4WDrive

2.8 Million Dollar Ford F-550

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I can just picture it. The boys are sitting around the campfire talking trucks, and one guy says, "Hey, let's take an F-550, make it ugly as sin, like a reject from a B sci-fi movie, and charge like almost three million bucks for it. Whad-da-ya think, eh?" The next guy over looks at him like he has his head screwed on backwards on says, "That's a stupid idea", they go back to talking about fishing and that's the end of it.

The same thing happened with a European design team, except they thought that a stealth bomber looked sexy and there was no one with enough common sense to say, "That's a stupid idea", so they built it.

Starting with a $47,000 commercial cab chassis, the exterior designers were smoking some bad weed and were only able to weld together flat metal sheets finished in matte rattle-can black. The accessory lighting next to the grille seems to simulate a face. They could represent dimples or fangs; or tears after it saw itself in a mirror. Unfortunat­ely ugly isn't just skin deep.

The interior designers went for a 4th Reich meets PeeWee Herman as the Dark Lord ambiance, and succeeded. A faux night sky twinkles over a plethora of fabrics, colours, angles and curves with nauseating delight. Someone must have looked to the Great White North for some inspiratio­n as it does have a PS4, satellite TV, coffee maker for the morning after, and a beer fridge for the night before.

For 2.8 million dollars you’re probably thinking they must have put some serious money into the engine and drivetrain. I can only imagine that the powertrain guys showed up for one morning, waved their Harry Potter wands, said ‘Expeliousu­m’, collected their checks and hit the road in a real truck. The 6.8L gas V-10 reportly generates a meager 398 horsepower (297 kW) to push 4,500 kg (9920 lbs) of truck (6000 kg if you tick the box for bulletproo­fing) up to an embarrassi­ngly low-for-themoney 140 kph (87mph).

You do get 40/14.5R20 tires, solid axles front and rear, and air suspension with this Chinese built truck.

The moral of this story? Stupid campfire ideas should go up in smoke.

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