As American pick-ups and SUVs keep getting bigger and bigger, they are now rivaling the size of the tanks American car manufacturers once built to win World War II.
Pickup trucks are the most popular vehicles in the United States, followed shortly after by SUVs. They seem to get bigger every year. In many cases they now exceed the length of the American M4 Sherman tank from World War II, which was the weapon of the Allied forces. US auto giants GM, Ford and Chrysler helped produce 50,000 of these steel-tracked vehicles before returning to civilian vehicles for the US and European markets.
42,000 kilo
But since then, the cars have continued to grow in size. Even to the extent that a car like the 20-foot Ford F150 pickup – the most popular car in the US with 787,422 units sold – according to the British newspaper Daily Mail now longer than a World War II Sherman tank. In most cases, America’s most popular pickups and SUVs are longer than the tanks, but they are often lower and narrower. The weights are also quite different: where a modern Ford F150 weighs about 2500 kilos, a Sherman tank with its cannon and heavy armor sometimes touched 42,000 kilos.
Gray license plate
Ever-expanding SUVs and pickups sell significantly better than sedans in the US. It is not surprising that the number of fatal accidents involving SUVs there has also increased sharply in recent years. In Europe too, there is growing opposition to these SUVs that are too large and heavy in the eyes of many people. In the Netherlands, the American pick-up is especially popular, often as a commercial vehicle. This is partly because many of these vehicles come under the so-called ‘grey license plate’ scheme, which means that hardly any road tax has to be paid.
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source https://pledgetimes.com/suvs-and-pickups-are-bigger-than-wwii-tanks-today-car/
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