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Can you please explain to me again why you need a lincoln navigator or the like?
By comparison, actual CDL-requiring commercial trucks weigh up to 80,000 pounds.
A lot of this is also dictated by the safety requirements for vehicle collisions, because a vehicle where the front of the hood is lower than the bumper on the other vehicle (which could be a pickup truck) causes the hood to act as a ramp instead of a crumple zone, and then the occupants get hit in the head by a truck.
Based on whose opinion?
> Plenty of families have the need for third-row seating
A 1993 Buick Roadmaster Station wagon has a comfortable third row while being shorter than the top of the steering wheel on a 2025 GMC Yukon Denali.
SOP now is to pull the whole cab off to work on the engine.
Air cooling while towing (allegedly), but it must be a tiny percentage of owners that tow at all.
https://www.azfamily.com/2026/06/24/watch-vehicle-fire-spark...
Maybe there's a bit of circular reasoning going on here where people bought giant vehicles because they liked the aesthetics and internal roominess, and then the prevalence of giant vehicles opened up the market for larger and heavier towables— rigid body RVs, seadoos, a trailer full of gas dirt bikes, whatever it is.
I also feel like in past times, it was much more common to see a two car household with two very different cars, with one being a hatchback or sedan for getting the family around down and doing grocery runs, and the other a truck or van for those occasional "hauling" requirements. Nowadays I feel like many times it's two big SUVs, just tuned to his and her brand tastes rather than two shared vehicles for different usages. I'd be interested to know if the stats on multi-car households would bear this out.
You didn’t mention height and isn’t that the actual issue?
Increased hood height kills people and creates an absurdly large blind area. Massive pillars add roll safety but create horrible blind spots in left hand turns.
A sedan is the perfect shaped car in my opinion. Wagons are nice too.
And nevermind that often these cars come with other compromises that signal they aren't really intended for "utility" use, for example the Taycan can't fit a regular tow receiver so forget about using a bike carrier with it other than the overpriced two-bike one that is available from the manufacturer.
https://www.volvocars.com/us/media/press-releases/3C9B9B3A25...
It seems people buying new cars mostly want big cars.
Are you sure about that? In North America, other than the Crown Vic in its heyday, Ford also had the Escort, the Festiva, the Tempo and the Taurus for sedans, all of which were smaller than the Crown Vic, which was the largest car they sold.
Per wiki, Crown Vic sales peaked at 114k in 1999. In the same year, the Taurus sold 368k and the Escort sold 260k. (The Tempo was discontinued by then, but was typically moving 200k+ per year.)
More to the point - at least for automatic transmission variants in the early 90s - even the base F150 could certainly out-tow Crown Vics of the time, unless the latter had a tow package, which would push the rating up to 5000 lbs (..same as the lower end F150). Later on the delta was a lot greater (in the truck's favor) as the tow packages for the cars were phased out.
Nowadays the minimum ratings of F150s (even with shorter beds) is 5000lbs, or more. The smaller CUV/SUV platforms are usually rated ~1500lbs *max*, with some of the larger truck-based models obviously running in the same range as the trucks.
TL;DR - Even back in the day the "typical" sedan was still only rated for towing small loads, unless specially ordered with towing packages. Now..all that said, the frequency with which typical F150 owners ever actually tow anything is a whole other question.
Are we concerned about safety, or are we not? Because towing a 2000+ lb trailer behind a sedan is kind of dangerous.
Over here a "fifth wheel" coupling is a massive horseshoe-shaped plate that sits on the back of an artic tractor and is rated for some unholy loading and drawbar pull.
Over there it looks very much like a standard 50mm towball welded to the end of a metre or so of scaff tube sticking up from the floor of a pickup.
I used to do auto electrics for a guy who imported American cars to the UK and I was always amazed at just how janky the towing setups often were. It's no wonder people think they need a huge heavy truck when the towball is just bolted to thin sheet metal.
It's also alarming how often you see people towing trailers that aren't even close to being level here. It almost seems like SOP.
The weight balance can be all to hell, it won't matter - it's not going to be long enough or heavy enough to push a two tonne Range Rover around.
Anything that's an appreciable fraction of my wheelbase between the hitch and axle, and over a tonne? Yeah I'll take a little care over getting that set up.
I tow 3500kg on a braked twin-axle trailer fairly often. You'd notice it was there, especially braking for a junction at the bottom of a hill, but with the weight a little forward and maybe 50-70kg on the hitch the major sign that anything is there is the trailer light telltale blinking when you indicate ;-)
The typical Dutch trailer is pulled by stuff like Volvo S60 and smaller, and it weighs around 3000lbs in freedumb units. They generally migrate about 1000km - 1500km to the South of France and then back North to the Netherlands.
