It's so funny that when people design vehicles that actually have a need to be big - big buses, commercial vans, fire trucks - one of their common features is that visibility is treated as something important, and often these types of vehicles have either a nearly flat, uniform front side, or they try to minimize the engine compartment hump as much as possible and make the windshield huge. But when we talk about cars that are made for the consumer, all sanity goes out the window, we get these near-caricatures that would be hilarious if they weren't real. The craziness can only be somewhat tamed by government restrictions, depending on where you live, but the peak of this design results in huge, elevated flat boxes for engine compartments, mounted as high as possible. It doesn't matter that the driver has a blind spot in every direction, what matters is showing off how HUGE your 18L V32 engine must surely be under that hood, how powerful it must be to draw air through that chrome grille that's half a person's height, and most importantly, how much of an imposing heroic warrior one must be to own that tank.

Yep, the hoods are higher than my wife's head.

I think they meant it has much larger % share of pickup market in Europe vs US, not necessarily higher absolute number of sales (https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/feu/en/news/2025/02...)

Where in Europe is that? Because in southern Europe pickups are very rare, but maybe they're more common in the north.

> to fit two motorcycles in the back of the Ranger, you need to adjust the angle of the handlebars awkwardly to fit both on the bed.

can't you position one bike facing forward and one facing back, so the handlebars don't collide? Either way, going with an absurdly big and dangerous car to avoid _awkwardly positioning_ some cargo is pretty American thing to do

Trailers do exist and there is no good reason to drive a commercial vehicle every day for simple trips. It is also less expensive to use a trailer.

So, the normal size truck actually carries the things you want to transport, if you move their handlebars.

You’d pay an extra $7000 because… you don’t like to pack?

Don't know why you are down voted. People just assume that you have a place to store a trailer (and truck and motorcycle).

As to your choice of the Ford,as a rural late model (2018) F-150 owner, I'd encourage you to consider something else. A used Tundra V8 or one of the GMC/Chevy's. My mechanic is thumbs down on the Rams longer term.

I've had nothing but stupidity with this F-150 and all I do is personal plowing and a few loads of gravel or dirt each year. Granted, my steep dirt road can be very rough in mud season. But I've now spent about 8K in non-maintenance repairs.

I say this as a past owner of multiple mustangs and rangers - I'm done with Ford.

A lot of commenters saying you "need" a trailer (instead of an F150), but another option would be one bike in the bed and the second bike (if needed) on a hitch-mounted rack. A hitch rack takes less space to store when you're not using it than a full trailer. It would probably be more annoying to load and unload than just putting two bikes in the bed.

Anyway, if you want an F150, get it -- I don't really care.

Get a trailer. Way more flexibility that way and easier loading/unloading.

Similarly I have been thinking about a van so I can sleep in air conditioning between track day sessions and/or races. I also want to be able to bring materials to my workshop. Not sure what I will do, yet.

I prefer small trailers for this but if you don't have the space for a trailer, F150 it is.

This is dumb, I've lost count of how many times I've hauled multiple motorcycles somewhere and you know how I do it? A trailer. It's easier and safer to load and unload, which is why almost everyone else does that as well.

If you want an 'image' purchase just own up to it. Your post hoc justifications don't really hold water.

> I do use it for home improvement stuff and for hauling stuff around

I don’t understand this argument, as they seem incredibly impractical for that. There is very little space for ‘stuff’, there is only the uncovered bed which is relatively small. The bed is also at an awkward height so very impractical to get stuff in or out. Since the bed is open, you always have to take all your ‘stuff’ out, you can’t leave tools in there or anything of value or it will get stolen. If you put a hard cover on. it leaves even less space. And since a large part of the vehicle has no roof you cannot have a roof rack.

You do not see these used by people in construction or other trades here in Europe. They use vans. An (extended) van has an ungodly amount of lockable storage space, easily accessible with side and back doors, with a floor at a reasonable height and if that isn’t enough you with a roof rack you can strap a lot to the roof as well.

I really don’t see how something like an F-150 is more practical for ‘hauling stuff’ than something like a Mercedes Sprinter.

I did look up some numbers (used the most capable configuration I could find for each of the vehicles):

Max bed length for an F-150: 247cm Max cargo space length for a Sprinter: 481cm

Bed/cargo width: F-150: 126cm, Sprinter 178cm Bed/cargo height: F-150: 54cm, Sprinter: 200cm

Max. payload capacity: F-150 : 1106kg, Sprinter 1477kg for the extra-long version, 2447kg for the long version.

Almost any large car will fit almost anywhere in the US, so you might as well get the car that serves even your most marginal use cases. Fuel costs are much lower than Europe, and Americans are relatively richer anyway.

From my experience, these trucks make much more sense on a road in the US. European roads are fairly small so these trucks look _even bigger_, whereas in the US everything is massive so the cars fit. Still, having to look _up_ to see the windshield is crazy and I hope it won't be normalized in the EU

The f-150 is a bit smaller than its big brothers the f-250 and f-350 dually!