Tomorrow (or Thursday night US time), something really big is happening at Ford: the Blue Oval will unveil its all-new F-150 pickup truck.
To reinforce what a big deal trucks are to the American public, prior to the launch Ford commissioned a survey by independent company Penn Schoen Berland (PSB) of 2000 owners and came up with some surprising/alarming results.
More than 70 per cent of pickup owners would rather give up television streaming, alcohol or coffee than stop driving their vehicles.
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Nearly half would give up using a phone or eating meat. And nearly 40 per cent would stop having sex if it meant they could keep their truck. Right then.
According to the survey, owners say a pickup truck makes them feel “self-reliant” and “capable”.
The attachments can also get a bit weird; 25 per cent have given their vehicles names, including Betty, Big Bertha and Cognitio (get it?). That seems okay.
But fifteen per cent of US truck owners also have a tattoo of their vehicle – or something related to pickup trucks – on their bodies.
Despite all that, if you’re looking in from the outside, US truck owners still seem like a fairly progressive bunch.
They're pretty evenly split between male and female (54/46 per cent), no one age group represents more than 27 per cent (that’s the 18-34 demographic, by the way) and 40 per cent of owners say they are excited about the prospect of Ford’s first pure-electric F-150; that increases to 62 per cent in California.
