Okay, I saw this (via Insty) and was immediately irritated.
Everyone wants to know about the Ford Fathom. What does it look like? What standard features will it have? What will be optional, and how much will the extras cost?
Well, not quite everyone, Simon.
My first question: Who the hell wants an electric Duracell truck? Having once lived in downtown Chicago, I can see (and always have seen) the desirability of an electric vehicle for inner-city or short-commute trips (more the former than the latter). Small, tight parking places? No problem. Tiny gaps in traffic between large delivery trucks? Likewise. But why would you want to own a load-bearing vehicle when a heavy load is going to drain your battery quicker than Bill Clinton’s hand going for an intern’s bra clip?
No. If Ford (or any manufacturer) wants to make a small inexpensive pickup, allow me to suggest that they use as a template the fantastic Datsun 120Y from the 1970s:
I once owned one of these little nuggets, and I absolutely loved it: tiny 1200cc engine which went through gas slower than a teetotaller sipping Laphroiag single malt, but had plenty enough power for just about any payload short of lead bars or two Lizzos in its tiny truckbed. I got it (very) secondhand because I was a Very Poor Student, kept it for over two years and never had a thing go wrong with it. To call the 120Y “basic transportation” would be a misnomer: “minimalist” would be a better description of its two or three features (heater, windshield wipers… actually I think that’s about it), and in today’s dollars, it cost the equivalent of about $8,000.
Yeah, it didn’t have airbags, safety belts or any of today’s OMG SAFETY!!!! must-haves, but surely, at some point, one has to make some kind of grownup decision about the compromises one may make — without the fucking heavy hand of Big Nanny Gummint making all your decisions for you.
Moving on…
My next truck (owned not in Seffrica but in Chicago) was this one, the 1993 Mazda B4000 (NOT the Ford Ranger equivalent, which was a shitty alternative):
Oh my. That Mazda 4-liter V6 engine — all the power one would ever need — with that mini-backseat to accommodate things like kids and gun cases. I got it secondhand, with only 11,000 miles on it. I loved that truck, lost it in the Great Divorce Of 1994, and ex-Wife #2 drove it until it literally fell apart in, I think, 2015 as much out of sheer metal fatigue as because of minimal maintenance. Cost: in today’s dollars, about $14,000.
Now these are two trucks that together could satisfy the transportation and trucking needs of just about anyone not engaged in heavy industry. And at prices — even in today’s straitened financial times — that wouldn’t empty the wallet, either.
Yeah, maybe the Datsun would be adjudged today as more dangerous than a Muslim jihadist with C4 underwear, but a reincarnated B4000?
Slam frigging dunk…
…which means it will never happen, because gawd forbid today’s car manufacturers should address the needs of their customers over the wallets of their shareholders.
There’s much more money to be made turning out faddish, underpowered and overpriced ($30 grand? FOAD) toys. From the article:
We think it’s meant to signal capability since critics have questioned whether a small, low-riding, electric pickup will be able to do “real” truck things like towing, hauling, and off-roading.
It won’t.
And, no, the Cybertruck was a singularly bad idea. Fugly along with all the negatives you cite.
It fits one thing greatly, the tax write off truck for a small business owner. It does that job very well and if you wrap it in your company name it may pay for itself.
For people that do not know what trucks are for from a company that has forgotten the same.
Well at least they got the name right. What ever the out the door price is ( … and it won’t be very close to $ 30 K ) the buyers will be instantly Fathoms underwater with their car loans.
I’m pretty sure the Fathom is Ford’s answer to a startup company called Slate. They just started production of their minimalist trucks in Indiana. About $25,000 gets you a “Clean Slate,” which is a very basic-looking small pickup with manual window cranks, no radio, and really no features at all that aren’t required by the government. The only problem is that they went with electric instead of gas engines.
I’m sure they’ll soon go the way of the Yugo and the Geo line of cars. Maybe whoever takes over after they fail will switch to gas and resume production. I’d be in line for one.
