Ask Jack: What the truck?

mary and mark think these are rookie numbers

Other than selling completely unregulated “Surrons” with pot-metal frames and fruit-fly life expectancy to welfare scammers in our country’s urbanized ZIP codes, the full-sized pickup business should be the easiest game in the wheeled-vehicle business. The customers don’t expect the product to ride well, stop well, handle well, or even display a lot of durability in the interior or trim. The chassis engineering is beyond basic. The bodies can weigh anything. Your 3/4 ton and above product gets to escape all sorts of regulation. The client base is intensely brand loyal and, on the aggregate, not exactly over-educated. Oh, and there’s also the fact of markup; I don’t think any mass-market auto product since the original Grand Cherokee has had the kind of profit gap in it that full-size pickups have. It should be impossible to screw this up.

And yet… General Motors has managed to do it. Every engine they fit to a pickup chassis now has a defined and in some cases inescapable set of problems. I don’t even know how to adequately describe the sort of deranged cupidity that causes the company to seek additional cost savings on, say, a $78,500 High Country Silverado. Tony Soprano didn’t run sporting-goods stores with this level of disregard for society.

Which should leave the field wide-open for Ford… except their premier engine, the 3.5TT, has an array of non-fatal (but expensive issues). The 5.0 isn’t widely available in the upscale product. The 2.7TT is durable but not exactly overpowered. And so on.

Which should leave the field wide-open for Ram… but you’ve got MDS issues, camshaft issues, and a few other minor problems.

Then there’s Toyota, which has decided in recent years that the engines in their trucks should fail as often as possible. The Japanese blame the American plant, because the same engine in the LS500 was okay. The Americans reply that the LS500 engine has far more component money in it, and also that no one tows or hauls with an LS500.

Nissan has quit the business.

Alright, let’s get to tonight’s question, which comes from DataDriven:

Jack, i hope you’re really doing well. My son is turning 18, graduating high school, and then shortly heading to college. He currently drives a 2021 HRV, so absolutely no fool factor there. He has said he wants a truck. So for all the above happening at the same time, I want to purchase him a new full size 4x4. I’ve had mostly GM but have also owned a Tundra (5.7, awful towing), diesel Dodge (motor was great, everything else a POS), and a F150 a long time ago).

I just can’t see a Dodge, so it’s out. GM seems like garbage now, Toyota doesn’t seem much better (bought the extended warranty on our LX600 last year, an extended warranty on a Lexus seems counter intuitive). Does that mean Ford? Help me out, what’s the best reliability, trim, and engine for the money?

First things first: props for being a great dad. In 2026 we can forget about all that “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” and “work for your vehicle” crap that (some of ) Gen X went through. It doesn’t build character to drive a piece of junk; it only makes it harder to compete against the kids who don’t. While it’s true I did not get my son a new car, it wasn’t because I thought he would build character driving a 135,000-mile Honda Accord. It was because I wanted to spend the money on buying myself bedazzled Golden Goose sneakers to wear in the Centurion Lounge.

Assuming your boy will use this truck to move forward in a successful academic career, followed by a successful work career in which he is not perpetually spending his evenings under a leaking oil pan gasket, then we should prioritize durability and usability over “rizz”.

But first, a digression: unless he is going to work in “The Patch” as an oil rigger, is a full-sized 4x4 the best way to spend your money? It will be expensive to fuel, to insure, to park, even to maintain. If we can walk away from the half-ton category, we have vastly more reasonable options, like a Camry, Accord, or even (deep breath) a Model 3. I like the Land Cruiser 1958 as a halfway point between a mainstream sedan and a full-sizer. It will last longer, cost less to run, and be worth more when you sell it.

End of digression. I’m prepared to recommend two full-sized trucks in the same $60k bracket as a Land Cruiser:

For sixty-five grand we have the F-150 XLT “Mid” with Max Tow, 5.0 V8, and Chrome Appearance package. That gets you a power slider window, heated power-adjustable front cloth seats, a limited slip diff, and enough gingerbread to not look like a base truck. You can save six or seven grand by choosing the 2.7TT without Max Tow, but trust me: when you list it for sale in ten years, the first question you get from everyone will be “Is it a 5.0?” I left off the various off-road packages because I think they are idiotic unless you’re going to go off-road; that’s why I probably have the only F-250 Platinum 4x4 in the country without “FX4”.

Here’s the other choice, and frankly I would be a little more likely to buy it:

This will be seven or eight grand cheaper in the real world than the Ford. It’s the Big Horn Level 2, which gets you a stereo and a center screen. It has the 5.7 Hemi, which to my mind is currently the class of the half-ton field, plus Trailer Tow II Group.

If you want to spend sixty-five grand, you can get the Laramie with just the Trailer Tow Group, and that is a very nice truck inside and out.

Is it worth it to spend more? I don’t know if an 18-year-old is going to benefit from the massaging seats and fancy leather in, say, a Ford King Ranch or RAM Limited. Let’s hope he has the sort of adventures that mess the thing up a little bit, ya know?

Alternately, is it worth it to spend less? Not unless you’re really cash-constrained. A base XLT Ford can be a rough place to spend time, and the XL is just miserable. Ram is better in this regard, but if you go too cheap you’ll have a Pentastar powering the thing. There’s also the fact that the V-8 costs more in a lower end truck.

Alright, I lied. I have one more candidate:

Two-thirds the price, just as much truck, with five thousand miles on the clock. There are quite a few of these Titans floating around. While I wouldn’t normally hold up a Nissan as a paragon of reliability, the later Titans have a good reputation and they’ve earned it. This is darned close to a new truck, but it’s not a new new truck. So when your son scratches it in a parking lot or his “situationship” girlfriend spills her White Claw in the passenger seat it won’t be a federal case. Parts and service will be available for a long time to come. It is difficult for me to conceive of a scenario where the resale value of this truck does not eventually converge with that of the other two suggestions; in other words, you save $20-25k up front and always save it.

Obviously, I cannot recommend you buy a GM truck; things have gone sharply downhill there since I got my very nice 2017 Silverado Max Tow 6.2 back in the day. (Although, to be fair, that truck ate torque converters at the rate of one every 40,000 miles.) If you must get a GM, I hate to say it, but… get a TurboMax. It’s their most reliable engine and, if what I read can be believed, has the fewest warranty claims of any half-ton powertrain in the first few years. The problem is that the power is kind of marginal for a modern half-ton, which means you’ll work it harder — and you’d be ill-advised to tow with it. Even the engine doesn’t blow up, you will be running the turbo at max pressure quite a bit, which does not translate to fuel economy.

As always, suggestions from the commentariat are welcome!