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Story by Jack Baruth

Hey, club racers! Are you interested in envy? Would you like to be envied by others? Sure you would; you’re only human, after all, and there’s nothing more human than a bit of showing-off. Here’s the problem, though: the world of amateur racing is full of money. Like, chock-full of it. Like, some guy brought a friggin’ Daytona Prototype to Mid-Ohio for a NASA race last month, and he Didn’t. Even. Win. Fast cars, shiny parts, and perfectly polished trophy wives are part and parcel of the club racing scene. Think your Gallardo will wow the crowd? Forget it; there was a Superleggera here two weeks ago. Maybe a Ferrari Scuderia? That’s the second one we’re seen here today.

No, if you want real envy – the kind of envy that causes people to talk about you when you leave the lunch table – you need a serious race rig. We’re in the middle of a tow-vehicle arms race out here. It used to be you could get some attention with an F-250 Crew Cab or a Cayenne S. Not any more. Shiny new one-ton trucks used to pull the eyeballs in your direction, but today they’re thick on the ground. To win this battle – to assert your supremacy over the guy in the next paddock space before you do so much as clip an apex – it’s gonna take a new level of heavy-duty.

Towards that end, Ford has performed some cut-and-paste in their Super Duty Lego Set and created the F-450 Crew Cab 4×4 Dual Rear Wheel King Ranch. To understand the truck, we have to take all those designations in order. First, F-450. That means a commercial-class front axle that is six inches wider than what you’d find in a standard Super Duty, a shorter turning radius courtesy of big steering angle, and a unique suspension design to make twelve-ton towing loads easily controllable. Next, we have Crew Cab. There have been F-450 Crew Cabs in the past, but now we have one with a regular eight-foot pickup bed attached, courtesy of wider rear frame rails. 4×4: electronic shift-on-the-fly to drag those big trailers out of slick situations. Dual Rear Wheel: it’s a necessity for serious fifth-wheel hauling, plus it just plain looks cool. King Ranch: Ford has now made its highest trim level, complete with free-range-look leather and country-club-friendly two-tone paint, available on the F-450. The result is a truck that pushes all the buttons, combining a previously-unavailable 24,000-pound tow rating with an Expedition-style level of interior ambiance.

Among club racers, this big hauler, dipped in Dark Copper Clearcoat Metallic, drew more attention than a stack of free Hoosier DOT-R tires. It was the talk of the paddock wherever it went, even rating an admiring mention from the event director in the driver’s meeting on the first Saturday we took it to the track. We’d come back from yet another frustrating qualifying session to find drivers aimlessly circling the F-450, poking their heads into a window or crawling underneath the front suspension to marvel at the sheer size of the components. There were few questions, because this was an educated crowd and they knew exactly what they were looking at, but there was plenty of admiration and, yes, envy.

Was it justified? Is it worth paying more than sixty-one-thousand dollars for a tow vehicle? To find out, we made a cross-country two-weekend journey between track weekends, using the infamously demanding Interstate 68 as our primary thoroughfare. I-68, the so-called “Home Of The Seven Percent Grade”, demands the absolute most from a tow rig. And since we were in a hurry, we wouldn’t be sparing the horses, either. Sure, the F-450 looks like the perfect race rig. Did it deliver? Hell, yes.

Continue reading Towin’ Speed:Sport:Life – Ford F-450 King Ranch 4×4 DRW – As good as it gets.

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Story by Jack Baruth, Photograph by “Neon” Dave Everest

As the sun hit high noon, me and my gang here – er, my race crew and I – rolled into the little town of Johnstown, Ohio to stir up a little trouble. Well, we had some seam-welding to do on our new Plymouth Neon race car, but make no mistake, if trouble showed up, we’d be ready for it. This here town was gonna learn right quick not to mess with us, and they were gonna learn right from the jump, if you know what I mean. In order for the local slobs to understand the kind of dangerous criminals we were, however, it was critical that we immediately show blatant disrespect for the local law enforcement, pronto. As we began to descend the long hill down into Johnstown’s main stoplight, I happened to see a sign on the side of the road.

“NO ENGINE BRAKE” was what that there sign done said. Well, we’d show ‘em something. We’d show ‘em that we don’t hold with no law whatsoever, least of all some small town law. With the maximum possible amount of calculated disregard, I callously depressed a small button on the center console of our mighty Ram 3500. The pictogram was a little tough to understand – it showed what looked like an ear of corn trapped inside a set of concentric circles – but the effect of the button was plain the moment I let off the throttle on the way down into the central square.

