Samples of genuine valor in the car business are uncommon, as the cosmic stakes included with any new vehicle program have a tendency to create progressive, play-it-safe considering. Portage, which has a long history of building autos and trucks to the penny, has reliably demonstrated the guideline with few special cases, the most prominent of which is the first Taurus.
Presently comes the aluminum 2015 F-150, a bet so enormous, so brave, that it overwhelms the Taurus and even the flathead V-8 in Portage's constrained pantheon of gigantic danger taking. The F-arrangement pickup, with more than 600,000 sold in a decent year, is Passage's bank, its brilliant goose. Portage's F-arrangement business alone could qualify as a Fortune 100 organization simply that one product offering. Administrators or Executives tamper with it at their great peril. So when this stacked, $61,520 Platinum SuperCrew moved up, a 19.3-foot-long landmark in steel and twice-as-costly aluminum that changes all the principles in the truck business to set another benchmark check weight in the half-ton pickup class, we expected singing heavenly attendants and a brilliant spotlight. Rather, the truck simply sat there all glossy from a crisp wash, its 3.5-liter twin-turbo V-6 sitting without moving quietly. The new F-150’s styling takes the Tonka Truck theme that Ford has been playing with for several years to even greater heights, literally. The Platinum’s three-bar grille is a vertical and much higher wall of chrome and mesh that reminds us of an industrial air conditioner or Goliath’s electric razor. You gotta want a truck with a big, square face that looks unabashedly like industrial equipment to go for the vibe that the F-150’s putting out.
Walking around this full-boat Platinum, you get the sense that a minivan team, which racks its collective brain to come up with new doodads for separating their box from everyone else’s boxes, was detailed to this truck to separate it from everybody else’s four-door pickup. As before, the F-150’s bed walls are high, but mechanical pop-out steps just aft of the cab allow anyone to scramble over the side. They deploy via a mechanical plunger on heavy, stamped-steel arms capable of withstanding a rock blow, and it takes some effort to push them back into the locked position with your foot.More bunk access is incorporated with the tailgate, with a hideaway stair step stuffed into the board. Pull it and the going hand in hand with collapsing handrail out to securely scale into the bunk. It looks clever and shrewd, such as something Q Limb would devise, until you understand that Chevrolet fulfills basically the same thing with basic set patterns for feet and submits the corners of the back guard and bedsides. Do cowboys rustlers need handrails? We opened the F-150’s massive door, watched the faired-in running board glide down on electric arms—watch your shins!—and stepped in. Compared with the more carlike Chevrolet Silverado, you sit higher in the F-150, with a commanding view over the dash and all you survey. And in the Platinum 4x4, there’s a lot to survey. For the $55,980 base price, you get full Sync with MyFord Touch including an 8.0-inch high-def center-console screen plus a second 4.2-inch “productivity screen” between the gauges operated by thumb controls on the steering wheel. There are leather power-adjusted mega-thrones, a power tilt and telescoping wheel that is also heated, voice-activated dual-zone climate control, remote tailgate release from the key fob, a power sliding rear window, and other things that range riders didn’t know they needed. A $900Technology pack adds a 360-degree camera system, lane-keeping assist, and dynamic hitch assist that helps guide you backward to a waiting trailer. A twin-panel moonroof is the most expensive option, at $1295. If there’s anything else this truck needs, it probably requires a separate license and a federal background check.
Clearly, Ford trades back some of its weight savings with more luxury gear, and this, basically the heaviest of all 2015 F-150s, presses the scales to the tune of 56000 pounds. While that makes the F-150 the lightest among the loaded luxury pickups we’ve recently tested, it only undercut an all-steel Silverado High Country 4x4 crew cab we tested last winter by a mere 90 pounds, or just a big dinner down at the local choke-n-puke. You’re entitled to wonder why Ford had to fuss with aluminum when using alloy merely got its curb weights down to those of its fiercest competitor.
Ford will no doubt say that additional payoff comes from chassis stiffness and cabin-noise suppression, and the Platinum is indeed the most like a luxury sports sedan of any pickup we’ve ever driven. The ride is generally placid and the cab is remarkably free of road and wind noise. Goose the 365-hp twin-turbo V-6 and the sound coming from both the engine and the stereo speakers tasked with improving the engine’s voice make a stirring, staccato thrum that is the closest a pickup will ever come to sounding like a Porsche.Twin turbos on a little motor work their enchantment, supplying a staggeringly expansive and thick torque band that starts just off unmoving. The F-150 hits 60 mph in a strikingly armada (for a square long pickup) 5.6 seconds. That is only 1.1 seconds slower than another 2015 Bronco GT we simply tried. We additionally saw great numbers in the ceasing test (179 feet) and on the skidpad (0.75 g), however the dedicated V-6 returned mileage just barely coordinating the most recent Silverado guinea pig's 6.2-liter little square, at 16 mpg. There's no denying that the 3.5-liter is an enchantment machine, making tremendous and refined force from only 213 cubic inches. In any case here once more, Portage appears to take a confused course to attain to comparable results as Chevy.
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