Rented F-150 Flings Up Sand in the Land of Raptors
A lot of rented trucks end up hauling furniture or pulling trailers. This 2019 F-150 SuperCrew gets treated like a Raptor.
It’s a running joke that rented vehicles lead hard lives, but we can personally attest to the fact that there’s some truth in the humor. We once attended a Foundations of Road Racing course; one of our classmates showed up in a rental agency Chevrolet Camaro SS and proceeded to cook its tires and its brakes. The 2019 Ford F-150 SuperCrew in this YouTube video from Michael Burgoyne is also a rental, but the person behind the wheel doesn’t use it to do anything you’d normally rent a truck to do.
Believe it or not, there are people out there who don’t own trucks. And some of those folks don’t have a friendly neighbor or a nearby family member who is willing to loan them their pickup. So what do they do when they need to move or go get a new washer and dryer? Rent a truck. This particular red F-150 doesn’t have to haul anything…except ass.
That’s because Burgoyne and one of his pals took it out to some sand dunes to see how it performs. Driving on sand requires keeping your momentum going; setting that momentum at a high enough level takes power. Judging by the sound of this F-150, it seems to have Ford’s 5.0-liter V8, which generates a substantial 395 horsepower and 400 lb-ft of torque. It does have four-wheel drive, but just the regular setup – no FX4 tech or hardware.
The driver gets right to it, whipping the Coyote engine hard with his right foot. He roars away from a stop and down a gentle decline before making his skyward ascent. By the time he reaches the uphill portion of the run, the F-150 is a pixelated black and red blob on a striated wall of sand that nearly fills the horizon. It keeps hooking and going until it veers left a little short of the summit. When the F-150 comes zooming down, it does it in front of an audience of dune buggy drivers.
But just one trip up isn’t enough. The F-150 driver races up and close to the brink again. The sight of the flawlessly blue sky and the nearly vertical acres of suede-like beige directly underneath almost seems unreal. But it’s very real – and addicting. The red speck soon reappears near the horizon line a third time.
Despite the speed and the altitude of each run, the F-150 makes it through the antics without flipping or getting damaged. But we’re willing to guess there was still a lot of sand in its interior when the person who rented it returned it – no matter how much vacuuming they did.
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