Given the vehicles Europeans typically drive, pickups should be too large, too thirsty and too unrefined to gain any traction in the region. So why are Europe's automakers piling into the midsize pickup sector?
Renault, Fiat, Mercedes-Benz and, further into the future, PSA Group are all launching vehicles to take on current market leader Ford in a sector that has been traditionally dominated by the Japanese.
The European pickup market is still relatively small. In the first half 80,300 were sold across Europe, a third of which went to customers in the UK, the region's largest pickup market, according to data from market analysts JATO Dynamics.
In Germany, more than 10,000 pickups were sold and the third-biggest market, France, took 9,450.
These are minuscule numbers compared with the U.S., where 1.1 million full-size and 216,194 midsize pickups were sold over the same period, according to the Automotive News data center.