{"id":606103,"date":"2009-11-09T07:00:18","date_gmt":"2009-11-09T12:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tundraheadquarters.com\/blog\/?p=2122"},"modified":"2009-11-09T07:00:18","modified_gmt":"2009-11-09T12:00:18","slug":"studebaker-had-the-tailgate-step-before-ford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/606103","title":{"rendered":"Studebaker Had The Tailgate Step Before Ford"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/div>

Saturday Chris Baccus posted a link to an old Studebaker commercial on his Twitter account<\/a>. This old commercial is corn-ball and ever-so-slightly offensive to women, but it also shows what might just be the very first tailgate step ever…installed on a station wagon.<\/p>\n

\"Studebaker

Studebaker put a tailgate step on a station wagon a long, long time before anyone else.<\/p><\/div>\n

This is just a still photo of the commercial – you can watch the commercial on YouTube here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sort of fascinating, isn’t it? Contrast it with some of Ford’s marketing literature.<\/span><\/p>\n

First, here’s a photo from the Ford website of the tailgate step in action.<\/p>\n

\"Ford's

Ford's F150 tailgate step in action.<\/p><\/div>\n

Ford brags that the “2010 F-150 features an available class-exclusive integrated Tailgate Step,” and they show lots of images of hard-working truck owners making great use of this option on their website, in brochures, etc. They’re proud of the fact they can advertise this feature – and they should be.<\/p>\n

For the record, the tailgate step is a good idea<\/strong>. The execution on the F150 isn’t great<\/em> (it can be hard to load around), but it’s certainly not bad. Ford’s truck marketing manager said that the feature was selling well back in January in this article on Jalopnik<\/a>, and a lot of people really like it. Kudos to the engineers at Ford.<\/p>\n

The point here is that there aren’t a lot of new ideas in the auto industry<\/em>. 6-speed transmissions, electric powertrains, dual-overhead cams, superchargers, trucks with coil-spring rear suspensions, and just about everything else you’ll hear a truck salesman brag about has been done before. Most of these features were toyed with 50 to 100 years ago.<\/p>\n

The military used nitrous oxide injection in aircraft in world war two. The first all-electric car was built all the way back in 1891 by a tinkerer in Iowa. Gottlieb Daimler (one of the namesakes of Daimler Benz) might have been the first to supercharge an automobile back in 1885.<\/p>\n

And Studebaker might just have been the first to invent the tailgate step<\/strong>…or maybe not.<\/p>\n

Read user reviews of Tundra Accessories<\/a>.<\/p>\n\"\"

\n<\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saturday Chris Baccus posted a link to an old Studebaker commercial on his Twitter account. This old commercial is corn-ball and ever-so-slightly offensive to women, but it also shows what might just be the very first tailgate step ever…installed on a station wagon. Studebaker put a tailgate step on a station wagon a long, long […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":288,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-606103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-2xFR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/288"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}