Regular And Extended Cabs Have Nearly Disappeared, But You Can Still Get Them On These Pickup Trucks

With all apologies to the extended Mercedes-Benz family — which claims to have invented both the car and the truck — we're not going to rehash the ultimate origins of self-propelled vehicles today. But we're on firmer ground talking about the first modern mass-produced truck and the person who came up with the term "pickup." In both cases, it was none other than Henry Ford.

He introduced the Model TT in 1917, and while this was primarily meant as a heavy-duty commercial truck, with a one-ton payload, it was also just a start. Ford brought out the light-duty Model T Runabout, complete with what he called a "pickup body," in 1925.

Rear doors weren't added to a truck cab until the late 1950s, and International Harvester gets the credit here. IH debuted the first truck with a back door in 1957 — although the total door count then was only three. The driver-side back-seat passenger didn't have one. Nonetheless, the Travellette could fit six people, and International would finally welcome a second full front door to create the modern crew cab in 1961. Note that this is different from extended- and double-cab trucks, which slot between regular- and crew-cab setups with more room behind the front row than the former, but less than the latter.

As more shoppers began choosing pickups for family vehicles over time, there was a definite shift in preferences. While tracking down solid recent figures isn't easy, crew cab models accounted for more than 80% of all pickups sold in model-year 2020. Nowadays if you don't want a crew cab, your choices are the Chevrolet Silverado, GMC Sierra, Ford F Series, Nissan Frontier, Ram trucks, and the Toyota Tundra/Tacoma.

We'll begin by looking a the big 3½, starting with the Silverado. Chevrolet's regular-cab models are available with either regular or long beds, but only for the WT work-truck trim. Double-cab Silverados, with full-size front doors and smaller rear ones, can be had in WT, Custom, LT, and RST trims. Naturally, these configurations are available for both light- and heavy-duty Silverados as well, plus they're matched on the GMC side with the same setups for Sierras. To be clear, GM's midsize trucks, the Chevy Colorado and GMC Canyon, are now only sold as crew-cab editions.

It's a similar story at Ford. The Blue Oval features a regular-cab F-150 in the base XL trim, and its SuperCab extended-cab models can be ordered in XL, STX, and XLT trim levels. Turning to the SuperDuty lineup, Regular-cab and SuperCab setups are on the menu for both XL and XLT trims. But like its crosstown rivals, Ford has foregone smaller cabs for its smaller truck. Both the Ranger and the compact unibody Mavericks are sold only with crew cabs.

Ram takes a slightly different approach to the cab business. The light-duty Ram 1500 may be available with a Hemi, but it isn't available with a regular cab at all. The two-door setup can be ordered for the HD Tradesman and Big Horn, however. You can then check out extended-cab layouts for the light-duty Tradesman, Big Horn, and Express, but not for the HD Rams. Instead, Ram upsizes its HD interiors to Mega Cab proportions as an option for the heavy-duty Laramie, Limited, and Limited Longhorn.

The pickings are even slimmer when we turn away from the traditional U.S. truck brands. Toyota supplies extended-cab entries for the lowest pair of full-size Tundra trims, the SR and SR5, but doesn't sell HD trucks in this country — so there aren't heavy-duty Tundras of any cab style. For the midsize segment, Toyota throws a wrench into the truck taxonomy by calling the Tacoma's extended cab an XtraCab, while the crew-cab Tacoma is known as the double cab, but again, the smaller cab is reserved for the cheap trims.

Nissan is next and last on our list with the Tacoma's close competitor, the Nissan Frontier. You can order the base-model Frontier S with the extended King Cab or a true crew cab, and the latter layout can be found across the lineup. Remember, if you're looking for the full-size Nissan Titan — or the fuller-size Titan XD — you need to look at used-truck listings. Nissan stopped producing them after the 2024 model year. Indeed, going the pre-owned route will give you access to regular- and extended-cab models from many of the trucks that don't have them now.

In addition, if you're dead-set on a pickup with a smaller cab, another option is to reserve an upcoming Slate electric truck, as the starter model is a regular-cab machine priced from $24,950. In fact, Slate will only sell its first truck with two doors and two seats, although you can get it with five seats with an SUV or Open-Air body style.