I was under the impression that the Mazda and the Ford Ranger were essentially the same vehicle with different badges. Having owned a 90’s model Ranger, I can attest that simply making that same truck again (4-banger, 5-speed manual) for roughly $15k would be a God-send to all of us old timers that just want a simple truck. That or a mid-90’s Tacoma. That Datsun thing is just a little too little, but making a no frills Datsun 240Z for under $20k would give me an erection lasting way longer than 4 hours. Yeah, I know, TMI.
Don:
The 1994 Mazda was simply a re-badged Ford Ranger built in Minneapolis, MN. Up until then they had been built in a variety of locations off-shore.
I owned a 1991 Mazda B2200 that I drove for almost 10 years. Great little truck that I put a topper on for camping and had a specially-made futon mattress for the back. What’s really funny is that when I wanted to go to a 4-wheel-drive truck I sold that Mazda to a (now former) friend of mine in 2000. The last time I checked Gurgle maps street view (dated to 2024) it was still parked in front of his house. Lemme see, that’s (counting finger and toes) 33 years of Minnesota salt-soaked driving and still running.
My problem was that I replaced it with literally the WORST vehicle I’ve ever owned, a 2000 Ford Ranger extended cab 4WD with a V6 and automatic transmission (for towing). That stinking pile of junk got terrible mileage (18 MPG) and left me stranded on the road so many times I lost track, including when I drove it off the lot and the oil pressure dropped to zero. I killed the engine and pulled off the road, then called the dealer for a tow. They looked at it and sighed, and said that Ford had built most of the Rangers with bad oil pressure sending units, and that there was such a backlog that none were available for months. Great, I stuck a piece of electrical tape over the warning light and kept the truck. Big mistake.
I was hunting at a friend’s place north of Bemidji, MN when the truck started overheating. I had a nice buck in the back along with my stand and other stuff. I got a tow into town and was diagnosed with a blown head gasket. Oh, goody. The guys at the dealership were quite nice and helped me line up a rental car and stick the deer inside it on a plastic tarp. I bought a bunch of bags of ice at a grocery store, packed the inside of the (gutted) deer and drove home a couple of hundred miles.
I finally gave up on that thing after ten agonizing years when the “Check Brakes” light went on. Brakes were working fine so I drove to work and then took it to a nearby dealer. They looked it over and told me that the anti-lock system had corroded so badly it was no longer working and would require $2000 to fix it. In the whole time I owned that truck I had only kicked in the anti-lock once, when I initially bought it and was playing with it on a frozen lake. Once again electrical tape did the trick over the light.
I drove right from the Ford dealer to a Toyota dealer and got a very nice trade-in value on my first Tundra, a 2010 4WD with the new all-aluminum engine. I got better mileage with that full-size truck than I could ever dream of with that Ranger. I’ll never buy a Ford (Found On Road Dead, Effed On Raw Deal) again.
I actually know the Mazda and Ranger came off the same assembly line, I was just politely letting our host know since he seems to think the Ford is a shitty alternative (his words).
Since I live in Texas I didn’t have any of the salt problems you mentioned. I prefer the 4 banger engine AND manual transmission over the V6 and automatic. The V6 didn’t give that much of an advantage in power (IMO) and sucked almost as much gas as my Chevy with a 350 in it. Never had an engine problem with it I couldn’t fix. Did have some issues with the anti-lock stuff in the differential.
Fun fact, the doorsill was a plastic piece that had the FORD logo molded in. Except mine, on the driver’s side, had MAZDA doorsill instead. Straight from the factory like that. I guess someone just grabbed something from the wrong parts bin.
The VW diesel pickup was a nice option and there are still some on the road.
