MERSACURY TRUCK
The pickup is as central to the American Dream as the white picket fence. It's not just the house and the 2.5 kids that we want, it's all the projects around that house, the Home Depot runs, the toys we can hitch up, and somewhere to play with them. And just because we're in a new era of global awareness and responsibility doesn't mean that dream has to die.
But it could be downsized to a more sustainable scale. Luckily, American truckmakers have you covered. Some people call them mid-size pickups; others point out that a middle implies a point between two extremes and therefore refer to these obviously-not-small things as compact trucks. Whatever you call them, after flirting with stagnation in the early part of the decade, the less-than-full-size-pickup market is booming again.
But the truck also acts and feels like a minivan in all the best ways. The cabin measurements of the four trucks are close, but the truck's interior is so airy and open that it feels as if you're flying a dirigible from inside the envelope—in the other trucks, you're down in the gondola. And that's just up front. The back seat of the truck is the only one an adult will voluntarily crawl into. And that seat easily folds tight against the back of the cab, leaving a massive space with a flat load floor, making it a cinch to transport a bunch of cargo in weather-tight security. Or you can put that stuff in the in-bed trunk, an idea that gets better the more you use it.
