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From: rbowman <bowman@montana.com>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,alt.comp.os.windows-11
Subject: Re: Pickup trucks for city boys
Date: 22 Aug 2025 18:19:07 GMT
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On Fri, 22 Aug 2025 14:07:03 -0000 (UTC), Lars Poulsen wrote:

> On 2025-08-20, Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>> On 2025-08-20, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
>>
>>> A couple of years later the Falcons morphed into the Mustang and it
>>> was also the basis for the Ranchero for a while. A lot of people
>>> associate 'cowboy Cadillac' with the El Camino but Ford got there
>>> first with the full sized Ranchero in the late '50s. Then it shrunk in
>>> the Falcon based years and got bigger again.
>>
>> I referred to the El Camino as a "city slicker's pickup truck".
> 
> Before the EU harmonizations, Denamrk had a 180% tax on firt time
> registration of new cars (because there was no local auto industry, and
> they wanted to preserve currency by repairing old cars instead of
> importing new ones). But there was no tax on heavy trucks. So they
> brought in El Caminos and added a 500 lb steel plate on the truck bed.
> Presto: It was a heavy truck for tax purposes (above 2 tons unloaded
> weight). Pretty useless for hauling goods, but a nice airconditioned
> Cadillac ride.

Small potatoes. The EPA imposed fleet fuel economy regulations on vehicles 
but exempted light trucks from many of the requirements. Put a shiny body 
on a pickup chassis and, voila, the SUV was born. Of course there always 
were vans built on light truck chassis but without rather expensive 
conversions they were noisy, uncomfortable, and almost impossible to heat 
in the winter.