Cloth bench? Luxury! The ones I remember were vinyl. And what do you mean a mono AM radio is crappy?

I have a 2 door late 2000’s Ford Ranger I’ve been driving for the past decade. Crank windows and the vinyl seats are falling apart and it’s my favorite vehicle I’ve ever owned. Low maintenance costs: only had one actual mechanical problem, bad coil pack, since I’ve owned it and I’ve had the sway bar replaced but otherwise nothing. other than that it’s only been batteries, oil and tires and registration/insurance. I bought a $200 vinyl tonneau cover off of Amazon a few years ago and the utility of the thing is just amazing for the price (I paid around $6000 USD for it in 2012). I recently replaced the crappy radio with a $40 unit with Bluetooth.

I’ve been interested in upgrading it as it’s kind of getting old now and it would be nice to get something with CarPlay without having to do a retrofit but the main killer feature that’s just not available on consumer trucks anymore is the bed size. It’s extremely rare to find a truck with the features I want that still have a 6 ft bed size. There are so many things I haul around that fit exactly into that bed length

For brand-new trucks, both GM (Chevy/GMC) as well as Ford make half-ton trucks with a regular cab and six-foot bed, which is the closest thing to what your Ranger and can be optioned with CarPlay. Ram, unfortunately, stopped selling the regular cab 1500 Classic as of the last model year.

Used availability varies, of course, but used cars are such a silly deal at the moment compared to new car pricing that it may not make sense.

I'm a big fan of those "shorty" trucks.

All of the mid-size trucks (Tacoma, Ranger, Frontier) have 6 foot bed versions. Unfortunately they don't make the traditional pickup single row seat versions anymore, but you can still get a two door model with the little back seats.

Yeah, I've got a 2016 Tacoma TRD OR Access Cab (6' box, tiny back seat with suicide doors) and it has been absolutely fabulous. The little back seats are big enough for my nephews or my dogs... not so much our wives when we went on a couples' hiking trip.

They also don't have a max load or tow rating. People frequently tow campers with them in "FFR" mode

I will say towing with my weak 2.3L engine is pretty comical. I have a hitch but it can’t pull much more than a flatbed trailer or a small sized UHaul. I suspect as long as you never took it on the highway though you might be able to really tow something of decent size with it, with the expectation you’d never be able to get it to go over 45 MPH.

It constantly does way more than I would expect though. I took it up a few mountains in Colorado and its little 2WD was going over rocky roads that you would basically otherwise need a Jeep to handle. Maybe that’s how I broke my sway bar.

You can still buy them, but when they're gone, they're gone. After Ford stopped the Ranger, nobody has sold a US market regular cab compact pickup truck.

You can get a regular cab F-150, or similar, and you can get a smaller truck with a tiny bed and two rows of seats.

This seems unlikely to make it here, but my hope is someone bring something like it here. It will probably need to be electric to meet cafe standards, but I'd prefer hybrid.