Some years back (10) I lived in Spain. Normally I drove a small Ford Fiesta and fit right in. While on an adventure to Switzerland, I drove a full-sized Chevy Blazer from Glarus, Switzerland to Cadiz, Spain. (Thankfully I wasn't paying for fuel.) Big, 5.7, 300HP monster. It was about 24 hours of being scared to death that I'd catch the bumper on a 15th century house and feel terrible.

Except for the highway and larger roads in the countryside, that truck just didn't fit. I realize that there are articulated trucks and so on. Just as a daily driver, it didn't work too well. Obviously here in North America, Central & South America and Australia there is a lot of space.

I'm not poking fun. I'm curious to hear a few stories about having a full-sized truck in Europe. I had seen a few there but, normally they were in storage.

What's everyone paying for fuel these days? When I was there it was about $1.00 US per liter.

 

Premium unleaded is running around US$1.70/litre in the UK.
And as for where to park an F series; well there's always somewhere if you look hard enough!
As I'm a truck driver anyway it's pretty much second nature and with experience you can tell "if it'll fit" before you get there. You do tend to look for corner & row-end spaces in car parks so nobody'll box you in by parking so close that you can't get the drivers door open to get back in, and the a$$-end of your truck always sticks out a couple feet from the parking bay LOL but it's always manageable, where there's a will, there's a way!
The roads are always plenty wide enough, even the narrow ones, and as long as your door mirrors are set right you shouldn't need to worry about hitting anything, again it's down to experience with that particular vehicle. You get used to it after a while.

 

I find on top of a SMART car is always good

 

allan1010,
$1.70/liter is unreal! As I'm sure you've heard, diesel is the top dog on price here. Basic, barely refined fuel $2.50 -$2.90 / gallon. I use about 50 gallons a week. That would be a great price in the UK, I'm sure.

I drive a dually and occasionally have to go into Philadelphia. By standards, an old and small city that was built for horse and carriage. My truck is about 23' long and 8' wide. Sometime I think what it would have been like to have my present truck where I had lived in Spain. It would have been in storage too.

I was reading in here about all these big Fords in Europe and wondering how the owners dealt with day to day driving. My father lived in County Dorset for a lot of years. Somewhere near Yeovil (?) He said the local tow truck was a full sized Ford pick-up and took up the whole lane.

 

We pay appr. 6 bucks a gallon here and the roads are narrow, parking spaces designed for Chevettes. How do we cope ? With humour and positive attitude and moving away from the big cities to the countryside.

 

LOL
I saw the funniest thing yesterday; A Smart had one of those tiny chromed boot (trunk) luggage racks that they used to put on the MG's and the likes in the 60's & 70's and there was a pair of skateboards bungeed to it, wheels outover.
Because the back end of a smart is almost vertical, it looked just like you were supposed to stand the car on end and wheel it into a corner when you weren't using it :-)
Oh, and I saw one parked at 90 degress to the sidewalk too when the entire rest of the city was parked parallel, it only stuck a couple feet into the roadway past the other cars, I think I'd need one (with a moonroof) for each foot!!!

 

Oh, I have a GIANT smile on my face, although my current vehicle is only a V6 I have it converted to run on propane and that costs around US 65c/litre
And you can believe that the next, one, which will either be a V8 or a Cummins/Dodge, will be converted too. whichever fuel it uses. Propane injection is an awesome way of increasing power to diesels too; in diesels it's used additionally like NOx but full-time instead of "on demand".

As to your comments on diesel, I think you may have been right 20 years or more ago, but there's a lot of science goes into producing modern diesel fuels today and you can't say it's "barely refined" just because it's a heavier fraction in the distillation process than gasoline. Compared with the likes of bunker oils that ships & industrial boilers use, that has to be kept warm year-round to flow through 2" pipes, it's an incredibly pure, highly refined fuel. Same with the engines, the efficiency increases (and pollution decreases of the order of 90% in 15 years) mean that modern diesels are very highly engineered compared to the basic "suck, squeeze, bang, blow" of an elderly engine of any description which would probably have run on bunker oil if you could have found a way of keeping it thin enough to pass through the injectors!

Yeovil is in Somerset, the neighboring county to Dorset but it's only 5 miles east to Sherborne, which is in Dorset! The counties are very small down there anyway, it's a beautiful part of the country and well away from the high pressure, heavy traffic of the rest of our little island.

Speaking of diesels, my current ride is a straight six, 630HP Volvo and it's faster than my car away from the lights bobtail!

 

I am a bit ashamed to admit that occasionally I have had to really drop the hammer to keep up with some of the rigs. Them big diesels, when not pulling the trailers, can really accelerate in the most enthusiastic manner.

 

Oh yeah!
VBG

 

Yeah, right on top of a mini cooper would be perfect!!

 

allan1010, I know modern diesel is far more advanced than it was years ago. I'm just mad that it costs more than premium gasoline these days. It's not the processing that makes it expensive, it's gouging by the oil companies. Yeovil was the only town I could remember by name. Your Volvo sounds great! My step-father drives a Volvo too. Not sure what model but, it's automatic (push button) you never have to change the oil and the transmission is guaranteed for 1 million miles. It's a fleet truck, he hauls (of all things) fuel. He says about the automatic, that he's done this for 40 years. He's tired of shifting.

 

That's true, Muki. It would take a well tuned gas engine to keep up with my stock diesel. The great thing is, I can have a rather heavy trailer and still have almost the same speed.

What's a SMART?

 

http://www.smart.com/smart_uk/smart_uk_start.html

it's a tiny car. Don't take on on the freeway, however.

 

They're great. They probably get better mileage than my tractor! They remind me of that Twingo (only smaller)from years ago.

 

This is a Smart:

http://tinyurl.com/e2kcn