Among compact pickups two vehicles really stand out: The Dodge Dakota and the Ford Ranger (and clone Mazda B-Series). Dakota is the only one to offer a V8 engine and near-full-size cargo and towing capacity. Ranger is the most refined and probably the best daily use vehicle.

This year we are limiting our Recommended choices to the Toyota Tacoma. It's every bit as good as the Ranger in daily use, just a tad more expensive.

Sonoma is being redesigned for 2004 along with sibling Chevy S-10. The original target was 2003, but project snags have forced a delay. Engineering is being handled by General Motors affiliate Isuzu, but whether the Japanese company gets its own version is unclear. Isuzu's discontinued Hombre was based on the current S-10/Sonoma design. GM is spending some $700 million on improvements to the Shreveport, Louisiana plant that builds Sonoma and S-10. No word yet on styling, but it should differ more from the S-10 look than it does now. The next Sonoma should also differ more visually from GMC's latest midsize SUV, but will doubtless offer the new Envoy's 4.2-liter inline-6, as well as base 4-cyl and midrange 5-cyl versions of that Atlas "modular" engine.

More immediately, Sonoma will likely exchange 2-door extended-cab models for more variations of the 4-door Crew Cab introduced for '01. This style is fast dominating sales of all pickups regardless of size. We'd also expect GMC to add a "performance" Sonoma model in the mold of its full-size Sierra C3, with extra power and standard all-wheel-drive.

Like S-10, Sonoma calendar-year sales dipped in 2000 vs. 1999, the difference here being nearly 12 percent to just over 51,000. S-10 declined over 11 percent, but its volume is still roughly four times that of Sonoma.