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Can pick-up trucks really be an indication of economic growth? The vice president of Nissan, Jerry Hardcastle certainly agrees that people such as farmers and builders who often have their own business, will invest in business vehicles when they are feeling good about the future of their enterprise.

UK Pickup truck sales rose 24% last year, but so far this year there has been a dip in fleet sales (much like in the rest of the economy!), but in retail market terms, mostly dominated by farmers and builders buying vehicles for manual labouring, the sales seems to have held up well.

Mitsubishi Motors UK's managing director Lance Bradley is, like his customers in the pickup truck area, optimistic about the future;

"The pickup truck market is interesting," Mr Bradley says, "as it's a bit of an indicator of where the economy is going."

Nissan vice president Jerry Hardcastle agrees that farmers and builders - the people who produce our food and erect our houses - tend to buy when they are feeling good about the future. They dominate the customer base in the retail market.

"The fashion of owning a pickup truck has lost its appeal so it's going back to its roots as a working vehicle," Mr Hardcastle said, "I go to Cumbria a lot, and the farming community both there and across the rest of the UK still very much use them the way they were intended to be used."

David Crouch of Toyota GB said that the only other major pickup customer base can be found within utilities companies, like EON, British Canals or Cable & Wireless, which saw pickup sales in the UK rise by 43% last year. "They buy pickups in order to do specific jobs," he says.

Mr Bradley from Mitsubishi says that builders and farmers like pickup trucks for two reasons; Firstly as a family car useful for the working week, and for the weekend, eliminating the need for a second car, and as modern pickups interiors have become very car-like in recent years.

The second, rather persuasive reason is that pickup trucks are defined as light commercial vehicles in terms of tax, so builders and farmers can reclaim VAT.

According to the website pickuptrucksdirect.co.uk, "This means that if you are a taxpayer in the 40% tax bracket, driving a Mitsubishi Animal or Nissan Navara, for example, could save you in the region of £4,000 every year on benefit-in-kind tax payments compared with a similarly priced passenger car”.

My Bradley does offer a word of warning for anyone looking to exploit this loophole. "A pickup truck is still a compromise… it doesn't drive like a Ford Mondeo."

The market for pickup trucks is still quiet small in the UK when compared to America. For example Ford's F-150 pickup, has been the bestselling truck in America and Canada for 34 years in a row and has outsold every other vehicle in the past 24 years, whether car or truck.

Toyota has sold more than 12 million Hilux models since it’s 1968 launch. Mr Crouch of Toyota says that “Globally, it's our second biggest selling vehicle after the Toyota Corolla”.

The durable nature of the model was highlighted recently Libya, where during the uprising they were often seen with machine guns attached.

According to Volkswagen, the market for pickup trucks is expected to expand further on a global scale, given the rapid economic growth in a number of developing countries.

The German automotive company recently launched its first pickup truck, Amarok, in response to the growth. This model is central to VW’s plans for dominating the world car-making Industry in 2018.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16509765