Sometimes you just want to keep on driving . . .
I’ve got the Ford F-150 Lariat double-cab pick-up here and I’m halfway to Toodyay, but need to turn back to make good on a promise at work. It’s a 2.5-tonne beast built for the open road but a big pussycat on suburban streets.
Why has it taken so long for me to get behind the wheel? The F-150 launched in Australia in 2023, imported from Detroit to Melbourne in left-hand drive and re-engineered to right-hand drive locally by Ford Australia and RMA Automotive, which is part of the Thailand-based RMA Group, in Mickleham. In the process, it’s been “torture-tested” at sub-freezing and searing temperatures and travelled some 135,000km in total in Australia — the equivalent of driving around the country nine times — through mud, slippery sand and water, with some of the world’s most punishing roads replicated in the laboratory at Ford Australia’s You Yangs Proving Ground, where the F-150’s driveline, steering, wheels and suspension were thrashed on a kinematics and compliance rig. Yes, this is our Day Drives vehicle that I’ve just picked up from John Hughes Ford in Shepperton Road, Victoria Park.
It’s no secret I love Ram trucks — and now I’m not sure whether I would choose an F-150 if it came to the crunch. You know how it is: you confide in each of your kids that they’re your favourite child and swear them to secrecy not to tell. Let’s just leave it at that.
VFACTS has the F-150 sitting on a 22.1 pe.