Over the years, Ford has made some very cool trucks. The cool truck today on the performance front for Ford is the F-150 Raptor off-road truck. Years back, Ford made an on-road performance truck called the Ford F-150 Lightning. The pickups are still popular to this day as collector items and for their performance.
Later in Ford F-150 Lightning production, the trucks gained a supercharged 5.4-liter V8 making 360 horsepower, which isn’t much by today’s standards but was a lot of power in its day. The Ford F-150 Lightning of the era also had a slick side-exit exhaust that not only looked good but sounded very good to boot.
If you are a Ford F-150 Lightning fan, or if you just like the sound of a big V8 with a supercharger bolted onto it, both of these videos are worth a watch. The only Ford performance truck left in the line today is the F-150 Raptor. Ford stopped production of the Lightning in part because the F-150 had grown so large.
Several years back we talked to Ford Performance Vehicle Dynamics Technical Specialist Eric Zinkosky, and he told us that around 2006 Ford started looking at the performance truck for the new chassis and realized what a challenge the Lightning would be with a truck so large.
He said that braking was a particular concern as massive brakes would have been required along with a lot more power and larger tires. The F-150 Raptor was inspired by the Lightning program, so some of the legacy carries on. Naturally, enthusiasts will wonder why Ford can make an off-road performance truck that can jump and stop, why can it not rekindle the Lightning for street performance truck fans. Lady Gaga owns a pristine 1993 Ford F-150 Lightning, one of the early boxy designs.
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Source: Road & Track
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