For starters, I had no idea that the F-150 was the best-selling vehicle in America for that long. The big shock to me, though, is not that it fell (rising gas was bound to hurt sales) but that it fell to 5th behind, you guessed it, the Civic (now the new #1), Corolla, Camry, and the Accord. By the Numbers May 2008: F-150 Falls Edition - Autoblog So, I ask you TF'ers, with the exception of those of you who actually need a truck for work, will your next vehicle be a truck or a car? And do you think this trend will continue, or is it just due to the extreme jump in the price of gas and return to normal as soon as gas prices do?
I will never own a car unless I absolutely have to. I would much rather complain about the prices than figure out a way to fit my tall frame into one of those tiny things. I would much rather make a small change in my "luxury goods" to offset the price -- this is all assuming I maintain a normal driving pattern of course.
Gas prices will never go back to $3. I need to do all my things with one vehicle, so an Explorer is the best for me. Not a huge SUV, but it gets truck mileage, not small-car mileage. I need it to get me an my canoe in and out of muddy river bottoms, for towing a couple of trailers, and for backroading on vacation. Yet it's nice enough to haul people around in. It's overkill for the daily commute or a trip to Wal-Mart, but fortuately I live extremely close (less than 2 miles) from each. Colleagues who commute from as far as Kentwood are being hurt badly by the gas prices and are all downsizing to rinky-dink cars. Ideally, I think most people would like to have a truck for hauling/playing/towing plus a small, high-mileage car for commuting and non-hauling trips. But I'm too cheap, so I have to compromise.
I have a F-150 and it costs a smooth 80 bucks to fill up, if I'm close to empty. I like having a full size truck for hauling stuff when I need too. I'm fortunate that I live only 9 miles from work, and less than 2 from wal-mart, the grocery store, etc. So I'm only filling up about every other week. But it's painfull. Like Red, a bunch of my colleagues who have far commumtes have bought small cars.
Just traded in my Suburban for a Pontiac Vibe (Toyata Matrix cousin). Kids are grown, don't need it anymore.
this is my plan. my wife and i have been with one car for 12 yrs now. i figure pretty soon will be the time to get a truck for cheap
Our Explorer is paid off and only has about 53,000 miles on it. I'm sure we'll be keeping it for a while, and the plan has always been to replace it with an Expedition. I don't know about the Expedition anymore, but I've driven an SUV since '97 (two Grand Cherokees and the Explorer.) I love them. I wonder if those cute Lexus SUV's get better gas mileage (don't they have a hybrid?) Of course, my husband calls those "chick mobiles," meaning they don't look very manly. Our other car is a Lexus sedan, and it gets better gas mileage than the Explorer, but my husband works from home, and I only have a 12 mile a day commute. All of our grocery shopping is nearby (in that it's less than a mile away), and our Home Depot, Sam's, Walmart, and even a huge mall are less than three miles away.
Keep it a while. Forget the Expedition unless you really need some towing power for a really big boat. The Explorer gets you 90% of what the Expedition can do and its lighter and gets better mileage. My last one went 200,000 miles over 12 years and was still a good truck when I traded it in.
The Explorer still looks great, and we don't have to drive it that much. Your points about the Expedition are valid. We only have two kids and aren't planning for more, and we aren't planning to tow anything.
