1990 F150 2wd on 2040-cars

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New Toyota Tacoma, Ranger, Colorado/Canyon fight for midsize truck dominance

Sam Wedll has been driving his Toyota Tacoma pickup on the rugged roads of Northern California for seven trouble-free years, racking up almost 100,000 miles, so he’s interested in the redesigned version of the truck coming later this year. He paid $34,000 for his truck in 2016, loading it with plenty of options. HeÂ’s eyeing the new gas-electric hybrid Toyota Motor Corp. is going to offer, but Wedll, who does his own repairs, isnÂ’t interested in paying luxury prices. “The hybrid is pretty interesting to me because I like the idea of the fuel efficiency,” says Wedll, 47, a casino operations manager in Blue Lake, California. “IÂ’m just trying to save some costs wherever possible.” The Tacoma, known as the Taco to its legions of loyalists, is the leader of the pack in midsize pickups, one of the fastest-growing auto markets of the past decade. With outdoorsy weekend warriors and do-it-yourselfers looking for a truck that could fit in their garage, sales of midsize pickups more than doubled from 2010 to 2020. General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co., which abandoned the market segment when sales slowed early this century, returned with new trucks to take on the Tacoma, which has dominated the medium truck market for almost two decades. Although it's easy to predict that the most lushly appointed versions of the new Taco could approach $50,000 (prices wonÂ’t be announced until later this year), Toyota insists it isnÂ’t backing away from budget buyers even as it rolls out fancier trucks. The current Tacoma starts at $28,030, and the company says affordability is critical to its success. In fact, Toyota will continue to offer the Taco with an old-school stick shift. The Tacoma controls 42% of the midsize truck market and outsells FordÂ’s offering 4 to 1. ThatÂ’s a role reversal from the full-size pickup market, where FordÂ’s F-Series has ruled the road for 46 years. Tacoma sales in the U.S. surpassed 237,000 last year, more than twice the number of GMÂ’s No. 2-ranked Chevrolet Colorado, according to consultant LMC Automotive. But as growth in the overall segment slows, the midsize market is developing into more of a turf war, with manufacturers vying for the sweetest highest-margin spots. “This segment is likely past its prime growth spurt,” says Jeff Schuster, president of the Americas for LMC Automotive.

Aluminum lightweighting does, in fact, save fuel

When the best-selling US truck sheds the equivalent weight of three football fullbacks by shifting to aluminum, folks start paying attention. Oak Ridge National Laboratory took a closer look at whether the reduced fuel consumption from a lighter aluminum body makes up for the fact that producing aluminum is far more energy intensive than steel. And the results of the study are pretty encouraging. In a nutshell, the energy needed to produce a vehicle's raw materials accounts for about 10 percent of a typical vehicle's carbon footprint during its total lifecycle, and that number is up from six percent because of advancements in fuel economy (fuel use is down to about 68 percent of total emissions from about 75 percent). Still, even with that higher material-extraction share, the fuel-efficiency gains from aluminum compared to steel will offset the additional vehicle-extraction energy in just 12,000 miles of driving, according to the study. That means that, from an environmental standpoint, aluminum vehicles are playing with the house's money after just one year on the road. Aluminum-sheet construction got topical real quickly earlier this year when Ford said the 2015 F-150 pickup truck would go to a 93-percent aluminum body construction. In addition to aluminum being less corrosive than steel, that change caused the F-150 to shed 700 pounds from its curb weight. And it looks like the Explorer and Expedition SUVs may go on an aluminum diet next. Take a look at SAE International's synopsis of the Oak Ridge Lab's study below. Life Cycle Energy and Environmental Assessment of Aluminum-Intensive Vehicle Design Advanced lightweight materials are increasingly being incorporated into new vehicle designs by automakers to enhance performance and assist in complying with increasing requirements of corporate average fuel economy standards. To assess the primary energy and carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) implications of vehicle designs utilizing these materials, this study examines the potential life cycle impacts of two lightweight material alternative vehicle designs, i.e., steel and aluminum of a typical passenger vehicle operated today in North America. LCA for three common alternative lightweight vehicle designs are evaluated: current production ("Baseline"), an advanced high strength steel and aluminum design ("LWSV"), and an aluminum-intensive design (AIV).

The 1965 Ford Mustang could have looked a lot different

The 1965 Ford Mustang is unquestionably an automotive design icon, and nearly every generation of Mustang has some connection to that original car. Because it's such a universally-known vehicle, we were amazed to see all the different designs that were being considered. Head of Ford's archives Ted Ryan recently shared photos of design proposals for the original Mustang on Twitter that he and Jamie Myler found, and we reached out to them to find out more. As Ryan initially noted, the photos were taken on August 19, 1962, and they are proposals for the Ford Mustang. Apparently Ford had committed to doing a Falcon-based youth-oriented car at this point, and it did have plans to launch the car in 1964 for the 1965 model year. But after having little success with early design proposals, the company asked all of its design studios — the Advanced Studio, Lincoln-Mercury Studio and Ford Studio — to submit proposals. With only about two years before the planned launch, Ford was understandably short on time, and it's believed that the studios only had a month to create and present these designs. Lincoln-Mercury design proposal View 8 Photos The majority of the designs, a total of five, came from the Advanced Studio, and part of this was because they already had a couple of concept designs in reserve it could present. Two other models representing three design possibilities came from Lincoln-Mercury, and just one model with two options came from Ford. The Advanced Studio proposals are shown in the gallery at the very top of this article, and the Lincoln-Mercury and Ford proposals are in the gallery directly above this paragraph. The Advanced Studio's most radical design is the one that was clearly related to the Mustang I concept that would be shown later that year with huge wraparound rear glass, turbine-inspired bumpers and enormous side scoops. The other proposals from the studio were more conservative, featuring simple lines, grilles reminiscent of the Falcon, and one even borrowing the jet-thruster-style taillights made famous on the Thunderbird. Lincoln-Mercury had some impressively bold designs, particularly its fastback that had buttresses to extend the shape all the way to the tail. This car had two different side trim possibilities. The other Lincoln-Mercury design was toned down a bit, but had two interesting possibilities for side detailing, as well as some crisp, low-profile tail fins.