Im driving a GMC kodiac as my work truck... now Im starting to wounder why the domostic truck market can not market a full size truck with a 100% flat floor in a 1500 to 3500 frame or put the front axle or rear axle over the frame ( to protect diff and transfer case) vers axle and leefsprings under the frame...

Hummer H1 ! axles are built high into the body ...

The transmissom tunnel gets in the way, so lets just get ride of it, or build over it, I also want a man transmisson in a truck ...

I may be posting this in the wrong fourm, but please offer up some design features you have, or ideals on the perfect truck the big three seem to be ignorant off ...

We are all truck owners under the ram badge, and im not so intant on picking the Ram apart ( i do this extreamly well on my own) but to shoot for the best design concepts you may have...

One item I would love to see is the return of fenders on trucks, ie 1940's style close to a interanational or hudson ...

just let her Roll ...

 

Hummer H1 has portal axles, which is why they can be high in the body. Easy enough to build into any truck, but expensive and more stuff to fail. Jeep even sells full replacement portal axles that can be retrofit into the current Jeeps.

 

I don't think you will ever see this in the future, probably the best you could hope for would be a flat floor in the rear like Ford makes or if trucks went to front wheel drive.

The closer the drive train is to the body of the vehicle the more aerodynamic it is, less under body air turbulence, and these days every .0001 mpg increase is crucial to the manufacture. Ever notice that if you lift your truck you will loose from 1 to 2 mpg depending on the lift and lower it and you will gain mpg's.

So with large engines and transmissions they will end up taking some room in the passenger compartment.

The other side of the coin with this would be those that want to drop the body of their trucks would have a very difficult time of scraping the pavement.