Me? I commute in a New Holland CR11.
I wouldn’t think twice about driving a reasonably maintained 25-30 year old Toyota if that was the vehicle that best fit your use case.
I think once cars got to closed-loop EFI and electronic ignition (mid-80s), they got way more reliable and low maintenance.
Because the trend in TFA only happened in the US, and only after 2009.
Fuel emissions standards changes, maybe? I vaguely remember that the monster trucks were the result of some efficiency changes introduced by Obama.
Boats, campers, etc.
Obviously not for a hitch-based bicycle carrier - I think most people can manage to use those reasonably safely.
People seem to like towing stuff with their Vanagons, but I hope that doesn't involve hills. :P
Almost every driver is, as you say, "properly insured" It is easy enough to avoid kids that death is is rare, and the insurance cost is quite low - even with astronomical insurance payouts for accidental child death.
There's no such thing. Standard automobile insurance policies cap injury liability in the low 5 figures. If you cause an accident and someone is seriously injured, there's a good chance you'll be personally liable for the majority of damages. Ditto property--you total someone's $100,000 Mercedes and you're likely going to be paying money out-of-pocket.
If you have any significant assets it's worthwhile to buy an umbrella policy.
The relevent question is if it is too high or a problem worth making significant changes to address.
Even the Dutch had to fight tooth and nail for it. I've lived in Germany for a while and there are cities here where even I would be snubbing taking kids to school with a bakfiets, because the biking infra is not good enough, or in other words the mingling I'd have to do with other traffic would be too out of my comfort zone.
Urban planning should prioritize walking and biking very first, and cars and other utilitarian-but-dangerous/harmful transport methods should be integrated in a way that's not engulfing the more human-scale side of things. But I think the costs (both monetary and in terms of "cognitive shift") are so high that I don't think I'll see this change in my lifetime. And that's before accounting for the power of corporate interest
They will complain endlessly about having nowhere to park, traffic, and dangerous driving but would never consider having their child walk. It is too dangerous.
How is a tall hood increasing your family comfort? It only increases your ego.
How much leg room does the third row have in that F150? I don't think the seats for the sixth and seventh passengers are quite comfortable.
How are the footrests on the second row? Are those Captains chairs on the second row or a rigid bench with no reclining at all? When you talk about how comfortable it is, are you saying that as all the passengers (all 6-7) or just you as the driver?
Are you comfortable letting a three year old operate the doors without damaging other cars around them and climb in and out of that F-150 on their own? My young kids manage the sliding doors just fine, their ability to largely do it on their own and the ease of access of the sliding door makes it a lot more comfortable getting them in and out. In fact, I can open the doors safely before they even reach the car. That's pretty dang comfortable.
> Not to mention the ability to tow.
The thing everyone imagines they'll do all the time but in practice practically never do.
And if we're talking businesses, building crews etc. - this is what they actually need: https://img.linemedia.com/img/s/flatbed-truck-3-5t-Volkswage...
Or just a regular van more likely, cause rain is a thing.
VW crafter with dual cab uses 57% of its length for the flatbed, largest F150 - 39%. Notice how the engine fits into this tiny vedge-shaped hood.
https://i.imgur.com/KopGeTi.png
Same idea as American trucks, more cargo space, higher usable load, can be loaded from all sides, completely flat bed, no wheel cutouts, fits 6 people inside, burns less fuel. All because there's no ridiculously huge hood, wheels and engine.
Let's be honest here. American pickup trucks are not about the usability, they are about ego.
Very few jobs require people to tow with their personal daily driver all the time.
> Not everyone is a city dweller
And yet a ton of these city dwellers do drive around in these giant lifted trucks.
It's also incredible to me you can't actually imagine any hobbies that don't require driving a giant pickup truck around. It's just so overly ingrained into your identity. As if it requires a giant pickup truck to go fishing or go to a sports field or go camping or whatever.
Sure enough, the XC60 crossover has a trunk space of 22.4 cubic feet.
It's the same trunk, just higher off the ground, which to me makes it less useful to me: more lifting to get stuff in, harder to rummage through items (eg camping pantry), much more difficult to access my roof box.
They all have sloping hoods. A sloping hood increases visibility and reduces air resistance.
Why does a Kenworth have a sloping hood but F-150's and SUV's don't?
A 47” high hood line does not provide any utility to transporting children. Children are not stored under the hood.
Oh now you tell me!