The Ford F-150 was the best-selling automobile in America final 12 months and the 12 months earlier than that. And the 12 months earlier than that. You’d have to return many years to discover a 12 months that the F-150 didn’t dominate gross sales in a technique or another, however America’s love affair with four-door vehicles took off within the early aughts, when Ford debuted the primary full-size pickup with 4 doorways in 2000 — a lot to my chagrin.
I’m kidding. I used to be a fan of the 2001 Ford F-150 SuperCrew as a result of it seemed like my household’s F-150 SuperCab (or prolonged cab) however with 4 doorways and a stubby little mattress. Even although four-door vehicles had been round earlier than the brand new millennium, Ford bought away with calling the F-150 the “first” full-size (half-ton) double cab because of its weight ranking and its front-hinged rear doorways, as Car And Driver wrote upon the truck’s launch:
In reality, the corporate unabashedly attaches that precise phrase —”first” —to the brand new F-150 SuperCrew, regardless that Nissan’s Frontier crew cab and the Dodge Dakota Quad Cab rolled onto the scene a bit earlier. How can this be? Simple. The F-150 SuperCrew is the primary full-size crew cab with a gross automobile weight ranking (GVWR) of lower than 8500 kilos. See? The Dakota crowds F-150 turf, each in energy and work ethic, nevertheless it’s simply sufficiently small to qualify as a compact.
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Be that as it could, the important thing to the F-150 SuperCrew —ditto for the Frontier crew cab and Dakota Quad Cab —is straightforward: To accommodate the additional set of sedan-style doorways, the cab was stretched. And to maintain general size in test, the cargo field —sheet metal inside, composite exterior, an business first —was shortened.
The C&D assessment of the revolutionary F-150 SuperCrew goes on to elucidate that Ford’s “traditional” crew cab was the F-Series Super Duty, or F-350, which differed from Ford’s mild responsibility vehicles in significant methods, resembling dealing with. Before the F-150 SuperCrew, driving a full-size truck with 4 doorways meant shifting round a a lot bigger and unwieldy automobile. Kind of like in the present day.
The 2001 F-150 SuperCrew bought round this by extending its cab size by one foot, and decreasing its mattress size by 11.6 inches to yield a truck with the identical 138.5-inch wheelbase because the F-150 SuperCab. You might haul extra folks, albeit much less cargo within the SuperCrew’s 67.2-inch mattress. But the tradeoff was hardly a sacrifice in any respect in response to truck consumers within the U.S., and the remaining is historical past.
I assumed the unique F-150 SuperCrew was nice, and the early mannequin was not but outsized nor menacing. I couldn’t have know, nonetheless, that it will be one of many main components behind full-size sedans dying off in ensuing years. By 2000, the U.S. was already in love with SUVs however the full-size four-door truck handily took over gross sales and has been within the lead ever since.
Folks who purchased single cabs began shopping for prolonged cabs. And those that went for prolonged cabs traded in for double cabs, together with my circle of relatives. Looking again on the 2001 F-150 SuperCrew, the truck was remarkably quick in comparison with in the present day’s vehicles — which means it was nonetheless straightforward to load and unload.
The introduction of the FX4 mannequin gave the F-150 a average raise and paved the best way for off-roaders just like the Raptor. Comparing a first-gen F-150 FX4 and fashionable F-150 Raptor is jarring, however the development is obvious. The first F-150 SuperCrew can be the origin of high-end pickup vehicles, in response to Motor Trend.
The tenth-generation F-150 is when Ford first launched the King Ranch (additionally as a SuperCrew) which went on to encourage others to make costly vehicles that rivaled luxurious vehicles. The first SuperCrew mainly modified our automotive panorama within the 12 months 2000, like Y2K however with F-150 as an alternative. For higher or worse, it launched fashionable vehicles — as we all know them — to the U.S. market.
Source: jalopnik.com