Pre-Review: 2009 Ford F-150

Justin Berkowitz
by Justin Berkowitz

This week, I went to Detroit on an all-expenses-paid junket extravaganza, where I drove the snot out of the new Ford F-150. What I took away from the experience, in addition to the F-150 (full review tomorrow) is twofold. First, Ford may have seriously lucked out on the 2009 F-150, because rather than focusing on peak horsepower, or acceleration, or size of wheels, or bling, or whatever else, it’s as though they’ve designed the truck pretty much directly for commercial users and heavy haulers. The people that actually need pickup trucks. Also known as “the only people that are going to continue buying pickup trucks in the forseeable future.” The F-150 performed extremely well in the proving grounds testing (Why wouldn’t it? Though I really liked the Chevy Silverado as well). Secondly, I’m not a fan of the Toyota Tundra. I drove it back to back with the Chevy Silverado, F-150, and Dodge Ram. The Tundra performed embarrassingly: TTAC has put in a call to Toyota to see if they want some kind of rebuttal.





Justin Berkowitz
Justin Berkowitz

Immensely bored law student. I've also got 3 dogs.

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  • Tdoyle Tdoyle on Oct 17, 2008

    As the current owner of an '05 F150, the problem is that it really isn't THAT much different looking than mine. Much of the same sheetmetal with the same door and roof stamping with an fairly fugly-front and non-descript rear. It isn't enough to make me trade...

  • Justin Berkowitz Justin Berkowitz on Oct 17, 2008

    @tdoyle: They'll give you $2000 if you do want to trade it. Owner loyalty, or something.

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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