Lifted Ford F-150 Review

Lifted trucks have their own crowd completely, a sect of the car community all on their own. They are like the people on that show LOST; they are on their own, and nobody knows where they are or how to interact with them. Even then, there are sectors within the lifted truck community. You have Ford, Chevy, and Ram. Then there are show trucks, work trucks, fast trucks, power trucks, stock trucks, and then there’s the never-ending war between gas and diesel trucks. All of which are under the individual umbrellas of the big three truck manufacturers. Personally, my favorite is show trucks, but not the kind when they are raised so high you need a pogo stick to get into. No, my favorite is the low-rider style. Slammed to the ground, big wheels, and preferably a bed powered by hydraulics, that can spin or do other crazy stuff. The kind that are more at home in Southcentral Los Angeles, rather than rural Ohio or Alabama.

Unfortunately for me, I did not get to drive this kind of truck. I had the opportunity to get behind the wheel of an extremely lifted Ford F-150, with massive wheels and tires that I rather undignifiedly had to use as a ladder to get inside. I have no idea what brand or exact size they were; I assume it was the Ultra Magnum XXL 4000 or something. However, my escapade was nothing compared to that of my friend Liz, who was doing the motor test with me. She is on the more unfortunate end of 5 ft tall, so watching her trying to get in was easily the funniest part of my day.

The reason behind testing this truck was, you guessed it, to write this article, and if I’m honest, I was bored, but also because the owner kindly asked me if I would like to give it a drive, and I just couldn’t resist. My friend and I met with the owner of the truck at a family friend’s used car dealership (not the sketchy kind) called Huber Automotive. I was not expecting to drive a lifted truck when we walked into a smaller, secondary showroom that was populated by an old Datsun racing car, as well as two old, near-as-makes-no-difference destroyed yet somehow gorgeous and tiny British sports cars.

Then the owner of the truck appeared, he instantly struck me as a sort of “man of the trucks” if you will. He had a beard and a ball hat on - no, he was not wearing a cowboy hat and overalls, you stereotyping monster, although one of those items was in the back seat. I’ll let you use your imagination as to which one it was.

When we finally finished climbing Mount Everest to get into the cabin and turned the key, the noise that emanated from the engine bay was nothing short of a biblical event. I think I heard tornado sirens blaring in the background because that is what this thing sounded like, but who knows if that is really the case. In terms of driving this machine, turning the thing onto the main street and through a small town gave me a fairly good idea of what it would be like to try to drive the moon. The steering has next to no feel at all, and the suspension is somehow both rock hard yet soft enough that you cannot tell if you are dropping a tire in the grass as you drive down the street. I constantly had this fear that I was going to run right over other cars completely, and even more scared that I wouldn’t notice the incident if it were to occur. That was on the freeway, the feeling was only amplified when we got into town. It was somehow claustrophobic yet the opposite at the same time, you are driving something so huge and you have tons of space inside, but your surroundings seem to close in on you. Then the inevitable happened, it caused the worst fear I had felt in a while; I made the mistake of making a wrong turn and had to make a three-point turn. A three-point turn which turned into a four-point turn, which then turned into a five-point turn. I would like to clarify that I am not a bad driver, this same thing happened to me earlier in the day in a Mercedes C300 coupe and it was perfectly capable of a three-point turn in the same amount of space.

However, there is something very appealing about this kind of truck. Yes, it is incredibly big, and hard to drive and in your face, but so is a Lamborghini, and everyone loves a lambo. That’s the exact thing that is so attractive about this thing, it is so silly, you can’t help but feel a pang of happiness from within. Although it does create a bit of an inner conflict as you see yourself in a window reflection on the side of a building and begin to resent the happiness because of what these things tend to represent...but I digress.

Before driving this truck, I was so judgmental about the community surrounding them and what these things stood for. However, I think I may have had something of a revelation. Now I completely get why these are so popular and why people build them; it makes you feel like a kid again. They resemble a Tonka toy and take you back to a time when things like gas prices and practicality didn’t mean anything. They resemble a time when the only objective was to have as much fun as possible, something this truck succeeds at perfectly. Driving around, you can see eye to eye with drivers of semitrucks and look clear over the heads of lesser mortals, a truly astonishing feeling. It makes you feel like the king of the road because, let’s face it, when you drive one of these, you pretty much are.