Pickup trucks composed 69% of the U.S. new vehicle sales at the beginning of 2019. Sixty-nine percent. They’ve replaced the SUV, the minivan, the station wagon and even the midsize sedan as the everyday, everywhere kind of vehicle. Long gone from the days where a pickup truck meant that you were working hard for your money or were preparing to haul something heavy around, four-door trucks are now the normal. Oddly, their full-frame designs and heavy V8 offerings make you wonder if shrunken, smaller cars are the reason for that market share. Just within the collective circle of family near BangShift Mid-West, every household has a four-door truck of some type. Every one.

Crash testing is the necessary evil for safety’s sake. How else can you claim that your product is safe than to simply prove it? The solution is simple: take production vehicle, square it off against an immovable object, wait for the dust to settle after the loud “bang!” and see what happened. That’s crash-testing in a nutshell, it’s what consumers look for when they shop for a new vehicle, and it’s what insurance companies use to justify their bills when it’s time to renew your policy. Eleven trucks enter, none will make it out alive.