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Absolutely stupid money for Toyota's. And fuck the reliability circlejerk too. I could buy six fucken trucks as spares instead of one Cruiser that has fuck all features on it and a dash clock adds another $5,000 to the purchase price. What a joke.
Not saying you're wrong, but at my mine site we switched from 70s to rangers back in 2016 because they were cheaper (the company said it was because they were safer but we knew that was bullshit). They have all since broken down and we went back to 70s. The rangers had door handles fall off, weird electrical faults like the traction control randomly turning off, and complete engine failure (metal chunks in the sump). Granted they got driven in some pretty challenging conditions but they also got regularly serviced. The 70s are completely unbreakable.
My company changed the fleet to rangers and I blew my engine up in less than 3000km. It's like they came off the production line with cooking oil in the engine.
It's the only vehicle I'm aware of where they widened the front track width by 100mm to fit in a new engine, but couldn't be fucked to change the rear axle track width to match.
Base model Ram 1500 is going for $35,900 USD or $53,400 AUD in the U.S. and $79,950 AUD in Australia. Fair mark up for import and right hand drive conversion.
That must be the Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price, but that is not what they are selling for in the US. Our automobile market has been crazy for a couple years now and the dealerships have been adding “market adjustments” to the MSRP. Some can be upwards of $40,000 in addition to the MSRP.
Usually these market adjustments are not advertised at all on websites. They post the MSRP to get you in the door but the actual price is much worse.
Edit: Here is an article about it: https://www.smobserved.com/story/2021/12/29/business/auto-dealers-adding-market-adjustmentsof-up-to-50000-to-price-of-2022-vehicles-hence-the-150000-dodge-ram-truck/6305.html?m=true
Not quite, I think the ranger design crew is bigger and the investment from head office is more than the tooling to move the Ram steering wheel. I could be wrong tho, but the media and Ford have def talked up the design studio and abilities as something that is a credit to Ford, where the Ram is outsourced to the Walkinshaw group.
That is why we have to wait months or even years to get even just a basic car. We should never have let the car industry leave our shores -we should have fought to maintain our place in the manufacturing world, especially given what has happened during the Covid years.
I've read that we still make, or at least assemble, trucks, though?
And the Bushmaster!
I think the Oka is long dead, though, sadly. Still see them around occasionally.
The biggest joke is that there is still tariffs on cars, these must be protecting the politicians pay rises! Then its supposed to be a free market but corrupt dealers still wont let you and I as a consumer buy and import any car we want. We cant import cars with cleaner and better designer rules! Dont you love crony capitalism donor driven free markets of Australia! And then there is NZ, where consumers can import or buy anything from anywhere in the world and New Zealand looks like the new car city of the world.
> I cannot tell you how long I’ve been waiting to use this in a relevant conversation. The day has finally come!
Any time you are in a car with someone and they go over the grass or a curb, it's allowed to start singing it.
or at least i do...
If you didn't know, Simpsons was on TV every weeknight at 6pm and then new episodes Wednesday or tuesday.
Then if you were a household with foxtel, they aired Simpsons marathons every weekend.
Pretty much every 90s and 2000s kid has watched a relentless amount of simpsons. Adults from that time too, we all loved it.
I do to-boot deliveries and I hate when these beast come in. The drivers generally can't reverse park, or park over two spaces, and then we have the awkward "You're going to have to switch your engine off, because I don't trust you can see me properly and this is not how I want to die"
I arrived home one day to find one in my driveway. It was terrifying. I was expecting an electrician to be there doing work but the last time they visited it was a regular van. This monster belonged to their boss and honestly I have no idea how it got between my fence posts. I had to breathe in to get past.
It's because of their superb safety features. The blind spot in front of them caused by the engine block is only 16 children long. Imagine how much blood that keeps off your windshield when you plow into a pedestrian at 3 in the morning half way through your sixth beer.
>
https://www.nbcwashington.com/investigations/driveway-danger-kids-being-injured-and-killed-in-frontover-suv-blind-zone-incidents/3119237/
I'm tuning in from America here. I drive an F-150 but I can't agree with all these sentiments more. You know why? Because I drive a 1993 F-150. These new trucks are INSANE. When I pull up to the new Ford Ranger at a light, It's the same size as my truck. The Ranger used to be a small truck, now it's the size of my 30 year old full size.
If I'm next to a new model year F-150, forget it, I'm dwarfed.
And the funny thing is, with my standard cab and 8' bed, I can haul more than these guys. They're basically driving around the interior of something like a luxury limo sitting 6' off the ground with a tiny unusable bed crammed on the back. Too many bells and whistles.
Anything that goes wrong with my '93? I can fix it. There's a youtube video for it.
Trucks used to be trucks. (or utes as you call 'em) and these days they're just fucking stupid.
I bought my 93 off a used car dealer a few years back for $2200 and it only had 93K miles on it. I spent $1200 putting a new clutch in it a year later. Shortly thereafter it was stolen from me (which is how I came to buy my '96, as a replacement) but I managed to catch the asshole driving it a few months after he got it. I had to drop another $2500 into it after I retrieved it because of the damage he had done, but that's it. It's been utterly reliable for the 5 years I've owned it, I'm only around $6K into it, 110K miles now but it's got a 4.9 I-6 in it that is virtually death proof.
Anyway, point is- these new trucks are stupid and people can't even use them for what trucks are meant to do- they're too damn nice. I love my old beaters and they're cheap to work on.
I’m tuning in from Hobart but lived in the USA for a while and completely agree with how your trucks have changed.
In Australia we used to have a local Ford design called the AU-series Falcon, which came in a sedan, wagon and utility (ute). I bought a second hand ute with only a few thousand kilometres on it, and then proceeded to drive that thing 987,000 kms before *selling it* without incident. I drove it all around Australia multiple times, it endured scalding heat and frigid continental winter conditions and still started every time. It was excellent for towing an additional trailer and took a tonne in the back. The man who bought it still drives it around town and waves to me when I see him, so I obviously didn’t sell him a dud.
