BMW 530d vs Ford F-350

What's the difference?

Eco-friendly vehicles are the leather pants of the new-car world; it takes a lot of money to make them look good (but people who own them think they look fantastic regardless). If you don't have a gazillion dollars to drop on a Tesla,  then it's a one-way ticket to Prius town. And really, who wants that? 

But what if it didn't have to be that way? Behold the BMW 530e iPerformance.

Seemingly tired of waiting for the Australian Government to introduce any sort of meaningful subsidy for green cars, BMW has made the choice simple: you can have a petrol-powered 530i for $108,900, or opt for the plug-in hybrid 530e for... $108,900. This is truly revelatory thinking.

There's no specification penalty, either, and the hybrid will power to 100km/h in an identical 6.2 seconds, so you're not even any slower. But you are sipping less fuel, emitting less C02 and basking in the general smugness, and sweet silence, that comes with feeling like you're saving the world.

So what's the catch?

Ford’s legendary F-Series has been America’s best-selling truck for more than four decades. A major factor in that success is the Super Duty range (F-250/F-350/F-450), which reports for duty when loggers, landscapers, miners, oil-field workers and anyone else with seriously heavy on- and off-road load-hauling requirements needs more than the entry level F-150 can deliver.

Not surprisingly, such extreme-duty towing is also required in Australia, particularly by tradies with heavy equipment, and/or for recreational and sporting pursuits that involve multi-axle caravans, horse floats, boat trailers and the like. Some of these large trailers feature a goose-neck design which requires a prime mover-style turntable coupling mounted in the cargo tub.

There are a number of small volume importers which cater for these specialised requirements, including Harrison F Trucks at Melton in Melbourne’s outer west. Harrison provides ADR-approved right-hand drive conversion, local certification and sales/after-sales service for these American giants, one of which we recently sampled for a few days to see what life is like in the world of the Super Duty.