So, I don’t know if it’s still an issue but I know the whole land yacht thing started because of emissions standards. The US used to (they might still) set emissions standards based on wheel base rather than vehicle type. The larger the wheel base the looser the emissions standards. The thought was that vehicles that needed a larger wheelbase like large work trucks would always have higher emissions so they wanted to take that into account. But what actually happened is manufacturers just started making larger and larger vehicles to take advantage of the more lax emissions standards.
I think the wheelbase based emissions standards thing has been fixed now, but I don’t know where I heard that so it might even still be a thing.
If you look at actual comparable bed length and cab type, you realise that outside of height, truck dimensions haven’t increased that much (especially not compared to car sizes, ex.: the mk6 Jetta is the size of the Passat from 10 years prior).
So, I don’t know if it’s still an issue but I know the whole land yacht thing started because of emissions standards. The US used to (they might still) set emissions standards based on wheel base rather than vehicle type. The larger the wheel base the looser the emissions standards. The thought was that vehicles that needed a larger wheelbase like large work trucks would always have higher emissions so they wanted to take that into account. But what actually happened is manufacturers just started making larger and larger vehicles to take advantage of the more lax emissions standards.
I think the wheelbase based emissions standards thing has been fixed now, but I don’t know where I heard that so it might even still be a thing.
If you look at actual comparable bed length and cab type, you realise that outside of height, truck dimensions haven’t increased that much (especially not compared to car sizes, ex.: the mk6 Jetta is the size of the Passat from 10 years prior).