“BRAAAAAAAAAAAP! BRAAAAAAAAP!” That’s right – the newest six-point-seven-liter variant of the legendary Cummins diesel engine has a flippin’ engine brake. We shouldn’t call it a “Jake Brake” – that’s a registered trademark of Jacob Vehicle Systems – but I guarantee you that everyone with whom we spoke during our test of this monster truck used the phrase. As we cheerfully engine-braked our way into the small town, I happened to see a local cop coming the other way. Oh crap. I was about to get seriously busted for engine braking. How was I going to explain it to Johnny Law? We weren’t even towing anything. The bed was empty. I had no reasonable excuse to do it. I was going to do thirty days in a roach-infested jail cell just for pressing a button with a graphic suspiciously resembling an ear of corn! Why, oh why, did I have to show off for my gang? We’re not even really a gang!

Continue reading Truckin’ Speed:Sport:Life – 2008 Dodge Ram 3500 4×4 Bluetec – Holy ****, it’s got a Jake Brake!

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Story by Jack Baruth

In 1958, David Ogilvy created perhaps the most famous advertisement in history. Titled, “At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock”, it made his reputation and permanently established Rolls-Royce’s reputation in the American consciousness. It featured nineteen technical points of interest, the last of which is reproduced below:

#19. The Bentley is made by Rolls-Royce. Except for the radiators, they are identical motor cars, manufactured by the same engineers in the same works. The Bentley costs $300 less, because its radiator is simpler to make. People who feel diffident about driving a Rolls-Royce can buy a Bentley.

So now we have before us the Ford Expedition King Ranch. It’s fifty thousand dollars and offers a set of luxury features virtually identical to the flashier, more expensive, urban-hip-hop-video-darling Lincoln Navigator. What’s the point of offering an Expedition with a Navigator’s level of bling? Is it the return of fake luxury? Who would buy a Ford when they could buy a Lincoln? Well, perhaps Mr. Ogilvy hit the nail on the head with his 1958 advertisement. People who feel diffident – that is, hesitant or concerned – about being seen in a Navigator can buy a King Ranch.

As usual, Ford has come up with a powerfully evocative name for this subtly elegant monster. If there is a place on the map which is spiritually farthest away from the bass-thumping downtown Detroit streets where Kwame Kilpatrick famously twirled the wood-rim steering wheel of his tinted-out Navigator, it must be the massive King Ranch, a four-parcel legend which dates back more than a hundred and fifty years and covers more ground than Rhode Island. The flying-W brand of the ranch decorates the Expedition’s characterful dark brown leather seats and center console. It’s a place, and a sentiment, very much in tune with Ford’s heartland image.

We don’t believe in “suspenseful” reviews, so there’s no harm in confessing that we came to admire – even love – this big-hearted truck over the course of our seven-day test. We’re so charmed that we’ve asked to get another one in “EL” specification before the end of the year, and at least one member of our staff has been seen building one for himself on Ford’s website. After a few days spent driving the all-new GMC Yukon earlier this year, we didn’t think that Ford’s revised-and-more-than-full-sized SUV would measure up, but the truth of the matter is that the Ford blows the new GMC and Chevrolet away, from the baroque majesty of its enormous angled grille to the admirable engineering of its independent rear suspension. But enough of this. We came to tow.

Continue reading Towin’ Speed:Sport:Life – 2008 Ford Expedition King Ranch – Absolute torch and twang.

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Story by Jack Baruth – Disturbingly poor photography by Jack Baruth

And… we’re back! The reaction to the first Towin’ Speed:Sport:Life article has been good, so it appears that we weren’t totally crazy to think that a lot of our readers are dragging various clapped-out race cars to tracks and events across the country. With that in mind, then, we’re trying again, this time with an epic 1,400-mile journey to the SCCA Solo National Tour event in Atlanta, Georgia. Last time we had a positively luxurious Lariat Crew Cab, but this time we’ve got a truly hardcore tow rig – a regular-cab, diesel-powered, six-speed manual F-250 4×2 in XLT trim.

