How do I override a taxonomy/term/% list with a view?
All of these answers are great solutions, and thanks for taking the time to provide such infomative answers.  Ashlar, your response taught me a lot about how taxonomy works works as well as the relationship between views and taxonomy.

I found a solution that works great for my situation, and I will share that in case it may help you guys too.

As I explained above, the my problem was that my view, with no argument, supplied the results I wanted, but the default taxonomy view with an argument, which was not what I wanted.

To solve this, I installed the module Taxonomy Display http://drupal.org/project/taxonomy_display.  I then reconfigured each view to have Taxonomy Term ID as an argument.

Taxonomy display lets you associate a vocabulary with a particular view. Now, when I click on vehicles/trucks, which is an alias for taxonomy/term/3, the view takes over and this is actually rendered correctly maintaining the integrity of the field structure.

If anyone wants to know more details about the configuration please let me know.