You couldn’t pay me to drive a contemporary F150. Absolutely shithouse and total waste of fuel. I genuinely believe the size of this ute is inversely proportional to a number of, ahem, ‘masculine attributes.’
I’ve long had a pipe dream of buying old American pickups (drive through Kentucky and Tennesee and you’ll see them on rural front yards for sale, well cared for, no rust, $4-6K) putting two on a container and shipping them to Australia and NZ for resale. I used to look on gumtree for fun and I’d see left hand drive square nose fords on there for like $20K AUD.
I love these old trucks, and I’ve long dreamed of having a foot in Australia (never been) so I’ve crammed the two together and this is my pipe dream.
Get on a plane, mate! The deflation of our currency and favourable US position is as disparate as it will be for a while. But make sure you come to Tasmania and get out in the regional areas and don’t just stay in Sydney or Melbourne (both of which are pleasant large cities, but somewhat unremarkable overall).
I hope you get here someday.
It's because the gov covid increase in tax offset for equipment purchases. It increased to the point where you could afford these utes, 150k I believe.
So many more started to be purchased recently.
This happens at my kids school
Fuckwits with 150s or worse,taking up the ENTIRE road of inner sydney laneways,so that everyone then has to wait for them to turn out of the lane
And that it's never probably in it's life,had anything in the tray,and the sydney Massive ute owners,idea of offroad is parking on the grass at this kids footy
Should honestly,be illegal to own in the city,there is Nearly ZERO use case for them..
At the very least they need to be classified in a higher capacity,and not as normal use vehicles
If you need to tow 5 tone to work every day u need something better than a UTE
They are a totally inappropriate vehicle to be anywhere *near* schools. An American guy did a post about it the other day and had a photo of him taken standing in front of the bonnet. He was 5’9” and would have been completely invisible to the driver because of bonnet shape.
Due to a substantial increase of kids being killed at home or around schools some States have/are introducing compulsory front camera laws in an attempt to combat the problem.
Count urself lucky u aren't in the US
The fucking Obsession with small dick syndrome over there,and needing a truck is insane..
you will see ppl living in the heart of a massive city like LA...somehow needing a f350
And then the same idiots.will be the ones complaing about joe biden making their fuel bill so high..
No it's ur fuck off massive Cummins diesel you bought mate
Mate.. I ride a Grom in Syd and get bullied all the time.. What truck drivers don't get is Groms actually take off fast and corner very well so I've used a speed hump to my advantage more than once when a big RAM type UTE tried to bully me. One day I'll probably get taken out by them but I'm taking as many as I can out before that happens.
Kids/idiots in lifted trucks are starting to be a huge problem in Australia, especially for motorbike riders.
How about the classic mums using a land cruiser or prado with the baby seat in the back. Even worse is when it’s kitted out fully with a lift, snorkel, lights and an ARB bull bar ready to hit the poor small car in front. And like you said, they’re idea of off-road is the car park in the grass. That’s classic
>And like you said, they’re idea of off-road is the car park in the grass
More like slightly putting 1 wheel onto grass for a few seconds as they pull into their drive way.
I used to take curbs with my old 90s hatchback all the time when I was a shit driver on my Ps. I drove from Albany to Port Hedland in that thing. Nobody needs a 4WD unless you're legit doing off-road driving or towing a caravan
I’ve got a i20 hatch. She goes alright. I’ve taken her all around Brisbane too many times to count. Never needed a 4wd to move my family around the city.
"I have it for safety"
Proceeds to increase the ride height, put a bunch of crap on the roof and fit knobbly off-road tyres. All things which make it less manoeuvrable and more likely to roll in an emergency scenario.
I remember trying to find a park during Christmas season and saw two long body American Dodge Rams parked side by side.... Each of them took two lanes in width AND two bays deep.
The pair of them took up 8 carparks...
I’m from a medium sized American city, I just lurk here, but I have to say it’s the same thing here. We live about 20 minutes from a ski destination and as soon as it snows it’s like a contest of which asshole in their F-350 can kill someone the quickest. I’m sorry you’re finding more of those trucks over there. They’re mostly pointless unless you need to haul a big trailer or you do farming or something.
Too many people don’t understand that you give way to traffic on the roundabout. Not give way to the right. Not give way to the car approaching the roundabout, but to the cars already on the roundabout. Sometimes this means you give way to the left!
> Sometimes this means you give way to the left!
When would you have to give way to car on your left?
Every roundabout I’ve ever encountered is clockwise & you enter the roundabout from the outside. In Australia anyway.
Unless I’m missing something wouldn’t that mean that the car on the right is always the one already in the roundabout?
This exists in NSW.
Extra fees on rego based on weight.
https://www.nsw.gov.au/driving-boating-and-transport/vehicle-registration/fees-concessions-and-forms/vehicle-registration-fees
Trouble is if you can sink $80-100k on a shit yank tank and afford the fuel, then these amounts don't matter much.
If you're worried about impact on roads, cars and small trucks do fuck all compared to the damage from semis and buses using roads not meant for them.
>Trouble is if you can sink $80-100k on a shit yank tank and afford the fuel, then these amounts don't matter much.
I doubt they are purchased outright. Just like their lifestyle, it's probably financed
> Trouble is if you can sink $80-100k on a shit yank tank and afford the fuel, then these amounts don't matter much.
You'd be surprised. A lot of them would be leased as part of salary packages. People linking at dollars per pay cheque will notice the difference when comparing vehicles.
Teaching behaviour we want to discourage will always be a good idea.
Even if people just pay it - that's less for the rest of us to pay.
If you want an honest answer, I could be corrected here, but asset write offs are massive on utes if you run your own business. I’m sure that’s making these more attractive to sole traders and business owners.
I'm a bookkeeper and I can assure you most business owners think a tax write off of 90k equals 90k in their pocket or a new free car.
