Carbon Fibre Hits Banal

Found this interesting

Turns out, if I paid any attention, I’d have seen it coming
http://www.autonews.com/article/20171207/OEM01/171209822/gm-carbon-fiber-pickup-bed
That makes for a bit of a head scratcher on the whole “strong steel” commercial strain to sell GM owners on their superiority over Ford (who started using aluminum in 2015, I think).

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This Internet thing is amazing!
It turns out, GM’s done the composite bed thing before:

This author suggests the reason this fully composite bed failed was that GM did no research or marketing, placing this $850 option into the “no promotion” arena as well as placing it into the backburner market of “image truck” owners, rather than the people who would have really benefited, fleet buyers of work trucks, by not marketing it AND making it short-bed only (not generally specced for work-truck purchasers).
Good to see GM’s learned something in the last decade, decade and a half…
image
(If you’re not hip on the GM lingo, “Denali” = top of the line, i.e. not “work trucks”, I think.)

They’ll surely get a wild hair and go down a gravel road at least once and at least do a lamp test on that switch.

Golf clubs for sure, maybe even a load of mulch (in the ½ft³ bags natch) to justify the purchase.

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The aluminum beds are limited to F150s, themselves now firmly cemented in the lifestyle truck segment, no?

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Yeah,

As soon as ford came out with the aluminum beds they got wrecked with these kinds of comparisons. The catch is that the vast majority of half ton pick up owners commute in their truck 95% of the time. So the effects of gas mileage due to weight savings are more important in many cases. Also, I would never let someone dump a load of bricks like that in my truck. Those bricks are loaded by hand or palette. I didn’t purchase a dump truck, which would be the vehicle you would expect to be loaded in that manner with that kind of material. Use the wrong tool for the job and something is bound to break.

Either way, new truck are just to expensive for my wallet. I’m currently looking for a 2016 Dodge Ram 3.0L EcoDiesel as getting 13 mpg towing is amazing. Also, you enjoy torque at all speed ranges, while horse power is most enjoyable at speeds that get you tickets. I learned this fact the hard way in my teen years.

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My 7.3 get 13-14 all day long, doesn’t matter if I’m towing 8klbs. Best thing is it’s paid for and reliable.

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And like many TV commercial comparisons, certain creative liberties were taken in the name of commercial hucksterism.

Naw man, drop it like it’s hot :

Should I find myself in the market for one in a few years, I too expect to be shopping the used market. Let someone else eat that “drove it off the dealer lot” depreciation - new car smell is overrated anyway.

My previous F150 got 10 city / 12 highway with that loved/hated 5.0L V8. But since it was a F150 it surely couldn’t tow or haul all that much - the borderline unreasonable levels of lift previous owner(s) installed surely didn’t help.

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And what a hit on their sales numbers from ford-authority.com :
image
from carsalesbase.com
image
Bloomberg’s take
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-19/ford-s-f-150-lots-of-aluminum-plenty-of-awesome
(sorry if it paywalls you; worked fine for me, and I can’t remember if they’re one of “them”)

To be fair, I don’t think it ate into the competition, but one wonders:
from gmauthority.com:
image

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@jast, Thanks for the numbers, I knew that the Aluminum Trucks have been a big success for Ford. It really shows that Ford checked the boxes that mattered, rather than going off the Binford Tools Grunt Rating System.

@TBJK, I totally get what your saying. I’ve followed that motto for many years. I’m still driving my 2003 Chevrolet Express Van with 5.3l Vortec Super Charged V8. It is in the 17 ish MPG while not towing. No clue what the MPG while towing is, but probably not terrible as I don’t really notice a huge drop in mileage.

The only reason I’m planning on changing, is my van is at nearly 250K miles now and I need 4 wheel drive when towing shoot trailers on damp and lightly muddy fields for fireworks displays. If I didn’t need the 4 wheel drive, I would continue with the van even though it is high mileage, as it has been a really good vehicle for many years and I really like having it. But, needs are changing and I find myself possibly needing 4 wheel drive about 20 days out of the year.

@ESmith, I had a buddy Lee in high school screw up even worse than your image. His dumb a** dad sent him to a rock yard to pick up a bolder for the house, rather than paying $150 for a crane truck to deliver it. His dad was family friends with the owner of the yard and when Lee showed up the owner gave him the keys to a fork lift and said just grab which ever bolder you want. Lee grabber a sand stone bolder about 1/3 larger than the one in your image and placed it in the bed of his Ford Ranger and bottomed out the truck like you would expect. So he went into the yard office to ask what he needed to do as the truck wasn’t drive-able. While he was in the office a foot size piece of the bolder broke off at the base, allowing the bolder to roll. This ripped off his tailgate and bumper. His insurance totaled the truck from the damage. My buddy Lee was dumb, but that is expected when dealing with High Schoolers. But his dad was a complete idiot for refusing to pay $150 for delivery on a crane truck. Lee knew they had no way to ever get a stone that large off the truck, but he didn’t dare challenge his dad’s word.

All and all in the end Lee ended up with a nice light blue Nova, which was a ton of fun and his dad got the bolder delivered. Which saved their house as a drunk driver missed the turn in from of their house at about 60 miles per hour one night and crashed hard into the bolder about 10 yards from their front door. Their house was on the dead end side of a T intersection in Sunny Vale. This wasn’t the first drunk to miss the turn and end up in their yard, but he was going well fast enough to easily crash through their house.

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Jeep’s got a 4.7L v8, and I only get 12 mpgs :frowning: what is this!

Strategically place boulders, I like it!

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remove it along with the tabby cats and pesky self cleaning filter and that cooler thingy and you should be good

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My work just un-DEF’d a ram 5500 - it gets 13-14 mpg instead of 10-11 mpg with 800 gallons of water in a large bed with tanks on the back. Also it got stupid fast.

Patiently waiting on the truck I drive to hit 100k miles so they can do the same to it and add on another fuel tank or something (it’s got a 22 gallon tank for a truck that normally gets 10-12 mpg. Riddle me that one Batman)

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This is my impression, too, from reading the EPA docs. However, it is, I have the impression, very common place in the commercial segment, making me think “they” know something I don’t…

curious why 100k comes into play…

I was talking about our digital extend flooring system in the trucks… Definitely

100k is when the factory warrantee goes away completely

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Watching the video, don’t all new trucks come with bed liners ?

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They will if you buy them that way…
:smiley:

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