Americans are obsessed with function and fashion. Every tool we buy, every item of clothing we wear, every stick of furniture we purchase, and every dwelling we inhabit has to work efficiently and look good while doing so. Witness the elaborate packaging of mundane kitchen appliances, the popularity of all-terrain boots, the custom-look consoles many computer chips are housed in, and the sometimes garishly ornamental 3-box home designs that stick the garage right out in front so that the short driveway is easier to shovel.

Similarly, the rise in popularity of the sport-utility vehicle (SUV) can be attributed to our desire for functional and fashionable transportation. Often blamed for the death of the traditional station wagon, the SUV provides a heavy safety shield for the family, room for five passengers, generous cargo space, and in many versions, four-wheel drive capability for exploring off the beaten path or beating a path to your door in lousy weather.

But how can we explain the faddish desire for workaday full-size pickups among the populace? The Chevrolet C/K pickup, the Dodge Ram pickup, and the Ford F-150 are among the most popular vehicles sold on this planet, and their success isn't completely attributable to a requirement for work trucks. Lots of these babies are parked in suburban garages, and not all of them are sitting around waiting for moving day or towing duty. People drive these things as commuter vehicles.

Why? Well, they are no longer the primitive conveyances of yesteryear. Our test trucks came well equipped with power accouterments, comfortable seats, and very good sound systems. As further proof of the civility of pickups these days, not one of them featured painted interior panels. Two of our test trucks even had leather seats. Safety and image are big draws, too. Regardless of what you've heard, size matters. When you drive one of these big pickups, you feel invincible. Visibility is excellent, a throaty V-8 responds to your right foot with eagerness, and with 4WD, almost any trail or task becomes a challenge. When behind the wheel of a pickup, you feel more like a rugged country boy than an overweight middle manager. Trucks can look good too. Each of our trio wore attractive sheetmetal, and all but the Chevy sported alloy wheels and some snazzy styling details. These days, a pickup looks as comfortable in front of the Biltmore as it does in front of a barn. Best of all, when the day comes to drag the mountain bike in for repairs, or to FedEx an old IBM computer to colleagues in New York, or to move a friend into a new apartment, a full-size pickup makes life easy. Just toss whatever it is into the bed, and off you go. No bike racks to mount, no wrestling a heavy box into the trunk or back seat, and instead of 10 trips, a move can be made in only two.

Full-size pickups are finding increased acceptance with the general public because they cater to our needs for function and fashion, and nobody builds `em like Americans. Oh sure, Toyota tried to steal some thunder in this segment with the wussy 1993 T100 V-6, but Chrysler Corporation put a stop to that by opening a can of 1994 Dodge Ram whup-ass on them boys from Japan. Then, Ford rolled out a redesigned F-150 last year, and the curvy new model sold just as well as the old boxy one. The T100 never had a chance.

See, full-size pickup buyers tend to be full-blooded, salt-of-the-earth, Buy American types. And once they've owned a truck, they become full-blooded, salt-of-the-earth, Buy Chevy types. Or Buy Dodge. Or Buy Ford. Big rivalries here, which sometimes lead to fisticuffs in the poolhall if one too many MGDs finds its way into a burly belly. Nobody on the Edmund's staff owns a full-size pickup. Don't want one either, though we did discover that all of our test trucks fit into my garage (the Ford only if the antenna was removed and the front bumper was touching the inside wall). We'd pop for a Ford Ranger or Toyota Tacoma, but none of us wants or needs one of these larger heavy-duty haulers. So we came into this test with no preferences. Objectivity was the order of the day. Our assignment was to figure out which of these pickups was the best via direct comparison, and we planned one full day of on-road driving and one full day of off-road driving to determine a winner.

Then Whitmore cracked up the Ford the day before our test was to begin. Well, he didn't crack it up. Some joker in an Eagle Premier rammed him at about 30 mph. Traffic on Denver's I-25 was stop and go, which apparently escaped the Premier driver, because he didn't even hit the brakes before using his forgettable French-designed sedan to fold the F-150's bumper under. How do you miss a stopped F-150 4WD, painted bright white, in the lane directly in front of you? Fortunately, Whitmore was uninjured save for a sore neck and a headache, thanks in part to the highback bucket seats found in our test F-150. The integrated headrests kept his neck from snapping like a Dixon Ticonderoga #2 pencil. Had he been smacked in the Chevy, the adjustable headrest would probably have completely collapsed, and the Dodge's headrest extends only to collar level, making it more of an extended backrest than anything else. We are certain that more serious neck and/or head injuries would have been suffered in the Chevy or Dodge. The Premier was totaled, folded up like an aluminum can; Whitmore drove the Ford home after getting tickets for expired insurance (Ford's fault, not Whitmore's) and having Michigan manufacturer plates in the state of Colorado. Evidently, Mr. Policeman thought the F-150 was one of them there rental cars, despite a Michigan registration and Whitmore's automotive-journalist-driving-a-press-vehicle explanation for his possession of the truck and the truck's current Denver residency. "Do you know the state of Colorado has shut down Alamo Rent-A-Car three times for not registerin' their cars here?" Whitmore could not have cared less.

Ford allowed us to continue the test using the crippled truck. At a glance, the Ford's bumper appeared to be the only part damaged. But further inspection revealed that the fiberglass bed was cracked, the cab had been dented, and the alignment was seriously out of whack. Worse, the transmission began upshifting extremely hard into 3rd and 4th gears, and the truck listed a bit to the left. Whatever maladies the Ford suffered at the hands of the wreck, they were evident while driving the vehicle. Therefore, much of what we have to say about the F-150 in this review is based on previous experience with three other examples during the past year. We brought the wrecked one along only to participate in group photos, of the front end only, of course.