Ford F-150 Puts On Its Game Faces
In an attempt to keep a blue oval on America's best selling vehicle, Ford rolled out a fancy new F-150, due to hit the market in 2009. The top-line Platinum Edition will feature real brushed aluminum trim with an interior who luxe-ness negates the need for a Mark LT clone. The interior of all F-150s will feature softer plastics with fewer panel gaps. Outside, the new model will boast a tailgate step à la Super Duty and a side step, so you can get things out of the bed from the side. (Suggestion to Ford: make the damn bed sides lower already, so customers don't need stilts to reach their stuff.) Each of the four models from el cheapo work truck to blinged-out Platinum Edition will have different grilles; big spenders' egos will be flattered appropriately. The only really discordant design feature: the girly-looking headlights copped from the Edge. What was wrong with the macho design used on the Super Duty? Now that everyone knows what improvements the 2009 model offers, Ford's biggest challenge will be keeping their market share from dropping even more precipitously during the lame-duck 2008 model year.
Click for more TTAC photos of the new F-150
[Reported by Sajeev Mehta]
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I am not a truck guy. Indeed I think the world was a better place when only the 10% of drivers, who really need trucks, drove trucks. But it is not just misty colored memory that tells me that trucks have grown obscenely huger over the past 20/30 years. Congress has now mandated a fleet average of 35 mpg. Don't manufacturers need to shrink these monstrosities by a couple of feet and a thousand pounds? Wouldn't that just bring back truck sizes from a generation ago? And, how about a nice 3L 6cyl diesel to power them? I bet it would work just as well for hauling as the 5L V8s they now feature.
I had to laugh when the Super Duty's headlights were referred to as macho! They're the ugliest lamps this side of a Family Truckster
moawdtsi: We reserve the "boot" you speak of for those hiding weapons of mass destr...err...nevermind.