WR Fleet: Breakfast with the 2008 Ford F-150
The fine people of the Ford Motor Company delivered a 2008 F-150 Lariat to us this morning for a one-week stay in the WINDING ROAD fleet. Fresh off the line, this F-150 is about as fully loaded as anyone could want. Upon entering the F-150 for the first time, we found a fresh box of Froot Loops cereal in the passenger seat and were curious about this seemingly random finding. However, a dive into Ford’s media site revealed the answer.
(Click the images below to open a high-resolution gallery, and click through the jump to find out why this F-150 included a box of cereal.)
Ford began a promotion this past Labor Day involving popular Kellogg’s cereals and what Ford calls their “best lineup of vehicles ever.
Comments
Clint
So Ford is trying to rebuild its brand image by offering its cars as prizes from cereal boxes? Hmm ...
Hopefully their cars are a bit more durable than the cheap plastic toys I dug out of Froot Loops boxes when I was a kid. Also, I hope the cars manage to be entertaining for more than ten seconds and actually turn out to be as cool as the picture on the back of the box, which are things most cereal prizes fail to achieve.
Targeting the cereal-buying demographic makes sense if you think about it, but it certainly is an odd marketing move.
GeoSB8K
Steve, they could have least gotten you guys the variety pack. Cheap bastards...
CHARLES G.
Time was, you'd open a cereal box and get a toy inside. Now, you open the truck and get a box of cereal.
John Carder
Looking at the pictures, it sums up what's gone wrong with pickup trucks. They used to be simple, reliable tools.
The most obvious silliness is the automatic transmission. Trucks get lousy mileage, a clutch helps them get better mileage, and some of us prefer the control. You can still order a 5-speed, but they're rarer than hen's teeth.
Can you see anyone working construction or logging climbing into that fancy interior at the end of the day, covered with all the grime of an honest day's labor?
It kind of reminds me of the Coke/Pepsi surveys. Pepsi has more sugar, so it always wins in a sip of each taste. The same people who are surveyed still buy more Coke than Pepsi because it's what they want. If you ask somebody whether he wants a truck with or without a small option, most will say they prefer the option. That doesn't mean that they want a truck that's loaded to the gills with options.
Steve K.
It's a Ford. It would take alot more than a box of Fruit Loops to get me to buy one. The interior still looks cheap. And it still doesn't have the one major option my Silverado has........OnStar.
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[...] WR Fleet: Breakfast with the 2008 Ford F-150Winding Road Magazine, MI - 56 minutes agoIt has also been the best-selling truck in America for 30 years running and the best-selling vehicle for 25 years in a row. Ford is adding to an unmatched … [...]
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[...] WR Fleet: Breakfast with the 2008 Ford F-150Winding Road Magazine, MI - 1 hour agoIt has also been the best-selling truck in America for 30 years running and the best-selling vehicle for 25 years in a row. Ford is adding to an unmatched … [...]
dante
I agree - trucks have been sissified. The interior should be vinyl with some rubber mats so it can be hosed off, a long stick for the manual transmission should sprout from the floor, the outside shouldn't be styled at all, but functional and designed for easy replacement of panels (even so, there were some good looking older trucks, but not the ones today yet they're trying to look good). And none of this 4-door crap - the kids go in the bed with the dog. OK, maybe I'll excuse the 4-door, but it's still not preferable.
chris mich
You guys are dinosaurs to think that trucks should be bare bones in this day and age.
Abdul Sachedina
Hey, i noticed this 2008 model still has those dangerous power window buttons, you know..push down on them and window go down. push don on them and windows go up. I thought these types of switches were outlawed. I know my kids are smart enough not to trap themselves in the openings. I also know my dogs are not. Better warn David E. Davis before he takes the truck hunting!
hwyhobo
This enormous expanse of plastic box between the driver and the passenger, with the pretentious stick instead of being placed where truck auto tranny belongs - on the steering column. All this wasting my leg room for some questionable affectation. Form over substance. Alas, that has been the motto of the big three for a while.
Ducati Minor
chris mich has it right. Chevy, Ford, and Dodge (to a lesser extent) have one area they have been consistently progressing in, and that has been with full-size pickups. I'm not fan of them, but the current generarion of F-150s, Silverados, and Rams are doing more than their predecessors ever could. I don't see a plush and roomy cabin as being "bad" as some have posted. The added civility is logical, as you want to expand your sales base not limit it just to rural farmers.
The best-selling vehicles in America are pickups. I believe four out of five those buyers don't need a $36,000 340 hp 18 ft. long king cab pickup in a Cleveland suburb, but those big yachts are selling. Ford, GM, and Chrysler should cut back on big trucks and focus their effort on better mid-size pickups and passenger cars (which GM is doing with the latter), but I don't see this F-150 as being anything less than Ford's pickups of thirty years ago.
hwyhobo
DucatiMinor wrote:
plush and roomy cabin
Plush, maybe. Roomy? I don't see how dedicating 1/3rd of the space up front to a useless plastic box makes for a roomy interior. Poor systems design, if you ask me. It may sell, but it sure is inefficient.
Perhaps it is a hangup of mine as a technical person, but waste and useless "fillers" offend my intelligence.
Clint
I personally haven't taken apart an F-150, so the space behind all the plastic may indeed be wasted space. However, you've got to put all the sat-nav and stereo equipment somewhere. Whether or not all these electrics are necessary on a pickup is debatable, but not all pickups are fleet or farm vehicles. I know plenty of people who want a comfortable daily driver that is flexible enough to tow or haul.
The floor mounted automatic shifter could be a result of the need for transmission tunnel room in four wheel drive and manual transmission versions. Plus, this makes room for center console storage space and cup holders. If you know any construction foremen, you know they need cup holders to hold their coffee as they sit in the truck while everyone else is out in the cold working.
hwyhobo
Clint wrote:
The floor mounted automatic shifter could be a result of the need for transmission tunnel room in four wheel drive and manual transmission versions.
In the past, Ford had no problem placing a manual on the floor and auto on the steering column, 2wd or 4wd. That current vast expanse of plastic and the auto on the floor is for poseurs who like to think they are driving a sporty vehicle while behind a wheel of a truck. And sporty of course means holding a stick like in a Porsche. I strongly suspect most of them wouldn't know what to do with a real stick if it came up to them and bit them on the &#@.
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