Twenty athletes took part in a four-day, 1,000-mile adventure in the Nevada desert north of Las Vegas. Their goal: to determine who would represent the U.S. at the 2009 Land Rover G4 Challenge in Asia. After off-roading (which included getting stuck in the Nellis Dunes and winching out), kayaking, mountain biking, and other tasks, Lisa Lieb of Durango, Colorado, and Tom Lyons of Reno, Nevada, finished ahead of the other teams. Peter Hanson of Minneapolis and Sarah McMahan of Incline Village, Nevada, the team in second place, will travel to the U.K. with Lieb and Lyons for the "international selection" event. There, one man and one woman from the U.S. contingent will be chosen to compete against teams from 17 other countries in the three-week-long G4 Challenge.
Just as sport/utility vehicles have morphed into crossovers in the past few years, pickup trucks are likely to evolve into "lifestyle" trucks, according to trend watchers interviewed by Automotive News. The GMC Denali XT and Toyota A-BAT concept trucks shown here are just a couple of examples of what could be a move towards carlike, unibody-based trucks that emphasize fuel economy and ride comfort over towing, cargo capacity, and other traditional pickup characteristics.
No doubt this shift is partially motivated by the more stringent fuel economy standards coming later in the decade. But analysts also believe there's a segment of the truck-buying market-as much as 25 percent-that doesn't need all the capabilities that a traditional body-on-frame pickup offers. Their occasional, light-duty hauling needs (home-center purchases, motorcycles, small boats, or watercraft) could just as easily be met by a front-wheel-drive, unibody truck like Honda's Ridgeline, which would provide carlike driving characteristics the other 99 percent of the time.
According to AN, Ford, GM, Chrysler, and Toyota have unibody, FWD trucks in the works or at least on the drawing boards.
What will this mean for "our" kinds of pickups? There will always be a market for true work trucks, so we doubt that fullsize, body-on-frame pickups will disappear anytime soon. But don't be surprised to see more of a gulf between the commercial and personal pickup segments, with likely casualties being the compact and midsize trucks currently available.
As precious-metal values climb, thieves are stealing all sorts of things-even sculpture-and selling them for scrap. The latest target: catalytic converters. The pollution-control devices contain a number of precious metals, including platinum, rhodium, and palladium, that can make them worth up to $100 at certain scrap yards. In a story in the Los Angeles Daily News, a police official said Toyota pickups and 4Runners are favorite targets for the cat thieves, since they stand higher off the ground than other vehicles, and because their converters can easily be removed.
Cooper Tire has partnered with the World Extreme Rock Crawling Championship Series (We.Rock) in the creation of a new event called the We.Rock All-Stock Nationals. Slated for Sept. 26-28 at the R-Rock competition facility in Hannibal, Missouri, the All-Stock Nationals will be the culmination of 19 qualifying events held throughout the year. Dustin Webster, executive director of We.Rock, said the All-Stock Nats will be "a once-in-a-lifetime chance for amateur competitors to compete against the seasoned pros they look up to and admire. For the first time, 'average Joes' will potentially have the chance to topple their favorite pros." For more info, log on to www.we-rock.cc.
Ford is taking a page from Nissan's playbook by offering a factory-applied, spray-in bedliner for '09 Super Duty pickups. Ford says its "Tough Bed" option is a "military-grade coating" that has been through the government's "toughest blast mitigation testing to determine whether the material can withstand the force of a bomb blast. It has performed equal to or better than other protective coating systems at one-third the thickness." Developed with PPG, the bedliner comes with a full factory warranty and will be available this summer.