2009 Ford F150...

My 2001 Nissan Pathfinder finally came to an end just short of 100K miles. No, it was not because there was anything wrong with it. It got caught in the hailstorm last February and I decided not to fix it and sell it instead. Now I got a 2009 Ford F-150 Lariat. This baby is HUGE both inside and out! It certainly makes parking a pain sometimes. But I love the ride and after driving one for 1,300 miles over the past month. I certainly understand why Americans want big, gas guzzling trucks and SUV's. There's plenty interior room for us oversized (obese?) Americans. I can sit upright and not have my head bump up against the roof of the car. There's plenty of head, shoulder, and leg room no matter where you sit.

Even the rear seats have plenty of room for NBA size basketball players. The rear seats fold up and the floor is flat giving a large enough cargo area to store a 50" plasma TV inside! You also get a 5.5 foot long truck bed for carrying all kinds of cargo. The versatility of a pickup truck is unmatched. It can carry 5 large people comfortably with luggage, haul cargo with ease and speed, or tow something (trailer, boat, etc). It may not be the most efficient vehicle to do your daily commute with (but it can do that too with comfort), but if you do activities with your vehicle like camping, boating, cycling, moving, off road (get the 4x4), road trips, tailgate parties, or anything outdoors, nothing beats the versatility of a full size truck like the Ford F-150.

Visibility of the road is excellent as well. You sit a good foot or more off the ground than a regular car giving you a great view of the road ahead and around you. The ride is surprisingly quiet and smooth, especially for a truck. The 5.4L engine with 6 speed transmission effortlessly propels the truck down the road at highway speeds while keeping the tach under 2K.

This is the Super Crew Lariat version which includes power leather seats that are both heated and cooled, Microsoft Synch with voice activation for hooking up your MP3 and bluetooth phone, automatic temperature control, and nice wood trim. You can get all the amenities you would find in a luxury car. Plus, with the economy in the tank, the largest discounts are on full size pickup trucks. The sticker on the Lariat was around $40K. I picked it up for around $32K after all dealer and Ford incentives.

How bad is the gas milage? It's bad, but it's probably not as bad as you think for a 6,000+ lbs. truck. The 5.4L engine with 4x2 is EPA rate 14/20. I'm getting around 15 mpg driving around downtown Austin and 18-20 mpg with mixed city/highway driving. Remarkably, it's getting practically the same milage as my much smaller Nissan Pathfinder (although that was a 4x4). The truck also has a large 32 gallon tank, so you can easily drive over 400 miles between fill ups. This is also much further than my Pathfinder, which I often had to fill up every 280-300 miles.