Rev up your engines, today's question comes from mark 767, scotty
which company makes the best full sized pickups in the US these days,
well if you go by popularity it has to be the F150, I'll give you a little history lesson
for that, in 1948 ford started the F series, it was
the first pickup truck that they ever built that was built from scratch, with it's own
body, the earlier ones they were based on car frames with a truck body on it,
the f series was the first one with a full sized truck frame made just for trucks, from
1948-1952 they made the f-1 series truck, but then
in 1953 they decided to call the f-1 the f100, rings off your tongue a little better, would
you rather say f-1 or f100, it sounds more impressive,
and today the f series is on it's 13th different generation, their now at the 13th generation
f trucks, and since 1948 they've sold over 35 million
f series trucks so their very popular trucks, if you notice recently ford said they're not
going to build cars anymore except for the mustang, but they aren't changing the trucks,
their building tons of trucks their not going to shut down their truck division,
being in it's 13th generation today, you realize they've been perfecting the pickup truck,
they make it to fit the buyers needs, take a short time ago, they too a bunch of the
steel out of the body and replaced it with aluminum so some of these things weigh 500
pounds less than they did before, they still have the solid steel frame, but a lot of the
body is aluminum so it's more lightweight and it gets better gas mileage for a pickup
truck, now of course anyone who's ever owned a pickup
truck knows, they don't get great gas mileage, their pickup trucks,
their high up in the air, their not aerodynamic their heavy,
but their made to haul stuff, and with the modern design in fords case of the 10 speed
automatic transmission that you can get in them,
they actually get decent gas mileage on the highway, and that's decent gas mileage for
a pickup truck of course, you can't compare them to the cars,
it's a completely different ball game, and when it comes to that,
I'll give you some advice about gasoline vs diesel pickup trucks,
people are always asking me, scotty should I get a gasoline full sized pickup or diesel,
well I ask them, what are you going to do with the truck, you have to decide what you're
going to do with it before you decide which one you're going to buy,
now if you carry a lot of loads like deliveries here in Houston,
heavy weight driving on the highway all the time, putting a lot of mileage on the vehicle,
you are better off with a diesel, because diesel engines have a lot of torque, they
don't have a lot of horsepower but they've got a lot of torque, so their great for pulling
things and if you're pulling something on the highway with a diesel pickup truck, it
doesn't really change the gas mileage all that much, but if you're towing that same
heavy load with a gasoline engine, it's going to get a lot worse gas mileage,
I've seen heavy tow loads with gasoline engines, the gas engines will get less than half the
gas mileage that the diesel engine would get, now in the past people who were pulling heavy
loads would get a big v8 diesel, but now everything is starting to change and a lot of them are
going to these v6 diesels that have turbos on them that are all set up that the new ford
f150 in 2018 you can get a v6 diesel that's rated at 30 mpg, so as times change so does
the f150, you could have never gotten a v6 diesel in them they just started doing that,
but they adapt to what the market wants, and in terms of their ride ability, they certainly
have adapted because I've been driving ford pickup trucks for years testing them out,
and every time I get one the wife would ride in it because we got free gas and everything
so we'd take trips in them and she'd say, I hate riding in these pickup trucks they
riding horrible, which doesn't matter to a truck guy but my
wife didn't like it, but then a couple years ago, they changed a lot of the suspension
in these trucks, and I took my wife for a ride in one and she said, gee this trucks
rides really good what's going on here, and I explained that they changed a bunch
of the suspension system to make them ride a lot better,
and that of course had led to a small amount of show trucks, like Lincoln makes a show
truck, it's got a little short bed and leather seats and everything,
and it's a good looking truck but it's not a serious work truck because the bed is so
short, it's more for rinestone cowboys who want to show off their truck,
and the reason that the f150's are really the best made American full sized pickup truck
is because that's what they are, their for hauling stuff, they can last a long time,
they can take a lot of things and historically they keep improving the things,
they just don't build something and then say, oh that didn't work we'll get rid of that
and start all over again, over all those years, they've perfected pickup
trucks, and now I've been around the world, and America
is the kingdom of pickup trucks, some countries, they don't even have pickup trucks, they have
panel vans and stuff for carrying stuff, they want stuff held inside so it doesn't get ruined
by the rain but hey American is the land of the pickups and really in the land of the
pickups the f150 is still king, I would rather have a pickup from a company
that makes a designs most of their own stuff, take the chryslers, their using different
engines, different transmissions from different companies, they keep changing stuff around,
and of course since fiat bought chrysler, their throwing a lot of these Italian diesel
engines in and hey they've had a lot of problems with those Italian diesel engines, I'd stay
away from those things, and when I was young it was a real battle
between the chevy pickups and the ford pickups, they were neck and neck for a long time, but
as far as I'm concerned, GM quality control it's been going downhill for decades now,
and as an example with my own customers, for every ford f150 that needs a transmission
rebuilt, I see 4 or 5 gm pickups that need their transmission rebuilt, I see the rear
ends the differentials go out on GM pickup trucks all the time, and it's rare that I
see an f150 rear end go out, now toyota makes full sized pickups and I used to like them
a lot, but as their aging, especially with the modern
designs, they have some very expensive repairs that you don't normally relate to toyota,
but the way they designed them their extremely expensive to work on when they do break down,
for example I was working on a tundra, it needed a starter, I had to take the whole
top of the engine off to get to where they put the starter,
there's no reason to do stuff like that, and if their going to do stuff like that, hey
I'm going to tell people, don't buy one of those because you're really going to be bad
when it costs you a $1,000 to change a starter on your truck,
and as times change, so does my opinion of stuff, the f150, hey it's done a pretty good
job of changing with the times, so I'm sticking with them,
and since this is the Thursday episode where I answer a viewers question, place your own
question on the YouTube comments below and I'll pick the best ones to make a single video
to answer your question, and where else can you find a guy with 50
years experience of fixing cars to answer your own question with a video,
so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to ring
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