original post: https://feddit.org/post/10733288
Source: stux@mstdn.social
"This is why we don't need #US #cars in #Europe"
Modern day trolley problem. Do you ram the Dodge Ram?
this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2025
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Dodge the ram or ram the Dodge.
Imagine thinking tariffs are why these warships don't sell in Europe.
Their road tax should be based on engine/volume/passenger capacity.
If you need it for work get a commercial.
A transit or sprinter makes much more sense for commercial use in the vast majority of professions as the cargo space to vehicle ratio is much higher and you can lock the whole thing up.
The only profession so far I've seen where they make some kind of sense is for landscapers, and even that's debatable considering you can get sprinters with an open bed that is much larger then what's on these pickups.
Not to forget that many vans have an okay towing capacity, so you can just use a trailer.
Your not towing anything with the smaller transits. And they suck in winter.
Man Ive pulled literal tons of cable for 100s of KMs with those, the NV400, the traffic and vivaro. Winter times down to the back of the beyonds. Mind you our winters are wet not the coldest.
Then get one of the bigger Sprinters. They're also available as 4x4.
I'm genuinely not aware of a single country that takes vehicle volume into road tax calculations, but that sounds like a damn great idea
Im a bit of a genius. But seriously I think it is the common sense move.
The original post was on reddit, a few years ago.
That's not even a big one by US standards.
Serious question: are you joking? We have a Doge Ram in my area and it's massive and it sends a lot of small pp vibes and now you are telling me, it isn't even that big.
At least I have the true freedom: no speed limit.
This looks like Ram 1500 to me, there's also the 2500 and 3500. I don't know how much bigger they are in terms of size or percentage but they do differentiate mainly with things like payload capacity, so it follows they fill the caps between this and a full size transport truck.
But i'm pretty sure you can't have those on a normal drivers license in the NL as their weight + payload capacity exceeds 3500 kilo's.
Edit: If you really want to see an Avengers level joke, search for "Ford F-650 pickup" with your search engine of choice.
Also, for added clarity the 2500 and 3500 models are essentially identical size-wise. Just have more springs.
I'd say they're about 1-2 feet longer (not counting the 3 bed length options), and a fair amount wider than the 1500.
The 1500 has a towing capacity of approximately 12k lbs. Goes up for each of the upper models.
Yup, EU is the weight limit 3.5t for a B driving license (regular car) but a C1 (up to 7.5t) or C (semi truck) is possible to make. A coworker has a truck license. He bought an old fire truck and made a camper out of it for his 2 kids and his wife.
But this is just comically large. I do understand it for the US in more rural areas but Europe? They don't fit in parking spots and are just wasteful. 12.8L/100km?! And then they go shopping at Lidl. And people complain about SUVs but compared to US trucks, an SUV is a small car. I really hope that US trucks don't get more common here.
There is something poetic about this image and how the USA "fits" in with the rest of the world.
And the orange man doesn't understand why Europeans don't want to buy American cars. :\
hey. we zijn allemaal Van Oranje!
Why would you even do that? Give that asshole a fat ticket for doing something like that
Trust me, if I were in charge of tramway clearance management, I would sound an annoying alarm at the vehicle, before having it be towed. Trying to tell the owner that they have until the tow truck arrives to remove the truck.
Canadian here - they’re useless here too. Saw a guy the other day who couldn’t even put some 2x4s in his box because it was to short due to having full size back seats. He had them poking through the window into the cab 😂
With the rear seats dropped my MK5 GTI has almost as much cargo space as some of those bloated cries for help.
the actual bed size is smaller than the old 90s ford rangers', iirc.
I bet it was a half-ton sporty short-box.
I saw a truck today, and I thought, if it were 1995 and you showed my mechanic old timer uncle that truck, he'd call you a yuppie
Big, beefy, and engineered to be loud this truck was, I don't think you could fit a 2x4 in the bed
Great car for the first few weeks of a zombie apocalypse.
Not great for any other situation.
How would you navigate that through streets full of abandoned vehicles and debris? A bicycle is quiet, faster than a human or zombie, easy to service, easy to navigate and even carry where it can't go, and don't require fuel. If you want something faster and fuel driven, a motorcycle would be better than any car.
Oh I wouldn't. The Dodge Ram would most likely serve as an excellent vehicle for transporting stuff. I'd do it as in project zomboid - drive the car to the border of the city, loot, bring loot back to the car, rinse and repeat until the car is full, then it goes back to base.
On top of that, the dodge ram has significantly more horsepower and can waltz through small and medium-sized zombie hordes without slowing down too much.
I see you've thought about this.
I've just seen one too many winters with icy roads and cars being stuck and (temporarily) abandoned making roads between towns unusable for a while.
I imagine that but worse with everyone fleeing the city and getting turned, being unprepared for a journey, running out of gas all over the place - not just cities. Maybe they can go off-road and get around a perpendicularly abandoned vehicle or two but eventually there will be an obstacle no truck can bridge.
So for me, I think two wheels for mobility. But that would also depend on what kind of zombie and what kind of apocalypse. Are they fast or slow; do they hunt by ear, sight, smell; is it almost instantaneous or after a year-long pandemic, do they travel in pack or avoid each other, how do they perish, etc.
*days or even hours, until you run out of gas.
Well, if I had such a car, I'd probably make it my mission to take over a petrol station or something similar so I have a steady supply for now.
Too bad the tram havent hit his car
This was taken BEFORE tram went to ramming speed.
I don't even drive a big vehicle, but I know that I would be mortified if I drove somewhere only to realize that my vehicle is like 2x the size of every other vehicle around me, and I cannot fit into any parking spot.
How do these people live with themselves? I would get out of the truck, take a look at how far I'm blocking the road, and then just drive away and never come back.
Some people love any kind of attention they can get. You can’t be ignored with such a car. People will talk to you about it. You can’t be ignored feel stronger and bigger inside it than anyone else on the road.
smul pp?
They live without shame, thinking the rest of the world should accomidate for their monstrosities.
Here's an answer to your question in joke form.
How does a ~~deva~~ diva change a lightbulb?
She holds the bulb and waits for the world to revolve around her.
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We don't need US cars like that one in the US!
American cars are the way they are because if you make them big enough, you can classify them as a truck. Trucks, because of old regulations aimed at farmers, have lower safety standards. The automakers thus don't have to spend as much on development and can make bank off of idiots that feel safer in their death traps just because they can see over the sedans.
Trucks, because of old regulations aimed at farmers, have lower safety standards.
More importantly, they have lower standards for emissions and efficiency.
So the manufacturers would have to spend more on research and development, then build smaller cars which sell for less and fewer people buy – or they can go the other way, build bigger cars that are cheaper to make for more money to more people.
The real issue here is badly written regulations due to lobbying.
In Germany for example, a vehicle classified as "light truck" can't have a back seat.
Which is fine for farmers and craftsmen, but not for the majority of private citizens.
And for commercial trucks above 3.5 tons, you need a different driver's license.
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I'm in the US and have a 1970 Fiat 500. That little car can handle quite a few of my needs. I sometimes use it for work, when I only have estimates. Normally I drive a full size Ford E150 van.
I appreciate the Fiat because it's so different from everything on the roads here, just fun to drive, (I'm 54, so at an age where things like lumbar support and other creature comforts are nice) and it's just uncomfortable enough to make me really appreciate our more modern and larger vehicles (the For van, a Mercury Cougar convertible, a Dodge 2500 4x4, and a Volvo XC70).
The only real bad side is that between it's age and the fact that they were never freaky imported into the US, parts aren't readily available. The last time I used it for work, it broke down.
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