Ford’s Newest Creation: The Pickup Emoji

Picture this: you’re browsing through your phone’s emoji menu, looking for the perfect symbol to add to your text message or status update. Eventually, you cut your losses. It must not exist. Fear not! Ford has the solution.

For quite a while now (somewhere between two and three years depending on who you ask), Ford has been working to add a pickup truck emoji to cell phones everywhere. And they’re finally (maybe) getting their wish.

Expecting to hit a screen near you next year, the trucks will be found on both Apple and Android – if they’re approved, that is. At first glance, the caricature is seriously reminiscent of the Ford Ranger, and quite obviously coated in Ford Blue. But it begs the question, how have we gone this long without an emoji representing the most popular vehicles in the country?

Well, there’s something called the Unicode Consortium, and it is a volunteer organization that oversees the creation of every new emoji. It also regulates the symbols to ensure that they can be read across a variety of devices and platforms. While many corporations have attempted to add their own designs to the mix, many were unsuccessful, including Ford.

A volunteer for the group admitted that the truck emoji proposal was not mentioned to have been sponsored by Ford, which may or may not have helped it in its approval process.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson had a hand in bringing the emoji to life. The Rock, a hardcore Ford enthusiast and celebrity endorser, has been hinting at the creation via Twitter.

On Wednesday, the design was unveiled by Joe Hinrichs, president of automotive operations at Ford. The video, narrated by actor Bryan Cranston, can be seen above.

The truck joins a list of fresh emojis awaiting approval for addition to a phone near you in 2020.

If (hopefully when) the truck is approved, it will join 2,823 emojis already existing in the Unicode Standard.

“Transportation in general is like 12 different trains and no pickup truck emoji,” said Eric Grenier, Ford’s social media manager. “It’s a surprising thing to realize, especially when 5 billion emoji’s are sent everyday on Facebook messenger alone.”

Now all we need is a Mustang emoji, and we’ll be good to go.

About the author

Stephanie Davies-Bardekoff

Stephanie Davies-Bardekoff got her start in automotive media while attending Rutgers. She worked for Roush Performance for a while, before eventually landing here at Power Automedia. Her Coyote-swapped 1992 Fox-body drag car is her prized possession.
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