Pickup Truck Review

Comparing reviews of pickup trucks

Two of America's best-selling vehicles -- the Ford F-150 (*Est. $21,565 to $44,355) and Dodge Ram 1500 (*Est. $21,270 to $43,240) -- get revamped for 2009, enticing major auto publications to set up head-to-head pickup truck showdowns. The best of these throw competitors from Chevy, GMC, Toyota and Nissan into the mix; that's how PickupTrucks.com and Truck Trend jointly conduct the definitive pickup-truck shootout. These sources test the trucks every which way -- laden and empty, towing trailers, on- and off-road -- but interestingly, they pick different winners.

Car and Driver includes fewer pickups in its test. Popular Mechanics, Edmunds Inside Line and ConsumerReports.org gather most of the major players in the pickup market and run almost every test possible, but off-road testing is minor or nonexistent. However, Consumer Reports does test more small and midsize pickups than other sources do.

Consumer Reports is also one of the few sources that take safety into account. "Small pickups have the highest driver death rates of all vehicles," Consumer Reports points out. Pickups (and pickup-based SUVs) are more likely to roll over than cars or vans, and rollovers are the deadliest kind of crash. The four-wheel-drive versions of the Ford Ranger (*Est. $15,835 to $25,235) and its twin, the Mazda B Series (*Est. $16,060 to $22,150), have a 26 percent chance of rolling over in a single-vehicle crash, government tests show -- the worst rating of any pickup truck.

Meanwhile, in side-impact crashes -- the second most common type of fatal crash -- the Chevrolet Colorado (*Est. $16,705 to $26,940) and its clone, the GMC Canyon (*Est. $16,705 to $27,075), both earn ratings of "poor" without optional side airbags in independent crash tests. But the problem isn't confined to small pickups. The full-size Nissan Titan (*Est. $26,150 to $39,350) also rates poorly without optional side airbags, and the twin Chevrolet Silverado (*Est. $19,375 to $41,355) and GMC Sierra (*Est. $19,375 to $44,020) pickup trucks perform poorly even with side airbags. In fact, only two pickups -- the Honda Ridgeline (*Est. $28,000 to $36,330) and the rear-wheel-drive version of the Toyota Tacoma (*Est. $15,170 to $27,075) -- perform well in both crash and rollover tests. Both are also among the best-performing trucks, and both make our Best Reviewed list.

Pickup trucks also have by far the biggest rear blind spot of any vehicle, Consumer Reports says. That raises the risk of backing over a child, a major cause of non-traffic child deaths. For example, a 5-foot, 1-inch driver in a 2007 Chevrolet Avalanche couldn't see a toddler-sized orange traffic cone up to 50 feet behind the truck in Consumer Reports' test. Backup cameras can help; see our What To Look For section for more.

Most of the pickups that earn poor safety ratings are bad choices for other reasons, too, reviews say. For example, the four-wheel-drive Ford Ranger/Mazda B4000 guzzles more gas than any other small pickup truck, according to FuelEconomy.gov. The four-wheel-drive Nissan Titan takes that dubious honor among full-size pickups, and it also takes last place in a PickupTrucks.com performance test (towing, hauling, etc). In addition, the Nissan Titan and Chevy Colorado rank dead last in both initial quality and dependability in J.D. Power and Associates' latest survey. Very few sources recommend these trucks.

But no trucks fare worse in reviews than the offerings from Hummer.

"With a slap to their noggins in the form of high gas prices, those poseurs who previously bought Hummers as 6,600-pound, 10-mpg fashion accessories are thankfully a nearly extinct breed," Edmunds.com says in its review of the Hummer H2 SUT (*Est. $61,585), which is Hummer's jumbo-sized SUV with a bed in the back. Edmunds.com admits the H2 SUT can indeed go anywhere off-road, but its gun-slit windows and "cumbersome" proportions make it a terrible choice for driving around town. Plus, you'll have to endure the "scornful looks of passersby" and the "fuel economy of a naval frigate."

The new-for-2009 Hummer H3T (*Est. $30,750) takes only slightly less flak. "The worst product rollout of the 2009 model year," Sajeev Mehta at TheTruthAboutCars.com calls it. Built on architecture initially derived from the compact Chevy Colorado/GMC Canyon platform, the smaller H3T shows its "third-rate engineering" with poor handling, meager payload and towing capacities, and an unhelpfully small, narrow cargo bed, Mehta says. Other reviews cut the H3T a little slack, noting that it is a capable off-road vehicle. But even generous critics say this fuel-thirsty pickup -- possibly Hummer's last gasp, at least as a division of General Motors -- is absolutely the wrong truck at the wrong time. ''Too little, too late' ...; has never seemed so appropriate," writes Andrew Ganz at LeftLaneNews.com.

The Hummer H2's year-to-date sales were down 78 percent from the previous year, and General Motors moved only 217 Hummer H3Ts in April 2009. As of this update, GM was still seeking a buyer for Hummer.