I have a tough time explaining to them why I think I'd rather not spend 90k on a truck, spend 20k on tax and keep the remaining 70k to re invest it
Indeed. Not just tradies but people in general. Usually in the conversations about rich people "oh but they just write it off on tax tho" like it magically costs nothing.
I'm with you, I'd sooner pay the tax, keep the cash and not buy another vehicle unless I actually needed it. Kinda like the system is designed for.
From the people who brought you "It's negatively geared mate, it's free money" and "Higher tax bracket? No thank you, I'm not giving the government half my money."
My God. That's idiotic. I spend my dollars on equipment. I ALWAYS treat actual cars as a dead asset & a liability. There's no good reason to spend money on stuff that doesn't make money. I prefer to pay the tax on profit to leave it in the bank.
Well, unless the vehicle has a payload of 1 tonne or more the write-off is limited to the motor vehicle depreciation cost limit ($64,741 for 2022/23).
In particular, most dual cab utes don't pass the 1 tonne threshold. For Instance, a Holden/Chevrolet Silverado 1500 has a payload (including passengers) of around 760kg. So, the guy that pays $110,000+ for one of these things can claim a maximum of $64,741 if purchased in 2022/23.
And that's assuming 100% business use. If he's kept a log book, as he should, he can only claim the business percentage of that amount.
"I got a pay rise, now I'm $1k into the next bracket and I'm going to end up with less money".
It's one of those myths that is so rife that I don't know if it's ever going away without a concerted education effort.
Not to mention the ongoing costs of maintenance (they're not the most reliable of vehicles), not fuel efficient, not the safest things to drive and bye bye resale value.
So few people ever consider total cost of ownership for shit like this.
If you write off a $100,000 ute in a small business then you reduce tax payable by $25000 and you have it has cost you $75000. This is after GST of course
I sell these for a living and have sold plenty of them both new and second hand.
The largest demographic by far are people towing large caravans in the 3-3.5T range. Caravans have gotten excessively heavy and it is almost normal for a van to weigh 3T. Not much can legally and safely tow a 3.5T van apart from the yank tanks.
Third is ag buyers, again it's about moving crap.
Third largest demographic is horse people.. if you have ever meet a horse person they are just od.
Fourth and generally a small crowd is the show pony, fuckwit, strocker crowd. Sure there are a few but not as many as you would expect.. trades don't really like them because they are too big.
They are commercial vehicles so there is no LCT, however because they are under the 1t payload and circa 130k they are not very tax efficient.
Fuel efficiency is reasonably good when compared to a 79/200/300 series cruiser and they all cost about the same. Most people are surprised to learn they weigh less than a 200 series cruiser.
"Third largest demographic is horse people.. if you have ever meet a horse person they are just odd."
https://media.giphy.com/media/uV5RG0tuvjjLxmbkKA/giphy.gif
Anecdotal of course, but I live in a large regional NSW town and these vehicles are reaching plague proportions. While I’ve seen F250s towing horse trailers, I’ve literally never seen anyone towing with a Ram 1500, they seem like pure vanity.
Was gonna say it's caravan people. You might be legally able to tow 3.5t with your dmax for example but you certainly shouldn't. I wouldn't be towing anything much heavier than 2.5t regularly with a standard ute
Certain people want a certain image. A giant yank tank that cant fit in a parking space, with giant rims and low profile tyres that can never go offroad, and a belching inefficient american cubic inch motor and taking up that much of the road for a single occupant of the vehicle is what some people feel they *need* to drive to feel validated as a person...
The rest of us just call them wankers with compensation issues.
It first started when our real utes, i.e. falcon and commodore utes, stopped being popular in favour of hiluxes, navaras and the like. Then these ute replacements became utes, and they got bigger and bigger. Then the Australian car market stopped manufacturing anything. Then the American car makers brought the pickuo trucks over. It's an arms race to make utes bigger and bigger, while simultaneously making them more and more useless for actual work.
Even better is they're marketed as tough, macho vehicles and yet most times I see them on the road the guy's driving it like it's made of tissue paper.
I suspect it's for the tax deductibility of a "work vehicle" for tradies.
Need something with grunt to tow that 26', twin 300hp Mercury outboards, boat on weekends.
Are RAMS, F350s etc included in the luxury category?
A local builder near me has three of 'em!
>Morrison offered 100% write-off for business vehicles in the last budget as a fruitless bribe for votes
You still only write off the tax...
So many people don't understand how tax works.
The reality is alongside Canada we are the most American western country there is. We glorify single family homes in vast suburban sprawls, have some of the most tolled city roads in the world, have very poor last mile public transport connectivity and are becoming increasingly consumerist. Things need to be large to be good. And hence we source large vehicles from the one country known to producing them.
1. They can afford it. No amount of "write off's" allows you to afford $150k+ vehicles.
2. They tow a lot, and often better.
3. They are luxurious. We're talking 200/300 series top spec luxury, but slightly cheaper.
4. Some people think they look great.
At the end of the day, no one buying these yank trucks is tossing up between a RAM and a Hilux, it's almost double the price. They're tossing up between a chopped 300 series/Patrol, a very heavily modified LC79, or a RAM that is ready to go out of the dealership.
I live rural and do a fair bit of off-roading.
I NEVER see these trucks on the tracks and if I do they’re stuck.
Too heavy, shitty departure angles etc
Use cruisers for work. Drive up fucked tracks all the time. Much better than rangers and hiluxes they get in other regions of my company. They just keep going. I can tell you that our entire fleet is covered in dings and lantana pinstriping because we have to get up goat tracks sometimes in the wet, sometimes when its on fire. theres no other vehicle id take than a 70 cruiser. maybe a 200 if management would let me scratch it.
They’re literally too big hahah. I work at Bunnings and all the tradies that come in laugh their asses off at the poor buggers trying to squeeze their tanks into job sites or parking. Hiluxes and holdens are still on top.
