Pickup Cars

Trucks with an open cargo bed behind the cab, from full-size body-on-frame models to smaller unibody ones.

14 models

The defining feature is a gap. Cab and cargo bed are separate structures with a break between them, mounted on a frame that carries both, and everything about how a pickup behaves follows from that layout. The bed takes loads that would deform a car body, the frame tolerates twisting that would crack a unibody, and the price is weight, a high floor and a turning circle set by a wheelbase long enough to hold both boxes.

North America drives the category, where full-size trucks sit at the top of the sales tables year after year and the Chevrolet Silverado, Ford F-250 Super Duty, Toyota Tundra and Nissan Frontier cover the range from heavy work to private use. Electrification is arriving from two directions at once. The Scout Terra is a 5,822 mm full-size truck; the Slate Truck, at 4,435 mm, is a deliberately stripped small one. Elsewhere the bed usually serves a business rather than a household, which is why the mid-size double cab, not the full-size crew cab, is the shape most of the world buys.

Models

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Frequently asked questions
Are all pickups body-on-frame?
No. The full-size and mid-size trucks that define the category are, because a separate ladder frame handles towing, payload and chassis flex better than a welded shell. A smaller group, including the Honda Ridgeline, the Ford Maverick and the Hyundai Santa Cruz, uses a unibody derived from a crossover. Those give up towing capacity and gain ride quality and fuel economy.
What do cab configurations on a pickup mean?
How much of the wheelbase goes to people rather than cargo. A regular cab is a single row of seats, an extended cab adds a small second row behind it, and a crew cab is a full four-door body with a usable rear bench. Longer cabs are normally paired with shorter beds, so the total length stays within what a manufacturer will build.
What is the difference between a pickup and a truck?
In North America the two words are used interchangeably in conversation, and truck usually means a pickup unless the context says otherwise. Elsewhere truck means a commercial vehicle in the lorry sense, and pickup is the specific term for a light vehicle with an open bed. The distinction matters mostly when reading market figures written for a different audience.
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