CAR GAZING
Special F-150 celebrates Harley
Loud, flashy Ford truck gets inspiration from motorcycles
By Derek Price
If you're looking for class, taste and sophistication, you've found the wrong truck.
This is the 2008 Ford F-150 Harley-Davidson Edition, a shrine to all things brash and loud. It's an unholy collection of chrome, leather, Harley logos and raw power that thinks of the road as its mosh pit.
Yes, it's a mobile death-metal concert, a celebration of overkill.
And some people absolutely love it.
Now, I'll be the first to admit I'm not a fan of pickup trucks in the first place, and nerdy newspaper editors are far outside the target demographic for a Hell's Angels truck. But I do see how this truck draws a crowd for how raucous it is, both in its looks and its performance.
It's that whole overkill thing.
One way it goes overboard is in Harley-Davidson logos, which are plastered everywhere they'll fit. They're on the seat backs, center console, interior trim, wheels, dash, and tailgate. As if that's not enough, "HARLEY-DAVIDSON" is written in raised chrome letters on both sides of the bed, and you know those little dots that shade the top of the windshield? Those make up the Harley logo, too.
It's also, I suspect, trying to corner the market on chrome. Aside from a huge billet grille and lots of shiny interior trim, it comes with massive, 22-inch chrome wheels that, if you melted them down, could form a puddle big enough to fill Lake Michigan.
There's more overkill under the hood, where you'll find not only a 5.4-liter V8 engine but a supercharger that boosts its output to 450 horsepower and 500 foot-pounds of torque. That's some serious muscle, but it gulps gas at 13 mpg in town.
Like the less brash F-150s, the Harley-Davidson Edition offers a rear-view camera and parking sensors that can help when backing up. The camera is especially neat because it has a display built into the rear-view mirror. When you shift into reverse, an image of the road behind you appears like magic in the mirror.
On the downside, both the camera and the back-up sensor are located in the tailgate, so when you fold the tailgate down and shift into reverse, guess what? The camera gives you a great view of the ground and the sensor makes the truck scream at you like you're about to back into a crowd of third-graders. Not cool.
Another downside is the F-150's interior quality. When this generation was introduced, it was a step above every other pickup on the road, but now it's nearing the end of its life cycle. Newer trucks like the Toyota Tundra have better build quality in the cabin, so picky buyers may want to wait until the next generation F-150 comes next year.
The Harley-Davidson Edition only comes in black. You can pay an extra $250 to add a copper-colored stripe on bottom, but the overall color scheme is black, black and more black.
Finally, there's the price. It starts around $38,000 and can easily reach into the low $40s with options, so it's no budget truck.
Is that too much? Not if you love bright chrome, raw power and hogs.
(Derek Price is a newspaper editor and freelance writer living in Texas.)
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