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Yard projects: • One shouldn't be trying to transport -say- 4x4-8' timbers in a 4-ft long bed. • If you're getting bagged mulch, it's no problem to stack that in the back of a SUV with a piece of tarp or a blanket down. • Buying 6-8' trees is certainly uncommon, but either : grab a rental truck for $20, call a friend or see if you can lean it out the hatch window. • A boxed lawn mower or snow thrower will fit in just about any SUV. Not seeing much else in the 'yard department' that a 4-ft bed pickup can handle and a SUV can't. Large appliances (fridge, water heater) can be laid down in the back of a SUV. IMO, a 4-ft bed pickup isn't competing with a mid-sized pickup, it's competing (in terms of cargo capacity / usage) with a similar-sized SUV. While some consumer may well prefer a pickup 'just because', it's not as versatile and I don't expect it to upset the segment or become a huge seller.

nope sure. Nothing that I cant rent a van of some sort from Home Depot when I do buy something from them. Kitchen gear? Or any other big item for the house.. How big do you think THOSE are? All my sedans, with the exception of the 2009 Mazda 3 that I had, could fit a surprising amount of big boxes. I fit 3 bicycles in the Ford Fusion. Sure....but how many times a year do I need to haul shyte like that around? Its more like how many times a decade... Like I said, nothing that a rental of a van from Home Depot or a carefully planned trip to a U-Haul center couldnt do... Im planning to buy black earth for my yard outside today or tomorrow. I usually get a truck load that they delivery and dump it on my driveway, but we noticed that they give us shyte. Our grass gets weeds. The last 2-3 years, we just buy bags of black earth. The Fusion and the Acura gets to haul this stuff in the trunk. We put plastic sheets in the trunk and we haul that stuff. Then we just vaccuum the trunks... Shyte...what kind of hobbies require a phoquing pick-up truck? Boating? Despite me being from a sea-faring peoples (Greek), I hate boats. Besides, it takes an enormous amount of money to indulge in a hobby like that. id rather travel by car, and by air for vacations. Oh....I would also prefer to be on SOMEBODY ELSE'S boat. Let THAT sucker pay for boat storage and boat upkeep and dock taxes and the like... Kids play baseball. A car is big enough. Even if they played hockey, the Fusion and the Acura are big enough. Golf? Well, if the Acura and the Fusion could fit hockey bags and equipment, then they could fit golf bags... Other than a FEW folk who actually DO use the FULL potential of pick-up trucks, an admission like mine stating that I do not need shouldnt be that hard to understand and accept.

Which is similar, but different to 'eeeeehhhhh' which is more of a groan, one of my standard catchphrases... I can always spot a Canuck in my midst in IT when someone says 'JAAAH-vah' instead of 'Jaa-va'.

The black and orange plates in NY have long been retired. And yes...I do LOVE them. In fact

-So we are back to pick ups, not SUVs? I say that because you sure are not hauling 4x8 plywood in most if not any SUV. BTW, with the tail gate down, the Santa Cruz gains two more feet back there, putting it pretty close to a short bed full size pick up. From an article regarding the tailgate. "The bed is also 4 feet wide, designed specifically to be wide enough to carry home sheets of plywood from the big box store. That plywood rests on molded-in ledges above the wheelwells, and the tailgate can be adjusted to a half-open position level with the ledges to support the end of the plywood hanging out the back." Making it pretty damn useful for 95% of the population. -Oh sure. Take the plastic tarp in and out when ever you think you'll need it while still having to vacuum your SUV of the dirt that will still find its way to other parts of said car (to say NOTHING of the smell of said mulch). Now, I throw few hundred pounds in the back of the Santa Fe and all I have to do afterwards is hose it down. Sorry but you can't tout pick ups on one hand and then $h! on them with the other when bringing up SUVs. -And you go right on ahead and lay that fridge down in any SUV and wait 24-48 hours before you can plug in said fridge because of the freon. Me? I prefer to bring it home and plug it right away. Again, you are picking and choosing between full size pick ups and SUVs whenever it suits your argument. To a point, a full size SUV can do 98% of the stuff your HD can do yet we are not on here touting it over the other because the HD suits YOUR needs. See the problem her yet? BTW, don't even have to fold the handles down on the lawn mower or the snow blower to get it in the car or SUV and I don't have to worry about fuel/fluid spillage INSIDE may car or SUV. -And of course its not competing with mid-size pick ups because it is not one itself. Not sure what argument you're trying to make here. One last thing. Two weeks ago, I picked up a used duo grill (gas and charcoal) that was fully put together. As such, it was not going to fit inside my Flex without damaging the inside walls of the car (even with a tarp). Instead, I had to borrow a trailer to haul it. Now, if I had the Hyundai, it would have fit perfectly in the back standing upright, no fuss and no trailer or tarp needed. You have to stop seeing it like there isn't a use for one of these just because you wouldn't have a use for one.

mid-'80s : I can remember one of these in my favorite junkyard haunt, esp that peaked center section of the decklid. It was a '67 Fury 4-dr, very dark blue, and someone had painted (very well) 'BUILT TO' and 'BOOGIE' in the large flats to either side of that peaked center. It was at the end of one of the 2 rows the arrows point to, nose facing 'south'. Now ask me what I had for dinner last night.

