Ford to Drop Diesel F-150 This Week
Sorry, diesel fans. Just three years after introducing a Power Stroke diesel for the F-150, Ford is dropping the diesel option.
And doing so with haste.
If you want to grab one of the last ones available, you have until Friday to do it.
Part of the problem, says Autoblog, is that the turbocharged gas options make more power and cost less than the diesel’s $4,995 price. They offer better towing capacity, to boot.
There’s also a hybrid model that is slightly cheaper, has slightly better towing, and is on par in terms of fuel economy.
Of course, diesel engines offer something gas engines don’t — low-end grunt.
While the diesel no longer seems to be the best powertrain option on paper, some buyers will still miss it. For the rest, special order by Friday or forever hold your peace.
Or, you know, save your dough for the upcoming Lightning.
[Image: Ford]
Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.
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“Part of the problem, says Autoblog, is that the turbocharged gas options make more power and cost less than the diesel’s $4,995 price. They offer better towing capacity, to boot.” That sentence reads like it was copied directly from a dishonest Ford press release. Of course they offer better towing capacity. When you manipulate the towing and capability numbers simply to drive sales numbers that is the result. Nobody actually believes the absolute garbage 5.4L could tow more than the 5.0L trucks but that’s how Ford decided to drive sales of the awful Ecobust trucks. What they won’t tell you is that not only was the diesel far more efficient than the Ecobust or Ecobust hybrid versions, but when doing actual work the fuel economy would still be impressive versus the Ecobust where the MPGs are abysmal. It’s a shame Ford hates the Diesel engine in the F150. It was one of two engines that are reliable and actually worth buying. The other is the 5.0L. The rest of the engines including the awful hybrid and laughably bad EV are just garbage. But we know Ford makes awful business decisions and intentionally pricing the diesel high and then wondering why nobody bought it is a self fulfilling prophecy. And now Ford can go around and say “See? Nobody bought it so we got rid of it.”
No surprise here. I've seen exactly *two* Power Stroke-equipped F-150s since they first came out, and that's here in truck-loving Texas. It might have been successful if EcoBoost weren't a thing. I find light truck diesels intriguing, but really, I'd never buy one. I do sometimes wish my Tacoma was a turbo diesel (for the fuel economy).
I've got a bad feeling about this.
So a publicly traded global corporation in a free-market late-stage capitalistic society that answers to shareholders made a business decision in a single country to improve profits by axing a poor selling engine at the end of the 2021 model year production run. The same corporation had to jump through burning hoops of regulatory fire during the Trump Administration to get the engine "certified." Somehow, Biden, who apparently actually isn't even in charge, is to blame for consumers not wanting to pay $5000 for the privilege of the said engine when it offers almost no advantage over other choices beyond, for a small subset of buyers, the fuel it uses. Check please!