>Interestingly too - the size of pickups was increased; what really seemed to have happened, is they "pushed up the models" - ie, what used to be the F-150 (say

>Interestingly too - the size of pickups was increased; what really seemed to have happened, is they "pushed up the models" - ie, what used to be the F-150 (say 1995 vintage) no longer exists. What we see as the F-150, today, is actually the size (and price) of the F-250 of 1995. The F-250 is now the F-350, and so on (it kinda levels off after the 400 class, simply because those and larger were mainly niche sales to individuals, or commercial sales). I don't know if that is truthly real, but if you compare the sizes of the vehicles and options, it feels like something they did. You can't justifiably make this comparison across such a wide year rage because trucks went from utility vehicles to flagship models in this time and there's been some massive improvements in drive-train tech since the 90s. A lot of that "moving up" is simply technological improvement allowing new trucks to do what old ones couldn't. Trucks have certainly grown to occupy more physical space but their footprints have remained close to the same and their weights haven't increased all that much. >I'd love to see smaller vehicles make a come back, because it might also mean smaller pickups and a return to smaller Jeeps and other 4wd vehicles, too! But until those CAFE rules change, I don't know if we'll ever see that here. Agreed. Unless you have some other market you expect to sell them in and consider the US a sideshow you aren't gonna invest the $$ to develop those vehicles.