Is a crew cab pickup your dream off-road vehicle?

this does really well off-road 97 Nissan 4 cylinder 5-speed with tire chains it's not a crew cab but it is an extended cab and it's awful on the road

"Is a crew cab pickup your dream off-road vehicle?" No, not even close.

Does that matter even a little bit? Nobody at GM gives a tinker's damn what my dream anything is. They are busy selling these things hand over fist to the kind of people who dream of owning an enormous $72,000 truck with TRAIL BOSS on the side and a two-story pimp-turned-Stormtrooper grille, and, credit rating permitting, will happily buy one.

Meh.

Tony Sestito said:

I'm going to come at this with the "The price of full size pickups is too damn high!" angle. Trucks have their purpose in the world, and I'm not going to judge what people buy with their money, but it's out of hand.

Last I checked, the Trail Boss package was basically a base model 4x4 with a few off-roady doo-dads bolted onto it, like slightly more knobby tires and a skid plate. And somehow that's $72,000+? Insane. Even the base model ones are stupid now. For example...

Back in 2020, my FIL bought a brand new Silverado W/T base model 2wd with the 8ft bed in fleet white. It is so base, it has crank windows, which were apparently still a thing in 2020 (and still are). He was a contractor, and he used trucks as tools on the job site, so getting something fancy was not worth it since it was going to get insta-trashed. He paid about $25k OTD with taxes for his. The same truck now, in the same model generation, is $40k+ OTD. Only difference is you get the 2.7L turbo 4 instead of the LS-based V6. It has almost DOUBLED in price in 5 years with virtually no improvement of the product. I know inflation has been a thing, but that price has outpaced inflation by quite a bit. 

EDIT: So I think I answered my own question about the Trail Boss package. There are apparently two flavors: the Custom Trail Boss and the LT Trail Boss. The one GRM tested is the latter, which is basically the skid plates/knobbies on the more luxe LT trim. That explains the bigger V8, all the cameras, etc. The Custom Trail Boss can be had in the low $50k range, which is still an absurd amount for a truck, but relative to what they cost these days, I guess.

My theory for the price jump is that trucks have mostly replaced luxury vehicles for older, wealthier people that aren't "car enthusiasts".  My grandfather retired in the 80's and bought the biggest Cadillac they made to celebrate his retirement, but these days its uncool to be seen in a Cadillac or even a Mercedes in most places that aren't NY/DC/Miami/LA. Nobody bats an eye at an F150 though, and you can get a lot of the same luxury features in a full size truck--heated/cooled leather, adaptive/auto cruise, etc etc.  

And for what its worth, you do for the most part get your money's worth on an expensive truck. The newer F150s drive fantastically, better than they really have any excuse to, and they're awesome road trip vehicles.  If they, um, didn't cost so much, I'd probably own one.  I probably would never take it off road, but it would probably do a great job towing a side by side to the trails if I was really interested in incinerating money.  

In reply to rothwem :

It's definitely part culture shift, that's for sure. It's "cool" to have a big truck now. I live in a semi-rural area, and just about every household down here has a giant brodozer. Not sure how useful a truck can be when you can't even reach the tailgate without a ladder, but that's the way it is and I'm not here to argue that. I do know that I had to install steps on my stock ride height 1979 Power Wagon so my wife could actually get into the thing. She would need an escalator to get into a new F250 4x4. 

I know that tax write-off allotment increases for small businesses also played into the price jump years ago, and seeing the uptick in sales on the more expensive trims, manufacturers started piling expensive luxury options like leather and tech into trucks to sweeten the pot for those who were going to spend to the cap. And since trucks are "cool" now, former luxury car buyers are just getting giant trucks with those options instead. I guess that makes sense; if you are going to drive around in a luxobarge, it might as well come with a little utility. 

In reply to Tony Sestito :

The tax write-off is significant if the GVWR is over 6000 pounds. You can walk into a Ford dealer, drop $70k on your new truck, finance it but still write the entire $70k off. You spend zero dollars until the first payment but take the tax advantage immediately. 

There aren't many vehicles that fall into that category that aren't huge trucks. 

Could be why I drive a Touareg with a GVWR 6100 pounds. 

And a H3T with a GVWR of 6001 pounds. 

Trucks were always cooler than cars, at least from the 80's on to the average person.  They just weren't that practical for transporting people. In the 80's and 90's, a mini truck was cooler than a compact car, and a full size truck was cooler than a midsize or large car for the same money. When they started adding cabs with real rear seats, they became accessible to a lot more people. Of course they kept adding luxury and cost, which got us where we are now.