Our 2019 chevy silverado is 100k+ and our 2013 chevy traverse is 180k+ so I was exploring a new ride. I’m 77 and wife is 79 so we dont see too many more cars in our future. The truck is needed to pull our camper so I thought a sedan would satisfy our needs. It’s a shame neither ford nor chevy make sedans any more. My 2 favorite touring cars were a 2005 Ford 500 and a 2012 Chevy Impala. I’ve usually bought American, I’m from Detroit and family works for Ford. Toyota Camrys are made in Kentucky so we looked at a Camry hybrid. We really liked the car but we were both struggling to get up out of it, especially my wife. The salesman walked us over to a rav4, also made in Kentucky, we really liked it so we ordered one. It will be in the next couple weeks. I’d really been resisting the idea of all this electronic control crap but I cant find a new/newer vehicle without it. The rav comes with a normally aspirated engine and all the propaganda tells me that I should get 200k out of it if I take care of it. 200k will get me to age 90 and I dont think I’ve got 13 years of driving left.
I was fresh out of the military in the mid 70s. I needed wheels, had very little money (and less prospects). I didn’t have much to offer the civilian working world in the way of saleable job skills since I wasn’t bilingual, but I figured I was pretty strong and smart enough to follow directions, so some sort of construction work was in my future, and you can’t do that in a little 2-door sedan.
So, I went to the dealer-man (no, not THAT dealer-man) and signed up for a 1974 Chevy LUV. I put 250,000 miles on it in just over 13 years. It had hand crank windows, an AM (only) radio, 4-speed transmission, and no A/C. It handled well, could run with the big dogs on the freeways, was absolutely a blast to drive on the dusty back roads here in Arizona, and never caused me to walk home from anywhere. Easy on the gas. Simple to maintain. If it didn’t start when you turned the key, it was light enough to push start from behind the wheel. Payments back then were light on the wallet.
I finally traded up (?) to a Ford F-150 with a small V-8, but it was never the same after that.
For decades now, the number of pickups sold in America that actually do “real” truck things is pretty small. Off-roading? Pfft: the closest most of them get to off-road is driving over loose gravel pulling into the Starbucks.
I was 74 before I got my first truck. I tow my travel trailer with it, but I was towing with my chevy traverse. About the only real truck thing has been a couple loads of dirt and mulch which I could have done with a utility trailer. Several of my neighbors have trucks that dont get anywhere near any cargo other than the occasional bicycle or golf clubs. Found one other use for the truck, had some limbs and branches to trim and I’m a bit shaky on ladders, the bed made a good platform to work from.
“…be able to do “real” truck things like towing, hauling, and off-roading.
It won’t.”
Oh yes it will, until it leaves its owner and bragging rights in some God-forsaken spot with a dead battery.
But…but..but.. they said it had a four hundred mile range. Yup, on a full charge, without using AC, heat or lights, at 45 mph on a level paved road, with no load but the driver.
Try getting a charge on some dirt road in the Nevada desert, or on a stretch of beach on the Outer Banks where the nearest town is 10-25 miles away and a tow off the beach is $250-$1,500. And there’s still no charging station. Getting there costs extra.
They are still out there. One of the best vehicles I ever owned was a 1995 Ford Ranger. It ran until it was finally flooded in a hurricane in 2019.
But if it’s got to be the Mazda, here’s one. It’s got just over 100,000 miles on it, in great shape and available for $15,500 in Nebraska.
I would buy this long before I bought anything new and accept any needed maintenance.
https://www.cargurus.com/details/452453531?
Here you go, Boss….
https://www.seven82motors.com.au/lot/december-7th-2025/2015-hsv-maloo/
That’s the go fast version, but they also made economical versions for tradesmen.
Sedan ride and appointments and about half the size and weight of a RAM. Built Aussie tough. They even raced these for a while in Australia. There was a Falcon based version for the blue oval crowd.
Ford and Holden also did station wagon versions of their family cars. The Ford in particular had a lot of space.
Sadly neither still in production.
I’ve seen something like these on the road. They look very handy for short hauls to the Home DeSpot, the gardening store etc
https://usminitrucksales.com/
I don’t recall much about mileage, etc., but I still have good memories of my 1987 Jeep Comanche 4×4 with the 150 CID engine and 5 speed.