Pickup trucks

A light motor vehicle with an open-top rear cargo areais knownpickup truck. A pick up truck is generally a medium sized truck with aseparate cabin and rear load area. A lot of pickups have dumpy stiff sides andan opening back gate while others have a flat tray back.

In Australia and New zealand these motor vehicles are known as ute (fromUtility vehicles), in SA they are known as bakkie (say"bucky"), half truck in Egypt, and in Israeli call it as tender,inIndia they are known as mini trucks. A kind of van, also known as Panel vans,popular in Australia during the 1970s, built on the current ute chassis, knownin Egypt as "box" and mainly used by police.

Design details of such vehicles vary significantly from nations to nationfor instance in America mostly uses full size trucks which were equippedwith V8 or six cylinder engines, mid-size, and compact comparatively smaller trucks generally equipped with inline 4 engines.

Types

1. Compact pickups

They are the most wide spread pickup trucks of the world. They were embeddedwith I4 or a V6 engine and a two axle built up like a mini truck with rearsuspension is of leaf spring type, frame-providing structure, a conventionalcab, generally using gasoline as fuel.

Inthe 1960s by Japanese manufacturers introduced compact truck to North America.Main manufacturers up to 1970 were Datsun (Nissan 1959) and Toyota. Some other manufacturers built pickups for theAmerican companies known as big three: for Chevrolet Isuzu built the Luv,for Ford Mazdabuilt the Courier, and for Dodge Mitsubishibuilt the Ram 50. Then in 1980s Mazda introduced their owncreation B-series, Mitsubishi launched their Mighty MAX, and Isuzu come up withtheir Pup.

Most popular pickup in Europe was Peugeot 504 pickup one of the few byEuropean manufacturers, which persistent to be sell in Mediterranean Europe andAfrica long after the original 504 stopped manufacturing. 504 were the mostdominating product by European manufacturers. In Eastern European manufacturerslike as ARO or UAZ have worked in theirhome markets devotedly for years, but are now fading. Mostly European pickupsused diesel as main engine fuel.

2. Full-size pickups

Trucks are meant for hauling heavy loads and perform other tasks too. Ageneral truck can carry load up to 450 kgs and some of them are capable ofcarrying up to 4 times greater then that. Bed of these trucks is mostly of thedimension 4 ft x 8 ft mainly to provide space for standard sized plywood sheet.They come up with I6, V8, V10 or a diesel engine, with front mounted engine andrear wheel drive; some of them use leaf spring suspension and live axle. Mostbiggest pickup trucks uses rear doubled tires, They are some times referred todoalliez (say DOOL-EEZ), and are often equipped with a fifth wheelfor towing heavy trailers.

Full sized trucks are categorized in three main class: Ton, Ton , 1 Ton.These are the actual maximum payloads of these trucks that they can carry. Butsome of recent trucks have proved it to be wrong they have the ability to carrymore then their class classification weight. Some of those truck are 2006 modelFord F-150 a Ton class truck can carry maximum payload of 3000lb, otherexample of this are 2006 model F-350 a one ton pickup can carry up to 6000lbsof payload.

As of 2007, eight pick-ups are sold as full-size in North America :

Chevrolet Silverado/GMC Sierra

Dodge Ram

Ford F-Series

Lincoln Mark LT

Nissan Titan

Toyota Tundra

Mid-size pickups

North American uses smaller pickup trucks because they are more fuel efficient as compared to that full sizedpickup trucks and mostly used bye office workers, house wives, constructorworkers because they have more space then that of the compact pickups coversless parking space and are good looking as of cars.

Dodge Dakota was the first mid-sized pickup introduced in 1987 which wasgoverened by an V6 engine, its engine was the only feature which differentiateit from many other small sized pickups. it can carry a ply wood of dimension 4by 8 flat on its bed which was not possible with compact sized pickups. Dakotahas also made its way in V8 segment also in 1991. Mitsubishi Raider 2006 modelwasa remake of Dakota and it was embedded with v6 and v8 engines.

Mid-size models include:

Chevrolet Colorado/GMC Canyon

Dodge Dakota/Mitsubishi Raider

Nissan Frontier

Toyota Tacoma

Honda Ridgeline

Coupe Utilities

The coupe Utilities are more car like in appearance and performance, thecontain an passenger cabin like coupe with integral rear bed. They arelighter in weight as compared to common trucks and are known as utilities orutes.

In the USA, popular Coupe Utilities (although not commonly known by thisterm) were the 1957 Ford Ranchero and the 1959 Chevrolet El Camino.

European Pickups

European manufacturers also have shown their interest in coupe utilitydesign and from last few decades all pickup produced were coupe utility. Someof them are mentioned below. Over the past few decades, nearly all pickups fromEuropean manufacturers are coupe utility pickups. Manufacturers from bothwestern and eastern Europe have produced coupe utility pickups.

Citron 2CV Pickup

Citron Mhari

Dacia Pickup

Fiat Strada

Fiat 125P

Lada Niva

Opel Corsa Pickup

Peugeot 504/404

Talbot Rancho dcouvrable

SEAT Inca

Skoda Felicia Pickup

Volkswagen CaddySmallest ever produced pickup is the British Austin/Morris Mini Pickup. Itwas just 3meters long it was the most popular mini truck with sale over 60000in between 1961 and 1983.

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