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Change I Can Believe In

Slate considers the oversized, typically egregious (try counting the number of empty cargo beds on these things, save the Costco run), inherently dangerous, fuel-guzzling — and, thankfully, slowly declining — Ford F-150:

“As prices spiked above $4 per gallon in May and June, the F-150 was overtaken on the monthly sales charts by a bunch of puny sedans with good fuel economy: the Toyota Corolla, Toyota Camry, and Honda Civic. With the 2008 F-150s failing to sell, Ford had to delay the launch of the 2009 model for two months while it pushed the previous year’s trucks off the lot at deep discounts, cutting into those $4,000-per-vehicle profit margins.”

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009 at 4:20 pm and is filed under Etc.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Change I Can Believe In”

  1. Wes Sherwood Says:
    February 4th, 2009 at 11:33 pm

    We at Ford appreciate the opportunity to share our opinion. Pickup trucks have been and will continue to be part of the backbone of our country and increasing sales should be one indicator of an economic turnaround as Americans begin purchasing the tools to rebuild. While many “personal-use” truck buyers have left the market, core truck customers – who are more loyal to the F-150 than other brands – will continue to drive a meaningful market because their work and livelihoods depend on a pickup’s unique capability.

    In terms of safety, the new F-150 is the only full-size pickup to earn the government’s top 5-star ratings in all crash tests and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s “Top Safety Pick” award.

    More details at http://media.ford.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=29685 and http://media.ford.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=29642.

    Thank you.

    Wes Sherwood
    Ford Communications
    wsherwoo@ford.com

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Traffic Tom Vanderbilt

How We Drive is the companion blog to Tom Vanderbilt’s New York Times bestselling book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), published by Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S. and Canada, Penguin in the U.K, and in languages other than English by a number of other fine publishers worldwide.

Please send tips, news, research papers, links, photos (bad road signs, outrageous bumper stickers, spectacularly awful acts of driving or parking or anything traffic-related), or ideas for my Slate.com Transport column to me at: info@howwedrive.com.

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