Car Gazing
Don't dog this yellow truck
Tough F-250 Amarillo Edition works hard, looks wild
By Derek Price
If you've ever lost track of your vehicle in a parking lot, you'll love this truck.
It's the Amarillo Edition of Ford's heavy-duty work truck, the F-250, and in a parking lot it stands out like a circus clown surrounded by Republican senators. You can't miss it.
Not only is this truck absolutely huge, but it's painted bright, blazing, look-at-me yellow, a color that probably requires its own nuclear power supply. It makes school buses look like a dull yellow-brown in comparison, and you definitely won't miss it when you walk out of the grocery store.
Based on the Lariat Crew Cab models, other visual changes on the Amarillo include 18-inch polished aluminum wheels, brushed aluminum door trim, black leather seats with a special logo, and lots of chrome added inside and out. It's definitely an attention-getting ride.
You can't blame Ford for making a wild looking truck. After all, people have customized their trucks for decades, and the Amarillo is just following that trend.
But in a work truck? I'm not convinced that's the best idea.
Think about it. The F-250 is normally the kind of truck you imagine being driven by sweaty, hairy, manly men – lumberjacks, construction workers and the like. When you put a gorgeous, hot-rod style paint scheme on a work truck, it's no longer useful for all those Paul Bunyan activities because you don't want to scratch the paint or ding the chrome. It's like coating a bulldozer in Faberge porcelain.
Still, it's a great looking truck.
Like all F-250s, the Amarillo is customizable with a long list of optional engines, transmissions, differentials, towing packages and luxury features. There's a truck to match every job.
The base engine is a 5.4-liter Triton V8 that makes 300 horsepower and 365 foot-pounds of torque. A Power Stroke diesel engine makes 325 horsepower and 570 pound-feet of torque, while a huge, 6.8-liter Triton V10 makes 355 horsepower and 455 pound-feet of torque. All could be good choices depending on how you plan to use the truck.
Depending on the options you pick, the price for this F-250 could easily climb over $50,000. That's an awful lot of money for what amounts to a good-looking tool, but it's competitive with similarly equipped trucks from Dodge and GM.
When you drive an F-250, it's obvious you're behind the wheel of a serious piece of jobsite equipment. It feels nothing like the refined and comfortable F-150, instead offering a harsh, bouncy ride designed for towing heavy loads and traveling over bumpy logging roads.
It's noisy inside the cab but is otherwise a pretty comfortable place. There's plenty of room in every direction, including the back seats, and it's actually not a bad place to spend time on the highway if you can drown out the noise with good, ol' country music.
George Strait would be a fitting choice. Perhaps his "Amarillo by Morning"?
In any case, this Amarillo Edition is a truck that can turn heads and tackle just about any job you'll throw at it.
You'll never lose it in a parking lot, that's for sure.
(Derek Price is a newspaper editor and freelance writer living in Texas.
Contact him at dprice@cargazingonline.com)
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