Following yesterday’s teaser, Ford has officially unveiled their smallest pickup.
Billed as a new white space vehicle, the truck doesn’t have a name but is expected to be launched early next year. The pickup will also be free, but there’s an important caveat – you can’t drive it.
If that sounds strange, it shouldn’t as the automaker is celebrating World Emoji Day by unveiling their proposal for the first pickup truck emoji. While the truck was just unveiled, Ford has been working on it for awhile as they initially submitted their proposal to the Unicode Consortium – which oversees and approves emojis – in 2018.
It would be easy to dismiss this as nothing more than a PR stunt for World Emoji Day, but the automaker says their emoji is the result of research and development which isn’t too dissimilar from how ‘real’ vehicles are developed. In particular, Ford’s North American design director said “Our team spent a lot of time digging through message boards, texting influencers and watching social media feeds to really understand our customers’ needs.” Craig Metros added, “People want a truck emoji that’s fresh, stylish, carries their ideas, and ‘tows’ the line on what a truck means.”
The resulting emoji is a blue, double-cab pickup with rounded fender flares and a tiny engine compartment. Like most emojis, it’s pretty generic but it does incorporate for Ford’s familiar split beltline on the front doors. The model also looks a bit like a bad E-Series van to pickup conversion.
The emoji might not be beautiful, but it’s been short-listed as a candidate for the next emoji update which is planned for early 2020. If it makes the cut, the emoji will be available on all mobile platforms.
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Joe Hinrichs, Ford’s president of automotive, said “Given the popularity of Ford trucks globally, there’s no one better than Ford to help bring an all-new pickup truck emoji to hard-working texters around the globe.” He added, “When customers started demanding a truck emoji, we knew we had to help make it happen,”