I'm not arguing small and light. Just that there's an optimum in the middle. I'm also not arguing that there are other factors, like what it is used for and where. And specifically, what I originally was addressing was pickup trucks from the 70's or 80's being safer than modern equivalents - I very much doubt that. There have been many engineering improvements over the years to both make them better handling and more survivable.
There is an optimum in the middle, but up here pickups and suburbans are the middle, among fleets of semis and winch trucks, the average family sedan is 'small'. If you are in a climate that does not get snow, your needs are different than here, where having a summer car and a winter vehicle is a bit of a luxury. You get what you need for the worst conditions you will drive in, or a little more. Not having seen any stats on survivability to compare 70s and 80s pickups to more modern ones, and not having been in a wreck since '80 in one (I got t-boned by a guy coming down a cross road, the yield sign on his road had been flattened and not replaced). I broke the rear wheels loose and the truck spun when hit. Both were totaled, but the raw impact to the one I was in was muted by the reduced traction. We both walked away from the wreck. That accident made me a much more defensive driver. I knew he was supposed to yield, I knew the roads, he did not. Had I not expected him to yield, I may have been better able to avoid the collision altogether.
A fellow in a early 2000's Ford F-150 brought an end to the project pickup (66 Ford) I had on the road when he did the same to it, with my wife and two grandkids in the cab, wife driving. None of them were hurt, but the only truck that drove away was the '66.
There was a lot less metal in the trucks by the late '70s.
My current pickup is an '87 Dodge, and the front is mostly metal (plastic grille).
Up here (North Dakota), bigger
is better. Elsewhere, perhaps not so much. One size does not fit all.
