With apologies
to mssrs Duvall and Coppola, I love the smell of Castano Leather in
the morning. The rich aroma of this Texas saddle skin
hits your nose as soon as you open the door to a King Ranch edition Ford
F-Series pickup and behold an interior of chocolatey tan, cowhide covered
surfaces that taste as good to the eye as any shot of cocoa flavored
moo juice ever could to the palate.
Inspired
by and co-branded with the largest cattle ranch in the United States
- located in (appropriately) Kingsville, Texas - Ford offers the luxury
King Ranch trim package across its entire line of 2007 light and heavy
duty trucks.
To be sure,
a King Ranch isn’t for everyone. It’s
the Prime beef of American pickups with a premium to match - around
$3K over Ford’s top of the line Lariat trim before you add cool
toys like navigation and satellite radio. And although
it retains all of the working class capabilities of its blue collar brothers,
it would be painful to watch such a purebred grind its life away in the
fields. No, a KR skinned and trimmed F-Series is a trophy truck,
sure to appeal to the most enterprising of buyers who’ve earned
their way to a higher station in life by pulling themselves up by the
bootstraps and want a luxury vehicle that shows where they’ve come
from.
For our
test, we drove the half-ton F-150 SuperCrew 4x4 Styleside version of
this highborn hay hauler with a 5.5-foot short box.
After
the sights and smells of the King Ranch interior get the heart pumping,
the driver can take their rightful position seated well above just about
any other traffic on the road. From here you can also
survey the rest of the four-door cabin.
I think
Ford continues to have the best looking interior of any full size truck. It’s
upscale and the gaps are tight, but age is starting to weaken some
of its features. For audio / visual entertainment
and assistance, our rig came equipped with the optional integrated satellite
navigation, six-disc CD changer, and Sirius satellite radio. My
kids loved the dynamic mapping but I found the controls to be unintuitive,
especially switching between the navi and stereo to change audio sources
and lookup artist information from Sirius. Having a touchscreen
helped but fingerprints quickly covered its surface, making it difficult
to read in bright sunlight. The HVAC could use an
overhaul. It lacked dual zone climate controls for the driver
and passenger, par for the course today in the new GM
pickups and 2007
Toyota Tundra.
The King Ranch also had an optional power moonroof and heated front
seats that radiated enough thermal energy to make your backside feel
like it was getting a little too friendly with the King Ranch’s
Running W brand.
The
King Ranch’s two-tone, slab sided exterior is also well executed,
with prominent KR badges on the sides and tail to identify this truck’s
heritage. It has near perfect proportions for a crew cab, and its
optional six-spoke 20-inch aluminum rims nicely fill the wheel wells
to round out the truck’s profile. However, the visual advantage
of the F-150's tall ride height becomes a challenge if you're trying
to access the cargo box from the sides. Its 5.5-foot
bed is modest for a full size pickup. If you want more surface area in
the back you can order the KR with a 6.5-foot hauling platform, or use
an optional bed extender with the 5.5-foot box so it can still swallow
4x8 sheets of plywood.