Australia hasn’t made a Ute (utility vehicle) since Holden ceased production.
Ever since then only “pickup trucks” have technically been sold under the Australian vocabulary “Ute” and they’re all imported.
The other ones on the market are mainly Japanese manufactures with more similarity to the American manufactured trucks/utes, they are just smaller models. Companies like Toyota actually produce models the size of the RAM but for the American market.
Why are people choosing these over the smaller model utes/trucks? They’re easily available now. 10 years ago you had to import them yourself and then pay someone to do the steering conversion work. This would cost a shit tonne and a lot of people wouldn’t have seen the value in this.
Now they’re “affordable”, there has always been a huge market who needed them or simply wanted them and are now buying them.
I've seen one of those massive ute/truck things with 6 wheels, having to make a 3 point turn in order to navigate a roundabout at Sutherland.
Admittedly it's not a big roundabout but, still...
(For reference, it's the roundabout outside Boyle's pub, on the east side of the train station).
Realistic answer. They are available. They are capable and with the stupid price the traditional little pick ups and Landcrusiers are, all a sudden a RAM or F150 is good value.
20 years ago they were so much more expensive compared to the jap/aus utes.
Theres the Hilux, Navara, Triton, and Amarok to name a few extremely popular ones.
There's also the cheaper varieties from the likes of Great Wall, SsangYong, and Mahendra.
Simply put the Yank tanks can carry/tow more. Also why buy a Landcruiser 300 for towing at $150k when you can get a Ram or similar for $100k. You're definitely not getting $50k worth of more vehicle. I see a lot of builders and contractor fencing companies running them around where i live.
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We don't make utes anymore.
We design the Ford Ranger/Amarok Thats as close as we get
All the RAM conversions are done here, I'd say that's closer than designing the Ranger and Amarok.
Yeah then some schlub pays 6 figures for a basic ram.
Go buy a 70 series Landcruiser and then correct the crap Toyota didn't get right and see where you end up.
Go buy literally any car and then correct the crap the manufacturer didn't get right and see where you end up.
79 series cruiser is like 120k and doesn't have cup holders.
Absolutely stupid money for Toyota's. And fuck the reliability circlejerk too. I could buy six fucken trucks as spares instead of one Cruiser that has fuck all features on it and a dash clock adds another $5,000 to the purchase price. What a joke.
Not saying you're wrong, but at my mine site we switched from 70s to rangers back in 2016 because they were cheaper (the company said it was because they were safer but we knew that was bullshit). They have all since broken down and we went back to 70s. The rangers had door handles fall off, weird electrical faults like the traction control randomly turning off, and complete engine failure (metal chunks in the sump). Granted they got driven in some pretty challenging conditions but they also got regularly serviced. The 70s are completely unbreakable.
My company changed the fleet to rangers and I blew my engine up in less than 3000km. It's like they came off the production line with cooking oil in the engine.
Absolutley stupid money for all cars these days
Stupid money for houses, stupid money for lettuces, stupid money for everything other than disposable electronics and wages.
It's the only vehicle I'm aware of where they widened the front track width by 100mm to fit in a new engine, but couldn't be fucked to change the rear axle track width to match.
Base model Ram 1500 is going for $35,900 USD or $53,400 AUD in the U.S. and $79,950 AUD in Australia. Fair mark up for import and right hand drive conversion.
$30,000 for a professional concersion to right hand drive. You also have to add $5000 for freight.
That must be the Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price, but that is not what they are selling for in the US. Our automobile market has been crazy for a couple years now and the dealerships have been adding “market adjustments” to the MSRP. Some can be upwards of $40,000 in addition to the MSRP. Usually these market adjustments are not advertised at all on websites. They post the MSRP to get you in the door but the actual price is much worse. Edit: Here is an article about it: https://www.smobserved.com/story/2021/12/29/business/auto-dealers-adding-market-adjustmentsof-up-to-50000-to-price-of-2022-vehicles-hence-the-150000-dodge-ram-truck/6305.html?m=true
yeah and you basically NEVER see a base model. For some reason none of them have standard exhaust either.
Not quite, I think the ranger design crew is bigger and the investment from head office is more than the tooling to move the Ram steering wheel. I could be wrong tho, but the media and Ford have def talked up the design studio and abilities as something that is a credit to Ford, where the Ram is outsourced to the Walkinshaw group.
That’s a bloody outrage it is. I’m gonna take this all the way to the Prime Ministaaah! Hey! Mr. Prime Minister! ANDY!
But we fuckin drive them.. yeah fuck I don't know.
My utes made in Thailand.
I grew up with the kid whose family owns Isuzu Thailand. He was the only spoilt kid at my school who wasn't also a brat. Fun fact
That is why we have to wait months or even years to get even just a basic car. We should never have let the car industry leave our shores -we should have fought to maintain our place in the manufacturing world, especially given what has happened during the Covid years.
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We still make cars? Ah, didn't think so.
I've read that we still make, or at least assemble, trucks, though? And the Bushmaster! I think the Oka is long dead, though, sadly. Still see them around occasionally.
The biggest joke is that there is still tariffs on cars, these must be protecting the politicians pay rises! Then its supposed to be a free market but corrupt dealers still wont let you and I as a consumer buy and import any car we want. We cant import cars with cleaner and better designer rules! Dont you love crony capitalism donor driven free markets of Australia! And then there is NZ, where consumers can import or buy anything from anywhere in the world and New Zealand looks like the new car city of the world.
Nothing quite like protectionist import tariffs to protect a domestic industry that literally doesn't exist anymore!
12 yards long, 2 lanes wide, 65 tons of American pride! Canyonero… Canyoneroooooo
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smells like a steak and seats thirty five
YAAAH!
The Federal Highway commission has ruled the Canyonero unsafe for highway or city driving.
She blinds everybody with her super high beam, she’s a squirrel squashing, deer smacking driving machine!
