Six-Wheel Drift: Ken Block Hoons Ford F-450 Dually
King Hoonigan Ken Block gives his hard-working hauler a break from pulling heavy loads and lets it have some sports car fun.
The automotive industry is a volatile place, but there are certain things about it that you can bank on. Touchscreens will keep getting larger. Truck makers will continue upping the amount of torque their heavy duty models generate. And if there’s a Ford with a lot of power under its hood, head Hoonigan Ken Block will eventually do something fun in it.
Block has a long history of laying down burnouts and performing impressive stunts in purpose-built vehicles with the Blue Oval badge on them. He’s blasted and drifted through several Gymkhana courses in machines ranging from a 600-horsepower Fiesta to a Mustang “Hoonicorn” with a 410-cubic-inch V8 pumping out 845 horses.
Block is no stranger to Ford’s trucks. In addition to a souped-up F-150 Raptor, he’s burned rubber in his “Hoonitruck,” which is based on a 1977 F-150 and features a heavily modified, 914-horsepower 3.5-liter EcoBoost V6 with a billet-aluminum block straight out of the Ford GT Le Mans development program. He also has a soft spot for the F-450. He’s used his 2019 Platinum dually to haul snowmobiles, slide around on the snow and even do “townuts” (pulling one of his high-performance Mustangs in a circle while it roasts its tires). Block tells fellow Hoonigan Zac Mertens, “Any time I get to drive one, I’m very stoked, so we thought it would be fun to take that fun-loving experience I’ve had on the snow sledding around and try to do it on the tarmac.”
The two tire-roasting enthusiasts head out to the Utah Motorsports Campus in Erda, Utah in the F-450 with an all-business 1978 Ford Escort on a trailer behind it. After Mertens attempts to do a burnout in the little coupe while it’s still on top of the trailer and snaps an axle shaft, Block separates the Super Duty from its ill-fated cargo and starts turning its massive tires into smoke.
Rear-wheel-drive sports cars get most of the drifting action out there, but Block makes a giant heavy-duty rig with six wheels look natural with its front wheels at full lock and its four rear tires churning out huge plumes of vaporized rubber. At one point, the nose of the F-450 comes uncomfortably close to the trailer that Mertens is observing Block’s antics from.
After the molten streaks on the pavement cool, Mertens tells Block, “You’re muscling around damn near 9,000 pounds, man” (according to Ford, a 2019 F-450 with four-wheel drive tips the scales at 8,600 pounds). Block made it look much easier than it actually was. He had to adjust his throttle application to the F-450’s behavior. He informs Mertens, “I come off and come back on just to like get it to hesitate because I’m too tight or something and … the power of the diesel just slows down and builds back up so slow, by the time it’s reacting, the moment’s already gone.”
That makes us think about what would make for another cool Hoonigan pickup. We’re picturing a lowered F-450 with bigger turbos, a custom e-brake setup and an anti-lag system…
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