Someday, maybe sooner than any of us imagine, a reckoning is going to come.
All of our favourite sci-fi tropes are now looking more and more as if they may become actual events. Towering tsunami, belching volcanoes and catastrophic storms are now ten-a-penny and even someone as serious as Stephen Hawking is warning about reaching out to possible alien species, lest we accidentally send out an invitation to the invasion, formal battle-dress required.
Maybe a zombie horde really will arise, or perhaps it'll be a Red-Dawn-style invasion by some nameless, faceless fascist foe. Either way, you're going to need a pickup.
You beg my pardon? Wouldn't, say, an armoured car or some kind of HUMVEE be a better bet for trampling over the massed legions of groaning undead? No, you fool - haven't you been watching? Anyone actually driving a fancy, shmancy vehicle that's supposedly designed for purpose will instantly become everyone's target, whether for destruction or begged salvation. The quieter, more humble vehicle slips by unnoticed in the background.
Don't believe me? Check out the Navistar SOTV-B - the ultimate blank-canvas pickup truck. It can be immediately and instantly rebadged and reconfigured to look like any run-of-the-mill Nissan or Toyota but underneath it's a specially designed military vehicle - fast, agile, bullet-and-bomb-proof - and is designed to get, for example, Navy SEAL teams in and out of sensitive areas without anyone noticing them. You've seen the news footage of various insurgents and anti-insurgents racing about in Hiluxes and Navaras? This thing is designed to blend in - try doing that with a HUMVEE.
My point is not that we all necessarily need a clandestine military vehicle (although, Santa, if you're listening...), but that a pickup truck may just actually be the ideal vehicle for us all. We nowadays live in a dangerous, unpredictable world. Even here in little old Ireland, we've been beset in recent years with floods, freeze and fecking horrendous weather. All of these things a pickup can shrug off like so much dandruff - harsh conditions are the life for which such vehicles are designed. If you can cope with the Nevada desert or the sticky, clammy climes of South East Asia, you can manage a downpour in Bray, is what I'm saying.
Pickups are also now becoming rather cool. Ever since Volkswagen introduced the Amarok, it's been obvious that pickups are starting to shed their old commercial vehicle image and become rather more mainstream. The Amarok is as big, tough and bluff as they come, but on the inside, it's surprisingly comfy and refined. Bear Grylls on the outside, Bertie Wooster within, if you like. It's as happy cruising up and down the motorway - heated seats on and sound system gently trilling - as it is climbing that mountain. No, that big one over there. No, the bigger one.
Sensing Volkswagen stealing a march on them, other pickup makers have responded. Ford has improved the old Ranger out of all recognition compared to its predecessor, while Toyota has facelifted the evergreen HiLux,presumably without compromising its incredible ruggedness.
Better still; Mercedes-Benz is now planning a pickup too. It won't arrive until 2020, but given what a smooth, comfortable operator the also-commercial-vehicle-based V-Class is, I think we can expect something with a rather delicious mix of hard-working and soft-living.
And frankly, who wouldn't want one? Tall, tough and tremendously useful, pickups make regular cars appear puny and make premium SUVs appear far too expensive.
So, when the apocalypse finally comes, and in whatever form it comes (shuffling grey living dead, volcano in your garden, Godzilla in the shopping centre), the pickup will be there and ready to rescue you. Commercial vehicle today, saviour of the world tomorrow. Anyone buying a saloon is just dead meat...