2005 Ford F-150 Lariat Test Drive
8/12/05
Bandwagon RiderChris and I jumped on the Employee Pricing bandwagon and headed to Ford to drive the best selling truck in America. We chose an F-150 Lariat Supercrew. It was almost fully loaded, missing only the 4x4 option, the upgraded stereo, and DVD entertainment.
The gas pedal isn’t as tightly sprung as my A4, which made me a bit jerky on the throttle at first. I goosed it, goosed it again, and then got the hang of it and goosed no more. The 5.4 liter V8 felt decently quick for a vehicle that size, but it probably won’t win many drag starts at red lights. The first time I tried to stop it I could feel how heavy it was, but I got the hang of it and didn’t notice again.
Driving the truck was easy. I pointed and it went. It’s a big vehicle, but not so big that I worried about hanging over into other lanes. The ride started out bumpy on the first road I headed down. It felt almost like a shimmy, so I asked about it. The salesman’s reply: “It’s a truck.” (Cue husband laughing hysterically.) Okay. Didn’t care much for “a truck” on that road, but on our freshly paved highway it was very smooth. To really give it a test we headed over to the Road that Eats Cars – a very rough section of road with a lot of joints and potholes. It rattled my teeth in the Chevy 2500 HD, but the F-150 handled it with ease. It was bumpy, but not unreasonably so.
Chris parked it on the lot (nowhere near any other vehicles, mind you, and slightly crooked), so I didn’t have the embarassment of trying to sandwich it back in between the other Supercrews. Parking it would probably not be easy, except that I park at the back of all parking lots anyway whenever possible. Parallel parking it actually would be pretty simple because of the ENORMOUS side mirrors that show everything you could wish to see.
Interior-wise, this was one nice truck. Tan leather with dark wood inserts set off the silver accents on the dashboard. The steering wheel leather felt higher quality than most and the rim was the perfect size. The seats were large and while I couldn’t get perfectly comfortable, I wasn’t really uncomfortable. Chris said later that it was because they were so big – just not designed for some who is 5’1” - they fit his 5’9” frame perfectly. Most of the controls were well laid out; the only problem I had was trying to manually tune a radio station. There’s a big knob-shaped button on the right side of the radio that looked like it should pop out and work as a tuning knob when I hit it (which I did repeatedly), but it doesn’t pop out or tune. This dealer removes antennas, so we couldn’t test the stereo.
The a/c vents are one area that could use some work, though. They don’t have high or low settings like most; they’re either wide open, or not pointed anywhere near you because if you close them at all, it changes where they aim. Weird. Chris never did get the hang of them and futzed with them the whole time he was in the truck. One fun thing about the a/c is that the fan speed and temperature control were on the steering wheel. Chris would turn the fan down, and I’d turn it right back up without moving my hands. Endless entertainment!
The model we drove had a console shifter instead of a column shifter. The salesman pointed that out and apparently it’s a big deal, but I wouldn’t even have thought about it otherwise. He said it gave the truck more of a luxury feel (Ford calls it “flow-through”). I thought the shifter itself was stupid looking – like a big, shiny, silver joystick on a shooting arcade game – and it doesn’t really matter to me where it is. The good news is that it’s an option. If you want captain’s chairs, you get the console shifter, and if you want a bench you get the column shifter.
The back seat in the Supercrew was amazing. I think it’s bigger than my A4’s back seat, and also very comfortable. There are a/c vents in the back and power windows, instead of old school pop-out windows (thank goodness!). The seat benches are split 60/40 and easily fold up to reveal quite a bit of storage space. If you opt for the stereo with subwoofer, it goes under the 60 side and there goes some of the storage. Both the front and back seats were pretty easy to get into, although the threshold was noticeably wide. In a tight parking lot you might have trouble opening the doors enough to clear the threshold.
If you’re on the short side, the running boards are a blessing. I had a hard time getting into a different model that didn’t have them (it didn’t have grab handles either). A $350 option (for the chrome ones) that’s well worth it.
When this new truck model was first introduced, I hated the new tall bed. It just makes the trucks look huge. It’s grown on me, however, and now I think they look more proportionate than most other large trucks. Usually you have a very large cab with a tiny little bed stuck on the back, but now with the Fords you have a very large cab with an equally large bed stuck on. One problem, though, is that I can’t actually reach in over the side. In fact, on the 4x4 models, I can’t even see over the side. But when I dropped the tailgate on the 4x2, the rear bumper is low enough that I could easily get a foot up and hoist myself into the bed.
I came away from the drive impressed. The Lariat felt more like an SUV that happened to have a bed then it did a truck. It was comfortable, well appointed, and easy to drive. And with employee pricing and a $3000 rebate (current offer, subject to change), this is also one hell of a deal.