Once upon a time, regular-cab trucks were pretty cramped affairs, causing taller drivers to assume all sorts of odd positions on the completely flat vinyl bench seats common to most trim levels. At 6′2″, your humble tester found his 1995 F-150 Regular Cab to be a real bow-legger of a truck – and the competition was even worse in that regard. It’s hard to look cool in your new rig while simultaneously rubbing your earlobes with your knees, and as a result, over the last ten years the market share for extended-cab and crew-cab body styles has risen to the point that most Ford dealers don’t bother to stock any regular-cab Super Duty trucks on their lots. Note, also, that unlike the F-150 Regular Cab, which now has a reasonably-sized cargo area complete with mini-window behind the door, the Super Duty is still an old-school short-cab.

The rarity of regular-cab Super Duty trucks means that we instantly achieved hardcore trucker status the moment we stepped up into our test rig, but this particular truck had a few more features to endear itself to non-sissies everywhere. To begin with, we had the monstrous PowerStroke diesel, complete with six hundred and fifty pound-feet of torque. That’s like having a Lamborgini Murcielago and a Mazda RX-8, torque-wise. With that much twist, accompanied by the angry compression-ignition rattle and audible turbo spool on each shift, we were tempted to start demanding access to the “professional driver” showers at our local Pilot station – but just to make sure we felt totally hardcore, Ford thoughtfully provided the truck with a six-speed manual transmission. Make no mistake – were Ernest Hemingway still alive today, he would insist on having the shift-it-yourself model. He would note with immense satisfaction that the eighteen-inch-long shift lever and super-vague gating makes every shift a voyage of discovery, while nodding approvingly at the amount of double-clutching required to uncork the PowerStroke’s savage pull up a long hill or smoke a Civic Si at the stoplight outside a movie theater. He’d also probably be completely cool with the regular cab, noting that the slightly pinched interior would still be more luxurious than the ambulance he drove in The Great War. The only question would be: in an era of male manicures, would we be able to cope with Hemingway’s truck?
Continue reading Towin’ Speed:Sport:Life – 2008 Ford F-250 4×2 Regular Cab XLT PowerStroke – Hemingway’s choice.

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Story by Jack Baruth – Photography by Dave Everest and Jack Baruth

Welcome to the first installment of Towin’ Speed:Sport:Life. In this series, we will be trying out different trucks with just one purpose in mind: towing to races and other auto events. We aren’t going to talk about residual value, slalom speed, or global warming – we’ll save that for the mainstream press, who typically “review” these rigs by driving little Austin and MacKenzie to their local Goddard School. Instead, we’re loading them up and running them hard. Each review will focus on Ten Important Questions For Your Race Rig, which isn’t a trademarked phrase as far as we know. Without further ado, then, let’s meet our truck: the 2008 Ford F-250 Super Duty 4×4 Crew Cab Lariat Styleside Triton V-10 156″ Wheelbase. Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it?

The Super Duty pickups were kind-of-new for 2008, featuring a revised frame, upgraded interiors, and a new front end designed to produce involuntary urination in five out of six Prius drivers. The list of options and configurations possible in a Super Duty makes for literally millions of possible combinations, and we’ll be trying more of them in the next year, but for now we decided to start with a variant that is relatively common among club racers – the 4×4 crew cab. Although having four-wheel-drive in a tow rig seems like a waste of money and fuel economy, it only took one start in wet grass to convince us of the benefits. Since then, we’ve found plenty of uses for 4×4 in towing, including backing the trailer up a steep hill, using the Low Range to tow a disabled race car out of the weeds, and dragging a stuck trailer out of six inches’ worth of mud. We’re not the only people to understand this, so more and more Super Duties are showing up at the races with the “4×4 Off Road” sticker on their beds.

Where this truck does deviate from standard club racer doctrine, however, is in the short bed and 6.8L V-10 gasoline engine. For the committed race driver, bed space is like money in the bank. It’s just not possible to have too much. However, this F-250 has a trick up its sleeve to help bridge the gap, as well see. We were also a little unsure about the Triton V-10, which serves up 362hp at a relatively lofty 4750 rpm and 457 lb-ft of torque at 3250 revs. Compare that to the 6.4L Powerstroke’s 350 horses at 3000rpm and 650 lb-ft of torque at a basement-level 2000 rpm, and it’s easy to see why many racers choose the diesel. Could the V-10 compete? Let’s ask the questions and find out.

Continue reading Towin’ Speed:Sport:Life – 2008 Ford F-250 4×4 Crew Cab Lariat 6.8L V-10 – Who needs a diesel?