Pick up
A pick-up (from English pick up , take up ' or take') is a passenger car or SUV with a flat, open trailer (trailer). The pick-up is therefore a special form of the flatbed truck . The importance of this type of vehicle is extremely different in different parts of the world.
Classic pick-ups consist of a ladder frame with a cabin or driver's cab and loading area (“platform”, cargo bed or cargo box ) with a rigid rear axle and leaf suspension screwed onto it separately .
North America
In North America this type is simply called a truck or, more rarely, a pickup truck . The vehicles are mostly based on an off-road vehicle or an SUV . They are not only regarded as commercial vehicles, but are predominantly used as normal cars, sometimes as leisure cars and even as status symbols . This can be seen in the equipment lines. Usually only the Spartan entry-level versions are actually used for work. Equipment lines with all imaginable luxury extras rank above this.
When it comes to engines, large- capacity V6 and V8 gasoline engines dominate the list of offers in the USA , even though diesel engines with six and eight cylinders have been available from Dodge, GMC, Chevrolet and Ford for years. In North America, pick-up trucks are offered with pure rear-wheel drive and optionally with switchable or permanent all-wheel drive .
The classic pick-ups in the USA are divided into small size , midsize ( e.g. Nissan Frontier ), upper midsize (only Dodge Dakota / Mitsubishi Raider ) and full size ( Dodge Ram , Ford F-Series , Chevrolet Silverado etc.)
Australia
In Australia (and New Zealand) there are North American style pick-ups as well as the Ute genus (derived from the English utility ), which is based on a larger car.
Europe
For a long time, pick-ups based on car models were widespread in Europe. With the VW Caddy, Volkswagen supplied a pick-up version of the VW Golf that was mainly used in the commercial sector and was based on a design developed in America. For the European market the car was produced by Tvornica Automobila Sarajevo in Sarajevo . The successor was based on the Škoda Felicia .
In the GDR, a variant of the Wartburg 353 car was delivered as a pick-up; in export it was particularly popular in Hungary and can still be found regularly in use there. A delivery van version was also built of the successor model, the Wartburg 1.3 with a four-stroke engine manufactured under a VW license .
Pick-ups were particularly common in rural France until the 1970s; To serve this market, Peugeot supplied pick-up versions based on the respective mid-range models 403 , 404 and 504 . With the discontinuation of the Peugeot 504, pick-up production by French manufacturers ended.
Apart from that, there have been some pick-ups based on small cars from European manufacturers in the past . Currently, only the Dacia Logan and Fiat Strada models, which were thought of as cheap cars, remain.
More recently, the European pick-up market has been dominated by Japanese manufacturers who also equip the vehicles with diesel engines. Examples are Toyota Hilux , Mitsubishi L200 , Mazda BT-50 , Nissan Navara or Isuzu D-Max . Ford sells the Ranger based on the Mazda BT-50 . With the X-Class, Mercedes-Benz has a model on offer that, like the Renault Alaskan, is based on the Nissan Navara. With the VW Amarok , Volkswagen has been offering a vehicle of this type developed in-house since 2010 . In addition, pick-ups are imported from the USA in comparatively small numbers and without official sales, which are significantly larger and almost always equipped with large-volume Otto engines.
Southern Africa
In southern Africa, pick-ups are common and are as bakkie known.
Developing countries
In developing countries (and also some richer countries in Asia) pick-ups are widely used as universal commercial vehicles. These vehicles come almost exclusively from Japanese or local manufacturers. In Spanish-speaking countries (especially Latin America) these vehicles are called camionetas , which is the diminutive of the word for 'truck'; in South Africa as well as in Namibia as bakkies .
In crisis areas, pick-ups are often used by different parties to the conflict as so-called technicals , which are a cheap alternative to regular military vehicles.
