Ford, the US’s leading
truck leader, now offers an all-new 3-litre Power Stroke V6
turbo diesel and the “next generation” 2.7-litre EcoBoost engine in the new 2018 Ford F-150. Ford now has a truck to more than match the Fiat Chrysler Automotive Ram 1500 with its VM Motori V6 turbo diesel and which, like the 'new' 3-litre V6 from Ford has a CGI vee cylinder block. Ford's move raises one simple question: How will GM, the sleeping giant, respond? Will the 'new' 4.5-litre Duramax appear sooner rather than later? Another vee CGI diesel? The US rumour mill says the CGI Duramax will bow in summer 2018.
Three years after
first introducing the high-strength, military-grade, aluminium-alloy-bodied
Ford F-150, the new F-150 arrives with bold new front and rear styling,
advanced technologies – including available Pre-Collision Assist with
Pedestrian Detection – and improved engines. The new engines include an all-new
3-litre Power Stroke V6
turbo diesel and enhanced V6 and V8 gas engines.
“Truck customers are constantly looking to
improve their productivity, for work and for play,” said Joe Hinrichs, Ford president,
The Americas. “Since 1977, we’ve been America’s favourite truck, and we’ve
never taken that leadership for granted. This new F-150 is our latest example
of Ford’s commitment to going further for our customers through continuous
innovation.”
Ford previews the new truck during the FOX NFL
Wildcard Pregame Show. Ford is the Official Truck of the NFL. The truck will be
revealed on Monday at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.
Ford builds on its performance leadership by
offering the most advanced F-150 engine line-up ever, plus the best towing
capability of any F-150.
The new F-150 introduces an all-new, standard
3.3-liter V6 engine, with direct-injection for increased efficiency. The
3.3-litre V6 is expected to offer the same 282 bhp and 253 lbft. of torque as
the previous model’s standard 3.5-litre V6.
An all-new second-generation 2.7-liter
EcoBoost engine features advanced dual port and direct injection technology,
reduced internal friction and improved robustness – all for improved levels of
output, efficiency, quality and durability.
Like the 3.5-litre EcoBoost, the 2.7-litre
EcoBoost will be paired to the segment-exclusive 10-speed automatic
transmission for 2018.
The 5-litre V8 also sees improvements in 2018,
as the naturally aspirated engine features significant upgrades for increased
power and torque. It’s also paired with the 10-speed automatic transmission for
the first time.
The 2018 F-150 also adds an available all-new
3-litre Power Stroke diesel engine, “designed, engineered and tested in-house”
and paired with the 10-speed automatic transmission. Ford says “it is the first-ever
diesel engine offered for F-150”.
Both this engine and the 2.7-litre EcoBoost
use compacted graphite iron vee cylinder blocks produced using SinterCast
process control technology. The 3-litre V6 engine is built in the UK at the
Dagenham Engine Plant.
In addition to the segment-first 10-speed
automatic, the Ford F-150 is now the first full-size pickup truck to add
automatic start/stop as standard equipment across all models and engines.
The new 2018 F-150 goes on sale this autumn.
It will be built at Dearborn Truck Plant in Dearborn, Michigan, and Kansas City
Assembly Plant in Claycomo, Missouri.
3 comments:
The interesting thing about this might be how GM will respond. Being the one and only of "big three" NOT having a halfton truck without diesel I think they MUST act. Hopefully by taking their fully developed BabyDuramax 4500 off the shelf where it has been since 2009.
Then Sintercast will have their CGI in the whole segment.
GM may aleady have responded by this
http://autoindustrynewsletter.blogspot.se/2016/12/gm-engine-plant-to-receive-295-million.html#more
Inevitably, thoughts go back to an earlier statement by Mark Cieslak, GM’s full-size truck chief engineer, who has stated: “The 4.5-litre V8 is fully developed and ready. “[If we decided to offer it] we could launch it in a heartbeat.”
So has that moment of heartbeat arrived?
It's intriguing to see that while light-duty diesel power in Europe is suffering an increasingly bad press, initially triggered by the VW emissions scandal, a trend in the opposite direction can be discerned in North America. Until relatively recently, light-duty pick-ups, exemplified by Ford's F-150, were offered only with gasoline power. But this decision to offer the UK-developed and manufactured 3 litre V6 diesel in the F-150, to compete with Fiat-Chrysler's Ram 1500, show's there's an appetite for diesel engines in vehicles sold mainly to private buyers or small tradespeople. A key breakthrough has clearly been the hugely improved refinement in small diesels. A good selling point for Ford - which Dearborn's marketing men would undoubtedly shrink from using - would be to draw attention to the upmarket 'limousine smooth' Jaguar and Land Rover models powered by the Ford 3 litre V6 diesel.
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