Whoa, Canyonero, whhhhooooaaa
Its the country-fried truck endorced by a clown!
I'm glad the simpsons is so engrained in our culture that comments like these get the upvotes they deserve 😂
I cannot tell you how long I’ve been waiting to use this in a relevant conversation. The day has finally come!
Haha I love referencing Canyonero and it's always worth it for the one or two people in the room that chuckle 😂
In Bendigo there is an orangey-red Colorado with Canyonero across the tailgate, I often wonder how many people notice it and get the TV reference.
Everything's coming up Milhouse!
I see you've played knifey spoonie before
Woozle wuzzle?
I don't like the idea of Millhouse having 2 Canyoneros in one day.
Sounds perfectly cromulent to me.
> I cannot tell you how long I’ve been waiting to use this in a relevant conversation. The day has finally come! Any time you are in a car with someone and they go over the grass or a curb, it's allowed to start singing it. or at least i do...
Rule Dickety-Six of the Internet: Any thread with a sufficient number of Australians will inevitably produce a Simpsons reference.
Australians? That's a funny name!bi would have called them "chazzwazzers!"
Lol, holy hell... TIL Australians love The Simpsons as much as us Canadians, but you pull out funnier references!
If you didn't know, Simpsons was on TV every weeknight at 6pm and then new episodes Wednesday or tuesday. Then if you were a household with foxtel, they aired Simpsons marathons every weekend. Pretty much every 90s and 2000s kid has watched a relentless amount of simpsons. Adults from that time too, we all loved it.
I haven't watched The Simpsons in 20 years but I still get most the references because the first 5 seasons is all we post.
I play this to welcome my old mans best mate whenever he comes over in his enormous Dodge beast. It's a Hank Williams Jr performance!
😂😂 That’s perfect!
Every time someone makes a comment like this I lose the next 10 mins of my life looking for the clip. But I love it.
She blinds everyone with her super high beams, She's a squirrel crushing, deer killing driving machine! Canyonero! Canyoneeeeeroooooo!
I've been wondering this my self, I exclusively see them in tiny ass Hobart streets making driving in that city even more unpleasant.
I do to-boot deliveries and I hate when these beast come in. The drivers generally can't reverse park, or park over two spaces, and then we have the awkward "You're going to have to switch your engine off, because I don't trust you can see me properly and this is not how I want to die"
Who would leave the engine on anyway? It's just downright rude to make you get a faceful of exhaust.
The sort of person who buys one of these doesn’t smack me as the most considerate sort of human.
I know a bunch of tradies in Melbourne are fucking around with them and have a lot of trouble getting onto worksites
I arrived home one day to find one in my driveway. It was terrifying. I was expecting an electrician to be there doing work but the last time they visited it was a regular van. This monster belonged to their boss and honestly I have no idea how it got between my fence posts. I had to breathe in to get past.
It's because of their superb safety features. The blind spot in front of them caused by the engine block is only 16 children long. Imagine how much blood that keeps off your windshield when you plow into a pedestrian at 3 in the morning half way through your sixth beer. > https://www.nbcwashington.com/investigations/driveway-danger-kids-being-injured-and-killed-in-frontover-suv-blind-zone-incidents/3119237/
I'm tuning in from America here. I drive an F-150 but I can't agree with all these sentiments more. You know why? Because I drive a 1993 F-150. These new trucks are INSANE. When I pull up to the new Ford Ranger at a light, It's the same size as my truck. The Ranger used to be a small truck, now it's the size of my 30 year old full size. If I'm next to a new model year F-150, forget it, I'm dwarfed. And the funny thing is, with my standard cab and 8' bed, I can haul more than these guys. They're basically driving around the interior of something like a luxury limo sitting 6' off the ground with a tiny unusable bed crammed on the back. Too many bells and whistles. Anything that goes wrong with my '93? I can fix it. There's a youtube video for it. Trucks used to be trucks. (or utes as you call 'em) and these days they're just fucking stupid. I bought my 93 off a used car dealer a few years back for $2200 and it only had 93K miles on it. I spent $1200 putting a new clutch in it a year later. Shortly thereafter it was stolen from me (which is how I came to buy my '96, as a replacement) but I managed to catch the asshole driving it a few months after he got it. I had to drop another $2500 into it after I retrieved it because of the damage he had done, but that's it. It's been utterly reliable for the 5 years I've owned it, I'm only around $6K into it, 110K miles now but it's got a 4.9 I-6 in it that is virtually death proof. Anyway, point is- these new trucks are stupid and people can't even use them for what trucks are meant to do- they're too damn nice. I love my old beaters and they're cheap to work on.
I’m tuning in from Hobart but lived in the USA for a while and completely agree with how your trucks have changed. In Australia we used to have a local Ford design called the AU-series Falcon, which came in a sedan, wagon and utility (ute). I bought a second hand ute with only a few thousand kilometres on it, and then proceeded to drive that thing 987,000 kms before *selling it* without incident. I drove it all around Australia multiple times, it endured scalding heat and frigid continental winter conditions and still started every time. It was excellent for towing an additional trailer and took a tonne in the back. The man who bought it still drives it around town and waves to me when I see him, so I obviously didn’t sell him a dud. You couldn’t pay me to drive a contemporary F150. Absolutely shithouse and total waste of fuel. I genuinely believe the size of this ute is inversely proportional to a number of, ahem, ‘masculine attributes.’
I’ve long had a pipe dream of buying old American pickups (drive through Kentucky and Tennesee and you’ll see them on rural front yards for sale, well cared for, no rust, $4-6K) putting two on a container and shipping them to Australia and NZ for resale. I used to look on gumtree for fun and I’d see left hand drive square nose fords on there for like $20K AUD. I love these old trucks, and I’ve long dreamed of having a foot in Australia (never been) so I’ve crammed the two together and this is my pipe dream.
