GearheadGrrrl

jpd80, thanks for the clarification- The "Kia Boyz" will be laughing their asses of at the upside down F150 squad that just chased them, but the engine will be just fine! Kirby, Before 2017 it was a "Special Service Vehicle", looks like not much changed except the name.

I remember when it was introduced and Ford discouraged using it for pursuit.

Thanks Rick 73! A pickup will probably do just fine as a gas guzzling patrol car 99% of the time. The problems will come when officers get into heated pursuits and forget or don't know that they shouldn't try to keep up with a Mustang through the corners. Ford probably got brave and pursuit rated the F150 after GM pursuit rated their jacked up 2" more pickup, both will probably be facing billion dollar class action lawsuits for rollover crash injuries and deaths in these trucks in a few years.

So looks like Ford has decided to take legal responsibility for all the pursuit rollovers of these things... Not a smart financial move!

IIRC Ford cautions that the F Series is not "pursuit rated"... The laws of physics pre-empt fantasies that a tall pickup is a sports car!

F150 makes a lousy and at worst dangerous pursuit vehicle, but makes sense as an EMT/Fire first response vehicle.

Good points- There needs to be a realistic plan for GHG reduction instead of just throwing out tax credits and subsidies willy nilly which may accomplish nothing. I live within sight of a railroad that carries western coal to midwest power plants and while the volume of unit coal trains has dropped a bit, they still pass by every day.

For Ford, it's a nice excuse to put the F650/750s out of their misery and screw the dealers who spent millions to build "Ford Pro Truck Centers" with 14 foot tall doors. CARB thinks they have a clever back door way to force electrification, but the cost of a Class 6-8 EV if you can get one is so high that only a few image conscious fleets will buy a few to parade around. Gas options are limited as many manufacturers don't even offer gas engines. So most likely we're going to see increasing numbers of trucks with out of state plates living in California, NEE (Florida Power and Light) is already running trucks all over the country on Indiana plates, so not hard to do...

But when you're transferring from a chair 20 inches above the ground a low car is a good thing- That's why a lot of wheelchair using drivers are hoarding 2 door coupes. Ford seems to have never caught on to that market, GM was smart enough to feature the S10 pickup with it's low height and suicide doors with a wheelchair using GM Engineer as their model in ads in Sports & Spokes.

Nice thing about a Mustang is there ain't far to fall, climbed into an F150 Lightning and was astonished that there was no handhold on the right side so I could do the proper "3 points of contact" climb into the cab. And as a sometime wheelchair user I know the Mustang is probably the only Ford product left here than is low enough for transfers without a $10K lift chair or chair lift.

Gen X is 43 to 58, not exactly young by US standards... A lot of the younger buyers actually need pickups for work... And as a 73 year old who can enter and exit a Mustang and shift gears for myself, I fail to see the attraction of a crew cab short bed half ton pickup.

You have described well the core market for half ton pickups- Boomers who really want the huge 60s full size sedans and wagons of their youth. May as well give them what they really want and let them (prematurely) die happy...

So then why did I log most of my miles behind the wheel of trucks? And with my own money buy an Econoline, Ranger, and Transit Connect? And further, while my favorite trucks were the old Macks, I drove many a happy mile in F series, Econolines, C series, Cargos, W series, and the Louisvilles. Ford was the best of the moderate price trucks and easily bested GMC, IH, and White as well as Freightliner, KW, and Peterbuilt. Got nothing against trucks, but kinda ridiculous to waste a truck to drive oneself and maybe a lunch bucket to work.

Much of that low volume problem is due to too many similar products canabalizing each other- After killing off the Fusion that sold itself to the tune of 200K a year, Ford has a half dozen SUVs competing with each other and Ranger is being squeezed between Maverick and F150. Kinda hard to blame "market shifts", the EV market cooling, and unions when Ford does this to themselves!

No problem... For those that can't handle 500HP and AWD we can always fill out production capacity with Ecoboost threes and delete the hybrid feature so they can fit two Costco carts of groceries!

Because Ford couldn't build them any faster! Like every hot hatch today, demand far exceeds supply and they're often sold before they're built... Would be nice to see Ford get some of this profitable business again!

How about a next gen Escape with 500HP, plug in hybrid, AWD, and enough ground clearance for Rallycross and a low enough CG to run with the hottest hatches in Autocross? And that's before upgrading with Ford Performance parts...

Fusion Sport was a "sleeper" that never sold well because nobody knew about it.

Are the DOTs in New England still buying any tandems? Here in southwest Minnesota where drifting is a big problem MN DOT is still buying some tandems but mostly single axles which aren't adequate out here. Towns mostly buy single axles but the county highway fleets are almost 100% tandems.

Golf R, Corolla GR, Civic Type R, etc. are sold out at twice the price of the econobox versions of the same car with transaction prices around $50K. SCCA, NASA, etc. have competitive events all over the country every weekend except when it might snow. And when you're not racing, they're practical hatchbacks for every day use. Mustang is a darn good track car for the price, but leaves a lot to be desired as a daily driver where it snows... Sadly, my next car won't be a Ford. As for those jacked up 4WD Broncos and pickups, even in the rural area I live in they've got no place to play- Off road park nearby allows ATVs and Side by Sides, but no trucks- They're too hard on the trails! The owners of those jacked up things are welcome to explore our township roads to their little hearts content, hope they don't get too depressed when they find the tracks they were following were made by a Rural Mail Carrier in a 1990s FWD sedan...

Instead of wannabe off road racers, Ford needs a performance car that can compete in events like SCCA Autocross and Rallycross. For that they need a low center of gravity/ wide track which the Escape could easily be given and being Ford's lightest transverse engine vehicle, the 2.3 Ecobeast tweaked to at least 300 horsepower and better transmission software with paddle shifters would make Escape competitive. Name? How about Escape RS...

U.S. spec so no block heater, a DEF tank heater would have saved VW a ton O' money what with all the DEF tanks they've replaced and buybacks of cars they can't get DEF tanks for. One of the techs over at TDI Club commented the other day that the TDI warranty has cost VW nine times what they expected plus many of us 2015 owners are holding off on getting the final stage of the emissions mod. That puts the TDI warranties out through 2028 or so and VW has programmed an ending date of the emissions mod in their computer system for 2050! May explain why Ford has backed off on offering Diesel engines in everything smaller than the Super Duties?

My 2015 Golf TDI at 70K miles hasn't had any mechanical failures yet, but from what I've read of the DEF system problems I've become very protective of that system- DEF starts to freeze at about 15 degrees F so I keep the TDI inside the attached garage all winter unless I'm driving it.

From what I've read over on tdiclub.com VW is again having to buy back TDIs they can't fix, hope they give you a decent price!

Good points, T3 should be an improvement, but if it isn't boxy and jacked up, will it sell? Agreed on the unneeded "off road" image, here in Minnesota the closest we get to that usage is deep snow, where breakover, approach,, etc. angles don't matter and there's no point in jacking the body above the bottom of the axles 'cause they're gonna be plowing snow with the diff housings long before the body drags on snow.