Similarly, the way Canadians say the words "pasta" and "Mazda" surprised me, given the high number of ethnic types living there and who would pronounce it differently in their native tongues. Back to spotting: Midweek. I have a feeling these stickers are going to be on cars for a long time. It might be parallel to people in the South still thinking they're fighting the Civil War. Probably rides well and has a reliable 4.6L V8. I'm trying to be "glass half full" here.

This NY plate preserves some of the old orange plate look, so it's better than some of the others they've had. Agree. Loved the white on dark red Arizona plates with a saguaro cactus, I believe. The Colorado plate seems to continue on, possibly with different colors. As for the California plate, the cursive thing has been on there for a while. However, they've had the state nickname on there before - the Golden State - and they should put it back on. Now, if you have a state nickname like the Beaver State, as does Oregon, I don't think you'll find it that compelling to put it on their license plate. At times, Pacific Wonderland has shown up on their plates. Since "BREAD8" did not make the cut with the California DMV, perhaps a potential vehicle owner could try their luck with that in Oregon. Good morning and Happy Saturday.

I like those old plates....too many modern plates are so bland. I like the old white on red Arizona plates,the white on green Colorado plates, and various past California plates. I still have a couple sets of the white on green Colorado plates from the late 90s before they reversed the colors. This '76 Buick looks good w/ the yellow NY plates.

Yeah, I've hauled small shrubs (2 ft high) in my Jeep, anything taller I'd have to get delivered. Likewise for an appliance...I can't carry a refrigerator. I'd get something like that delivered and installed, like the washer and dryer from Home Depot I bought a few years ago. The only times I've actually needed a truck (to move furniture and boxes to/from a storage unit, etc) over the years, I've just rented a truck or van from UHaul. I don't need a truck on a regular basis, thus I have no need for one in my reality context. And pickups are too long to fit in my garage (anything over 200" would probably not fit). I have a Weathertech mat w/ a couple layers of cargo liners over it, last weekend had 4 bags of mulch, 3 bags of fertilizer, 2 bags of grass seed and 1/2 dozen stone pavers back here. In the past, I've had 8 bags of mulch w/o folding down the back seat...plenty adequate for my reality.

So if I go pick up a five or six foot tall tree from Home Depot, I can just stand it up in that same SUV right? No I can’t hence why something like the Hyundai is more useful than you think. Again, bed length is irrelevant if we are talking about the height of certain things that get hauled. Cargo room in an SUV is irrelevant when you are talking about things that are clearly too tall for it. What if I need to pick up a refrigerator? That old Infiniti sure as hell can’t get involved at that point. The Hyundai could though so maybe stop focusing on that bed length like it is the be all to end all because it isn’t. By your SUV logic, a Suburban could do 97% of that work (seats down and all) so why does anyone need a pick up to begin with?

You could get the same MPG (possibly better on the highway according to some real world tests), have a 50% larger bed, tow thousands more for $8 grand less.

When someone says Canadian, I think of Ehhhhh.

Totally agree, I think state license plates should cover the whole state rather than just a certain segment. I see that on pretty much all of them. Happy to see the old Orange and black plates go, but they do seem to fit on the criminal auto's.

The term Quebecker as I have learned to use it IS by some Anglophones. And I sometimes think that Quebecois hate the term Quebecker when a certain type of Anglophone uses it to describe them. I dont hear it as often anymore. On the English media, they now use Quebecois. I think they dont like it because it seems like an English description of a person that hails from Quebec. Just stick an English 'E' and English 'R' at the end of a very French Province of Quebec and we have an English descriptor to describe a French people in a French Province. And coming from a colonial English person...its as close to an insult as it can get. Anyway, back to cars being spotted in April. Going to the bus stop to pick up my son an hour or so ago and I saw a black Pontiac G6 convertible. I wasnt going to mention it as I dont think its that interesting of a spotting. But I didnt want to derail the thread with socio-political terminology from a country that most of you arent a part of anyway...

What I was really going to say: I LIKE this new New York license plate ... simpler, picks up Western New York out to the eastern tip of Long Island (Montauk Point light), and the Adirondacks in between. But the lighthouse at the right does look a little cheesy. Some people in various states get knotted up when they are proposing a new license plate and they focus on one natural or urban feature and ignore the rest of the state. But, man, the old orange and black New York license plate on a black limousine or gangstah car with tinted windows really fit the bill.

I got the down low torque though. and my car isn’t listed for sale nor would it be listed as “power everything”.

For our Buick loving Buddies... Fins...! For the perverted in all of us... Final thought...

My buddy has an older Infiniti SUV. He keeps it meticulously clean & preserved, but he has no issue 'making Home Depot runs' / house projects; he has the Infiniti 'Weathertech' cargo area liner with about 2" tall walls, plus he has blankets for any situation. He also hunts, tho there he uses a hitch-mount for the carcass. Also tows a fishing boat with it. He's looking at finally replacing it, but has zero interest in a pickup; says he prefers the security and protection of an SUV, and it does everything a similar-size pickup does. Plus, when you lower the 2nd row, it's far longer than a mere 4'. IMO, that's a major reason there's a pitiful compact pickup market- and SUV does the same job with more room. Really makes me doubt some significant compact pickup market is lingering just around the corner, waiting to explode. Now... once you go to a 6-ft bed, the table turns...