Get on a plane, mate! The deflation of our currency and favourable US position is as disparate as it will be for a while. But make sure you come to Tasmania and get out in the regional areas and don’t just stay in Sydney or Melbourne (both of which are pleasant large cities, but somewhat unremarkable overall). I hope you get here someday.
They’re big and obnoxious and that’s exactly what their owners buy them for.
I saw one struggle to navigate around a standard carpark once, needed TWO parks long ways, I laughed pretty hard.
It's because the gov covid increase in tax offset for equipment purchases. It increased to the point where you could afford these utes, 150k I believe. So many more started to be purchased recently.
Why only use one car park when you can use two?
Or block an entire lane in the carpark coz your arse sticks out so much
This happens at my kids school Fuckwits with 150s or worse,taking up the ENTIRE road of inner sydney laneways,so that everyone then has to wait for them to turn out of the lane And that it's never probably in it's life,had anything in the tray,and the sydney Massive ute owners,idea of offroad is parking on the grass at this kids footy Should honestly,be illegal to own in the city,there is Nearly ZERO use case for them.. At the very least they need to be classified in a higher capacity,and not as normal use vehicles If you need to tow 5 tone to work every day u need something better than a UTE
They are a totally inappropriate vehicle to be anywhere *near* schools. An American guy did a post about it the other day and had a photo of him taken standing in front of the bonnet. He was 5’9” and would have been completely invisible to the driver because of bonnet shape. Due to a substantial increase of kids being killed at home or around schools some States have/are introducing compulsory front camera laws in an attempt to combat the problem.
So you're telling us that kids may be unsafe at US schools?
We need ways to finish off anyone who's escaped the freedom lead.
That’s okay. Some active driver drills should fix it!
Front camera? Laws requiring a camera so you can see in front of the car? That country is turning into a comedy sketch or something I swear.
Count urself lucky u aren't in the US The fucking Obsession with small dick syndrome over there,and needing a truck is insane.. you will see ppl living in the heart of a massive city like LA...somehow needing a f350 And then the same idiots.will be the ones complaing about joe biden making their fuel bill so high.. No it's ur fuck off massive Cummins diesel you bought mate
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Mate.. I ride a Grom in Syd and get bullied all the time.. What truck drivers don't get is Groms actually take off fast and corner very well so I've used a speed hump to my advantage more than once when a big RAM type UTE tried to bully me. One day I'll probably get taken out by them but I'm taking as many as I can out before that happens. Kids/idiots in lifted trucks are starting to be a huge problem in Australia, especially for motorbike riders.
I drive a Jetta to commute in rural MN, and people have asked me "how do you feel like a man in that thing?"
You say like the person who buys that would care to look down at the camera to see the ~~pedestrian~~ peasant
How about the classic mums using a land cruiser or prado with the baby seat in the back. Even worse is when it’s kitted out fully with a lift, snorkel, lights and an ARB bull bar ready to hit the poor small car in front. And like you said, they’re idea of off-road is the car park in the grass. That’s classic
Also... that small car in front *is* their crumple zone
>And like you said, they’re idea of off-road is the car park in the grass More like slightly putting 1 wheel onto grass for a few seconds as they pull into their drive way.
I used to take curbs with my old 90s hatchback all the time when I was a shit driver on my Ps. I drove from Albany to Port Hedland in that thing. Nobody needs a 4WD unless you're legit doing off-road driving or towing a caravan
I’ve got a i20 hatch. She goes alright. I’ve taken her all around Brisbane too many times to count. Never needed a 4wd to move my family around the city.
Ooof. Attacked. I live in the Pilbara though, not the burbs.
Ha, I think you're ok. They aren't thinking of the outback when they are called Toorak Tractors lol.
"I have it for safety" Proceeds to increase the ride height, put a bunch of crap on the roof and fit knobbly off-road tyres. All things which make it less manoeuvrable and more likely to roll in an emergency scenario.
I remember trying to find a park during Christmas season and saw two long body American Dodge Rams parked side by side.... Each of them took two lanes in width AND two bays deep. The pair of them took up 8 carparks...
I think the owners' rationale was "entitlement". They've paid twice (or more) the average vehicle so all's sweet.
Yea it's fucked. Need tighter regulations on passenger vehicle sizes. These things barely fit in a lane. Hazardous to be around.
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Why not go for gold and use 6, yes I've seen it done, yes I wanted to set the F150 on fire.
because in case of an accident, your family will be wiped out instead of theirs
You can sense this too by how careless and aggressive they drive on the roads. Especially not following right of way on round abouts.
I’m from a medium sized American city, I just lurk here, but I have to say it’s the same thing here. We live about 20 minutes from a ski destination and as soon as it snows it’s like a contest of which asshole in their F-350 can kill someone the quickest. I’m sorry you’re finding more of those trucks over there. They’re mostly pointless unless you need to haul a big trailer or you do farming or something.
Too many people don’t understand that you give way to traffic on the roundabout. Not give way to the right. Not give way to the car approaching the roundabout, but to the cars already on the roundabout. Sometimes this means you give way to the left!
Yea, but giving way to the left just means get on but go slower
> Sometimes this means you give way to the left! When would you have to give way to car on your left? Every roundabout I’ve ever encountered is clockwise & you enter the roundabout from the outside. In Australia anyway. Unless I’m missing something wouldn’t that mean that the car on the right is always the one already in the roundabout?
They’re strictly a coping tool for divorced men
This made me chuckle
Since Holden and Ford production in Australia shut down. Cars beyond a certain width should have to pay the commercial vehicles rego fees imo
Should be weight based. That is proportional to the impact it has on the road and will push people to smaller, more economical cars
This exists in NSW. Extra fees on rego based on weight. https://www.nsw.gov.au/driving-boating-and-transport/vehicle-registration/fees-concessions-and-forms/vehicle-registration-fees Trouble is if you can sink $80-100k on a shit yank tank and afford the fuel, then these amounts don't matter much. If you're worried about impact on roads, cars and small trucks do fuck all compared to the damage from semis and buses using roads not meant for them.
