Uhh, because it’s your truck and there are roughly zero parallels?
I understand your complaint, but the analogy doesn’t really work. You can drive an audacious car because it’s fun and makes you feel good, and then when you step out of it you don’t have to have a Gucci-mane-esque ice-cream cone tatted on your face.
I think your opinion is about subjective as it gets. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but there are just a ton of people who don’t like the luxury truck segment because something something redneck Alabama something. Like, is a BMW or Lexus SUV less audacious? I’d say they are more so.
Bad looks don’t make bad cars any more than good looks make good cars. I hear a ton of people say the Juke is one of the worst cars Nissan has every produced, and then when I ask why they say, “I don’t like the bug eyes.” It’s a perfectly capable little crossover thing, no?
Also you can’t park it in a parking space anywhere on earth. I drove some AM General 6x6 trucks for a job I used to have in Alaska. They were a blast but also a pain in the ass.
The hell do you define as “practical”?
Rear-end shifting is just where you switch from 4x4 low to rear-2-wheel-drive high range once you hit top gear. So you’ll go normal shifts from 1st through 5th gear in 4x4 (or 6x6) low, and then when you max out low 5th you flip a switch/air actuator/lever/foot pedal to shift “up” into high gear 4x2 (or 6x4), but back into 1st gear on your shift pattern and then continue to re-run the pattern up through whatever your truck has. So the switch from low-to-high effectively disables drive to the front wheels but changes your gear ratio in the rear so you can drive at something vaguely resembling highway speeds.
Then on a lot of trucks when you need to stop you’d downshift from high gear 5th to high gear 1st, come to a stop, and once stationary re-engage 4x4 (or 6x6) and low range.
Another implementation is where you “split” the gears, so your shift would go 1-low -> 1-high -> 2-low -> 2-high -> 3 low…etc etc. In this case you’d use the clutch to shift full gears (2-high to 3-low) but an electric or pneumatic shifter mechanism takes care of the low->high on the fly transfer within a gear. Then you just to rev-matching to downshift.
A lot of semi-trucks have something like 18 or 20 effective gears the driver can use. They’ll have 8 or 9 speed transmissions with 3 different gear ranges so they can use medium and high range when just rolling the cab or towing an empty flatbed or something, then low range for actual serious towing loads with the ability to bump up to a high range, high gear on the highway. And then they have nifty stuff so you only have to use the clutch when shifting between ranges or starting from a stop, but you just throw the shifter into gear and the system takes care of it.
Big trucks are fun! Maybe I should get myself one of those 6x6 rigs I drove last year. Like, I couldn’t use it for anything, but they cost like $3500 and would be a boatload of fun on the rare weekend I could find a spot to go offroad it.
