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 that bell!