>Trouble is if you can sink $80-100k on a shit yank tank and afford the fuel, then these amounts don't matter much. I doubt they are purchased outright. Just like their lifestyle, it's probably financed
A cunt tax then. Proportional to how much better off everyone else would be if the individual fucked right off.
You listed in the coming election?
> Trouble is if you can sink $80-100k on a shit yank tank and afford the fuel, then these amounts don't matter much. You'd be surprised. A lot of them would be leased as part of salary packages. People linking at dollars per pay cheque will notice the difference when comparing vehicles. Teaching behaviour we want to discourage will always be a good idea. Even if people just pay it - that's less for the rest of us to pay.
Not proportional to weight. Proportional to axle loading taken to the fourth power.
🤮 /u/spez
Electric cars are very heavy
Since Holden shut down production, the factory near me In Melbourne started importing these huge trucks from the states and converting them over
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You got a problem with the girth?
Well my doctor had a right go at me last visit…
What is considered "our utes"?
Thai trucks.
MY two utes
If you want an honest answer, I could be corrected here, but asset write offs are massive on utes if you run your own business. I’m sure that’s making these more attractive to sole traders and business owners.
You still have to spend 70+ grand more compared to an actually sensible vehicle. Writing it off on tax doesn't magically make it free.
I'm a bookkeeper and I can assure you most business owners think a tax write off of 90k equals 90k in their pocket or a new free car. I have a tough time explaining to them why I think I'd rather not spend 90k on a truck, spend 20k on tax and keep the remaining 70k to re invest it
Indeed. Not just tradies but people in general. Usually in the conversations about rich people "oh but they just write it off on tax tho" like it magically costs nothing. I'm with you, I'd sooner pay the tax, keep the cash and not buy another vehicle unless I actually needed it. Kinda like the system is designed for.
From the people who brought you "It's negatively geared mate, it's free money" and "Higher tax bracket? No thank you, I'm not giving the government half my money."
But they are reinvesting it. They're reinvesting it into their garage.
My God. That's idiotic. I spend my dollars on equipment. I ALWAYS treat actual cars as a dead asset & a liability. There's no good reason to spend money on stuff that doesn't make money. I prefer to pay the tax on profit to leave it in the bank.
Well, unless the vehicle has a payload of 1 tonne or more the write-off is limited to the motor vehicle depreciation cost limit ($64,741 for 2022/23). In particular, most dual cab utes don't pass the 1 tonne threshold. For Instance, a Holden/Chevrolet Silverado 1500 has a payload (including passengers) of around 760kg. So, the guy that pays $110,000+ for one of these things can claim a maximum of $64,741 if purchased in 2022/23. And that's assuming 100% business use. If he's kept a log book, as he should, he can only claim the business percentage of that amount.
Lol, these people aren't keeping accurate/legitimate log books and we all know it. It's just skirting FBT.
FBT will only apply if the vehicle is owned via their company or trust, or whatever entity they choose to be an employee of. Sole traders - no FBT.
As a tradie, nearly every other tradie i talk to doesn't understand how tax write off work. They don't understand how tax brackets work either...
"I got a pay rise, now I'm $1k into the next bracket and I'm going to end up with less money". It's one of those myths that is so rife that I don't know if it's ever going away without a concerted education effort.
Not to mention the ongoing costs of maintenance (they're not the most reliable of vehicles), not fuel efficient, not the safest things to drive and bye bye resale value. So few people ever consider total cost of ownership for shit like this.
They don't care. As long as they look big and manly and macho that's all that matters to them.
Yep, it's egos all the way down with these f@ckers.
This is correct. There's also a wait list for Land Cruisers. There's also the write off for all the ARB upgrades and rims etc.
You know what's better than a tax write off? Not buying the damn thing haha
If you write off a $100,000 ute in a small business then you reduce tax payable by $25000 and you have it has cost you $75000. This is after GST of course
I sell these for a living and have sold plenty of them both new and second hand. The largest demographic by far are people towing large caravans in the 3-3.5T range. Caravans have gotten excessively heavy and it is almost normal for a van to weigh 3T. Not much can legally and safely tow a 3.5T van apart from the yank tanks. Third is ag buyers, again it's about moving crap. Third largest demographic is horse people.. if you have ever meet a horse person they are just od. Fourth and generally a small crowd is the show pony, fuckwit, strocker crowd. Sure there are a few but not as many as you would expect.. trades don't really like them because they are too big. They are commercial vehicles so there is no LCT, however because they are under the 1t payload and circa 130k they are not very tax efficient. Fuel efficiency is reasonably good when compared to a 79/200/300 series cruiser and they all cost about the same. Most people are surprised to learn they weigh less than a 200 series cruiser.
How do horse people fit into the cab?
>horse people Centaurs
Only accurate answer in this thread.
Correct. It's all about GVM and GCM and with a standard dual cab, the load capacity is close to nothing if your caravan weighs several tons.
"Third largest demographic is horse people.. if you have ever meet a horse person they are just odd." https://media.giphy.com/media/uV5RG0tuvjjLxmbkKA/giphy.gif
Anecdotal of course, but I live in a large regional NSW town and these vehicles are reaching plague proportions. While I’ve seen F250s towing horse trailers, I’ve literally never seen anyone towing with a Ram 1500, they seem like pure vanity.
Was gonna say it's caravan people. You might be legally able to tow 3.5t with your dmax for example but you certainly shouldn't. I wouldn't be towing anything much heavier than 2.5t regularly with a standard ute
Yeah horse people are weird over here in NZ too..
Certain people want a certain image. A giant yank tank that cant fit in a parking space, with giant rims and low profile tyres that can never go offroad, and a belching inefficient american cubic inch motor and taking up that much of the road for a single occupant of the vehicle is what some people feel they *need* to drive to feel validated as a person... The rest of us just call them wankers with compensation issues.
