were all little 2WD Nissans and Toyotas with a few bales of hay in the back. The trucks you're talking about were kind of family tractors and would rarely be used for distance. They all got like 9mpg and just needed to run when something got stuck.

View on HN

Hardly anyone is making compact pickups anymore. Even models that used to be in that class (e.g. Tacoma, Ranger) seem to have gotten a lot bigger over the past 10 years. I find it disappointing, I always thought they were a great compromise between fuel efficiency while still retaining most of the utility of a regular truck.

Huh? 30 years ago Nissans and Toyotas had negligible pickup marketshare (at least in the US, not sure about Canada?). Anyway, the average retail price of gas back then was ~$1/gallon, so 9mpg wasn't a major deal (considerably cheaper than a 30mpg sedan today).

This was soon enough after the oil embargo that mpg was still on everyone's mind, and people didn't really use 4WD vehicles for general transportation at that point.

Just big, uncomfortable, expensive to maintain and operate vehicles that you'd generally use for a specific purpose.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com