Development process:
When I first saw the name "pickup truck", it was difficult to associate it with the appearance of the car. Pickup is a transliteration of the English word "pickup truck", which originated in North America and took shape as early as the early 20th century. Now it has developed into an independent type of commercial vehicle. Since pickup trucks entered China in the late 1980s, the main battlefields have been small and medium-sized towns, urban-rural fringe and vast rural areas, and the sales volume in big cities is almost zero. Therefore, for urbanites, the main consumer groups in China automobile market, the definition and division of pickup trucks have always been vague. Here we go back to the English dictionary to understand its definition.
From the English definition, a pickup truck is a four-wheeled or six-wheeled car specially designed for transporting goods. The load standard is lower than that of the truck, and no special driver's license is required. Generally refers to those small cars with front engine, front head and rear tail. In short, it's a minivan. This model has become very popular in North America, so when some state governments made regulations that pickup trucks can't pass on certain roads, it caused many people's dissatisfaction. Interestingly, in the dictionary of Duke of Zhou in the United States, I dreamed that pickup trucks were standing there working hard, which shows that pickup trucks are deeply rooted in people's hearts as an effective means of production and the image of hardworking bulls.
But the pickup truck took a detour when it entered China, and it was imported from neighboring Japan. At that time, the market economy had not been established, the automobile as an important "means of production" had not been liberalized, and the government implemented unified control. The pickup truck landed in China as a truck with a long independent container at the back. But then, large and medium-sized cities were unable to bear the serious load of road traffic, and they introduced load-limiting policies one after another, and pickup truck manufacturers suddenly fell into an embarrassing situation.
However, the SUV boom in the emerging China auto market has made "smart" pickup truck manufacturers borrow the east wind. In the past, the statistical data of pickup trucks were mostly convertible pickup trucks. Today, the statistical data of pickup trucks have been very different, and the product structure of pickup trucks has also undergone great changes. Almost without exception, all pickup companies have introduced pickup trucks with different identities, such as the van pickup truck with the prefix "5", which completely closes the rear cargo compartment and separates it from the cab, and can also be used as a multi-functional commercial vehicle or station wagon. More is a low-cost SUV with the word "6", which is an integrated van modified on the chassis of pickup trucks. Its cab and warehouse are connected together, and it is the same chassis as the pickup truck, but the upper body is different.
The transformation of this technology is only a small step, but the "identity" has suddenly changed dramatically. It announced the pickup truck's "rural to non-agricultural", and from then on, it can bypass the urban restriction policy and pass freely in major cities. Coupled with the advantages of simple technology and cost, pickup truck manufacturers can control the price of this modified so-called SUV below 6,543,800 yuan. At present, low-priced multi-purpose vehicles have formed a group.
The origin of strange names
According to American tradition, almost all the names of pickup trucks and SUVs are related to the west, Indians or cowboys to some extent. This is probably to flaunt a rough and unrestrained spirit. Mojave is no exception. Mojave was originally a famous desert in the southwestern United States. Hyundai and KIA's R&D institutions have invested 50 million dollars to build a large-scale testing ground covering an area of 4,300 acres here. Almost all new models sold to the American market have to undergo rigorous tests here before they are officially put into production.
In fact, Kia's medium-sized pickup truck project was secretly launched as early as two years ago, with the internal code name KCV4. The Mojave concept car exhibited at the auto show has actually surpassed the concept car and is more like a prototype car that is close to mass production. So KIA stopped mentioning that lame code name, but gave it an American name, which is expected to be used after mass production.
Simply put: a pickup truck is a van!