Ford F-150 reviews

2006 Ford F-150 Driving Impressions

The Ford F-150 offers a ride that's smooth and firm, with a minimum of body roll in corners, and a nice, plush ride over cobbled pavement, rutted dirt roads, and freeway slabs. We found this to be true in all the models we drove. Among them: an XLT SuperCab 4WD, a Lariat SuperCab 2WD Styleside with a 6.5-foot bed, an XL with a standard cab, and an FX4 SuperCrew. We were delighted by the ride of the FX4. It seems smoother than most off-road pickups. It offered a firm but comfortable ride around Los Angeles even with no weight in the bed to pre-load the rear suspension.

The power rack-and-pinion steering in the F-150 is exemplary. It's responsive, without hesitation or delay, and without being darty or overly quick or nervous. The truck tracks like a laser beam, turns in quickly, and recovers quickly even with no load in the bed.

The F-150's excellent ride and handling are benefits of a frame that's fully boxed with hydroformed front rails. The seven-crossmember skeleton is stronger, stiffer and heavier than any previous Ford pickup frame. The current frame is nine times more resistant to twisting and 50 percent more resistant to bending than the C-channel frame used up through 2003.

The front suspension is a double-wishbone setup for both 2WD and 4WD models. The rear suspension has outboard shock absorbers to control rear-end motions better in quick maneuvers. The outboard shock position provides better control on washboard surfaces, reducing the tendency to skate around in bumpy corners. The rear leaf springs are three inches wide. Liquid-filled motor mounts and a long list of other measures keep vibration and noise to a bare minimum.

Braking is smooth and responsive. They start slowing the truck just a little way into the pedal travel, and the more you push the pedal, the more acute the braking becomes; the absence of dead space in the pedal travel is a welcome relief from typical truck practice. All F-150s come with four-wheel vented disc brakes and ABS.

We found the big 5.4-liter V8 smooth and quiet. Rated at 300 horsepower and 365 pound-feet of torque, it delivers quick acceleration, although it doesn't seem as responsive as the 5.6-liter V8 in the Nissan Titan. The F-150's 5.4-liter V8 is part of Ford's Triton engine series, and features a single overhead camshaft per cylinder bank, three valves per cylinder, and variable valve timing. EPA estimates for a 5.4-liter F-150 with 2WD are 15/19 mpg City/Highway. A flexible-fuel (gasoline/ethanol) version of the 5.4 is also available for the 2006 model year. The high-capacity 4R75E four-speed automatic transmission that comes with the 5.4 is smooth and responsive, downshifting quickly and crisply when you punch it, and shifting almost seamlessly when cruising.

The 4.6-liter Triton V8 also features aluminum overhead-cam heads, but with a more conventional two valves per cylinder. Rated at 231 horsepower and 293 pound-feet of torque, it offers a broad torque band, with 90 percent of its peak torque available at just 2000 rpm for strong towing performance and solid acceleration when hauling heavy loads. The 4.6-liter is also rated 15/19 mpg.

The 4.2-liter V6 is an attractive option for work trucks. It's a nice, smooth engine of the traditional pushrod-overhead-valve kind, and we liked the XL model we drove with it, though performance is sluggish by modern standards. The V6 is rated at 202 horsepower and 260 pound-feet of torque. A V6 2WD automatic rates 16/20 mpg; with a five-speed manual transmission, city mileage actually drops to 15 mpg.

The Harley-Davidson edition comes with a suspension biased further toward precision handling. The 5.4-liter V8 comes with a unique exhaust tuned for more hot-rod rumble. The available all-wheel-drive (AWD) system is electronically controlled and continuously monitors throttle position and wheel speeds to determine how much power to shift from the rear wheels to the front.