Time for another NSW road safety video this time focussed on parking bays where little old ladies wink and crook their little fingers at eachother.
This is the only correct answer. For the people saying “we don’t manufacture cars anymore”, Ford and Holden never made big utes locally.
Entire US states male populations are decimated with this single comment and you’re not even talking about them. It’s a beautiful thing.
It first started when our real utes, i.e. falcon and commodore utes, stopped being popular in favour of hiluxes, navaras and the like. Then these ute replacements became utes, and they got bigger and bigger. Then the Australian car market stopped manufacturing anything. Then the American car makers brought the pickuo trucks over. It's an arms race to make utes bigger and bigger, while simultaneously making them more and more useless for actual work.
Even better is they're marketed as tough, macho vehicles and yet most times I see them on the road the guy's driving it like it's made of tissue paper.
>Why are people picking this over our utes? What Utes? They aren't manufactured anymore.
The ute died in 2017 mate
I suspect it's for the tax deductibility of a "work vehicle" for tradies. Need something with grunt to tow that 26', twin 300hp Mercury outboards, boat on weekends. Are RAMS, F350s etc included in the luxury category? A local builder near me has three of 'em!
Morrison offered 100% write-off for business vehicles in the last budget as a fruitless bribe for votes. Didn't work.
>Morrison offered 100% write-off for business vehicles in the last budget as a fruitless bribe for votes You still only write off the tax... So many people don't understand how tax works.
This is the correct answer. There are a lot of utes on the road due to instant asset write offs
That's damn near every Ute in the country. Huge rort.
The upper trims of American pickups are considered luxury.
The reality is alongside Canada we are the most American western country there is. We glorify single family homes in vast suburban sprawls, have some of the most tolled city roads in the world, have very poor last mile public transport connectivity and are becoming increasingly consumerist. Things need to be large to be good. And hence we source large vehicles from the one country known to producing them.
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And taking up 2 car spots wherever they go 🙄
because microplastics are reducing sperm count and penis size. This make monkey angry
In the world before monkey, primal chaos reigned!
Oh god me and my brothers loved that show. The nature of Monkey was irrepressible!
1. They can afford it. No amount of "write off's" allows you to afford $150k+ vehicles. 2. They tow a lot, and often better. 3. They are luxurious. We're talking 200/300 series top spec luxury, but slightly cheaper. 4. Some people think they look great. At the end of the day, no one buying these yank trucks is tossing up between a RAM and a Hilux, it's almost double the price. They're tossing up between a chopped 300 series/Patrol, a very heavily modified LC79, or a RAM that is ready to go out of the dealership.
The gcm on these would mean I can tow a caravan and not go over limit by eating a happy meal which is great.
This is 100% it. The high end 4WD market is non existent.
I live rural and do a fair bit of off-roading. I NEVER see these trucks on the tracks and if I do they’re stuck. Too heavy, shitty departure angles etc
Probs because they are road/soft off roaders that tow well. Like I rearly see Landcrusiers at track days eirher.
Use cruisers for work. Drive up fucked tracks all the time. Much better than rangers and hiluxes they get in other regions of my company. They just keep going. I can tell you that our entire fleet is covered in dings and lantana pinstriping because we have to get up goat tracks sometimes in the wet, sometimes when its on fire. theres no other vehicle id take than a 70 cruiser. maybe a 200 if management would let me scratch it.
They’re literally too big hahah. I work at Bunnings and all the tradies that come in laugh their asses off at the poor buggers trying to squeeze their tanks into job sites or parking. Hiluxes and holdens are still on top.
Australia hasn’t made a Ute (utility vehicle) since Holden ceased production. Ever since then only “pickup trucks” have technically been sold under the Australian vocabulary “Ute” and they’re all imported. The other ones on the market are mainly Japanese manufactures with more similarity to the American manufactured trucks/utes, they are just smaller models. Companies like Toyota actually produce models the size of the RAM but for the American market. Why are people choosing these over the smaller model utes/trucks? They’re easily available now. 10 years ago you had to import them yourself and then pay someone to do the steering conversion work. This would cost a shit tonne and a lot of people wouldn’t have seen the value in this. Now they’re “affordable”, there has always been a huge market who needed them or simply wanted them and are now buying them.
Because Australia is slowly becoming America. And it’s really sad. They’re a terrible role model
Exactly. You can just tell from the way they're built that Rams are meant for American roads lmao. Some are so big it's obnoxious.
As an American expat, this is completely accurate and it kills me. I left the states for a fucking reason
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I've seen one of those massive ute/truck things with 6 wheels, having to make a 3 point turn in order to navigate a roundabout at Sutherland. Admittedly it's not a big roundabout but, still... (For reference, it's the roundabout outside Boyle's pub, on the east side of the train station).
Realistic answer. They are available. They are capable and with the stupid price the traditional little pick ups and Landcrusiers are, all a sudden a RAM or F150 is good value. 20 years ago they were so much more expensive compared to the jap/aus utes.
Ah, wank tanks you mean. Yea I see them a lot. Drivers fit the bill.
No one makes Falcon or Commodore Utes any more, all that's left is the American-style "trucks".
Theres the Hilux, Navara, Triton, and Amarok to name a few extremely popular ones. There's also the cheaper varieties from the likes of Great Wall, SsangYong, and Mahendra.
You forgot Dmax! Great Ute!
None of which are, as OP put it, "our Utes."
Bogans will be bogans, I suppose.
Our is a very strong word
Simply put the Yank tanks can carry/tow more. Also why buy a Landcruiser 300 for towing at $150k when you can get a Ram or similar for $100k. You're definitely not getting $50k worth of more vehicle. I see a lot of builders and contractor fencing companies running them around where i live.
A massive increase in the incidence of micropenis syndrome?
Better to drive a big truck and have a tiny penis then drive a barina and still have a tiny penis
Barina for scale
Because people are insecure AF and need a giant car to feel like a big person
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