Ford has divulged that it delivered 6 F-150 pickups to 3 fleet clients beginning in 2011 with no telling them that the trucks’ beds were created from aluminum. The thought, of course, was to test the planned switch to the lightweight metal for the 2015 F-150
The 3 organizations knew they have been receiving prototype trucks, says Ford spokesman Mike Levine, but the automaker didn’t divulge how the trucks differed from those in showrooms. (Ford also hid the aluminum F-150 in plain view when it raced in the 2013 Baja 1000 you can read about that act of deception right here.)
“We wanted to test the truck outside, in the harshest conditions and in the hands of genuine customers, with no limits,” Ford stated in a release. “So when we gave them the prototype automobiles, we told them to use the trucks like their other . . . trucks, and we would be back to stick to their progress.”
The 2011 model F-150 trucks had been built with regular steel cabs and fitted with prototype aluminum cargo beds stamped to look identical to the steel 2011 units. The beds have been painted, but had been left unprotected otherwise. The trucks had been then loaned to Barrick Gold Corporation, a Nevada mining firm Walsh Construction, which put them to use at a hydroelectric dam in Pennsylvania and a freeway interchange project in Alabama and a North Carolina utility organization that assigned the trucks to crews that regularly ventured up mountain roads and off-road to replace and keep utility poles and study meters. Ford checked on the trucks each and every 3 months to see how they have been holding up and glean feedback from the customers.
The fleet operators noticed that the beds didn’t rust when the paint was scratched by way of. According to Levine, they also saw no cracking of the bed floors and observed that the bed mounts didn’t break, as often happened with the steel beds, especially at the gold mine. They also couldn’t stick magnets to the beds.
As a outcome of these tests, Ford says it made the floor thicker and it modified the tailgate design and style to make them a lot more sturdy for the 2015 F-150. The prototype trucks are nonetheless in use at the 3 firms, who had been lastly clued in to the secret at the 2015 F-150 reveal at January’s Detroit auto show. Sort of gives new which means to the term “embedded,” does not it?
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Ford Secretly Tested Its Aluminum F-150 Beds in the Genuine World—Starting in 2011
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