Ford F250 News

The Ford Motor Company has embarked on its boldest and most exciting new-model blitz in its 118-year history - but will Ford Australia be left behind or strap in and hold on tight?From the game-changing and crowd-pleasing F-Series electric pick-up (and ev

Sales figures show our car market is becoming more like the US.

Ford's F-750 Tonka truck is a life-size version of the iconic children's favourite.

Performax International announces F-250 full-size pickup range for Australia. They're everywhere in the US but monster-truck-style full-size utes haven't really taken hold in Australia as buyers prefer the smaller, more manageable and affordable light commercial utes like the Toyota HiLux and Ford Ranger.That may change if independent American vehicle importer Performax International has any say. This month, they launched the 2015 Performax Ford F-Series Super Duty range full-size pick-ups, priced from $105,000. This may be more than double the price of the average light-commercial ute, but it's a lot of truck with huge towing potential and 'go anywhere you damn well like' off-road ability.Queensland-based Performax refers to itself as a  `full-volume manufacturer'  but is in fact a conversion specialist with `production' underway for right-hand drive Ford F-250 XL, XLT, Lariat, King Ranch and Platinum models.It's no backyard operation though with a dedicated assembly line and locally designed and made parts to effect the necessary changes to a factory standard.Vehicles will be sold by Performax International and through dealers around Australia.ENGINE / TRANMSISSIONThe local  F-250 is powered by a 6.7 litre V8 common-rail turbo-diesel engine producing 328kW of power and a massive 1166Nm of torque.Combining exceptional power with six-speed automatic transmission and on-the-fly four-wheel drive, the F-250 has a five-tonne towing capacity unmatched by mass-market utes and 4WDs sold in Australia, plus exceptional all-terrain ability.It has an imposing presence on the road and a luxurious interior to match which gives the F-Series Super Duty style, comfort and ability like nothing else.Performax F-Series Super Duty production marks a milestone for the Gympie-based company, which has been producing right-hand drive versions of American pick-ups and sports car for 25 years.ENGINEERINGIn that time, the company has mastered the complex engineering and electronics challenges of converting the latest vehicles with high-tech safety and powertrain systems."We're tremendously proud of this latest achievement, which is the pinnacle of all our years of experience and perseverance with quality standards," Performax General Manager Glenn Soper said."Old-fashioned conversion methods are no longer acceptable to customers buying these sophisticated new American pick-ups. In engineering, electronics and final fit and finish, the Performax Difference ensures we build every vehicle to factory-original quality standards."The F-Series has been one of America's most popular vehicle ranges for six decades, but many people in Australia too are keen to see the nameplate back on the road here. Pre-launch demand has been very strong."We're totally confident the 13th generation F-Series we're building now will be the best ever seen in this country, with unprecedented levels of performance, capability, safety and comfort, all backed by a comprehensive, competitive warranty and roadside service."NEW COMPONENTSInstead of vehicles being individually engineered and approved by government authorities, there are no one-off or handmade items among the 100-plus new components in a Performax F-Series.All parts are part-numbered and 100 percent identical, ensuring consistent high quality and easy replacement.Work is completed to ISO 9001 Quality Assurance standards. The company is also certified to ISO/TS 16949 (Automotive Quality Management).

The US's top-selling pick-up for the past 35 years is coming here, via independent importer Performax.

Ford’s global HQ in Detroit will this year salute an Australian design that turned into a smash sales success for the brand – the first ute, which has developed into the vehicles that see the Blue Oval leading the segment around the world with nameplates such as Ranger and F-Series.The body style was developed after a Victorian farmer’s wife wrote in 1933 to the then boss of Ford in Australia, Hubert French, famously asking for “a car and a truck but we need a car to go to church on Sunday and a truck to take the pigs to market on Monday”.French put the challenge to Ford’s young design engineer, Lew Bandt, who devised a two-door cabin with a load-carrying tray at the rear, blending the tray sides into the coupe body – rather than the separated cabin and trayback truck commonly used until then. The rest, as they say, is history – 80 years of it.Bandt’s first full-size sketches – on a 10-metre blackboard -- quickly became blueprints and then prototypes, and the ‘coupe utility’ went into production in 1934, with examples heading off to the US and Canada.It became a popular vehicle style in Australia, with 22,000 sold between 1940 and 1954, and spawned generations of Falcon utes, which have sold more than 455,000 since the first XK rolled out in 1961. And the Australian influence continues. The Aussie designed and developed Ford Ranger is a strong seller in more than 180 markets around the world.Lew Bandt’s original drawings are archived here in Australia, and one of the original coupe-utes is still on display in a Victorian museum. Its descendants have gone on to resounding global success, with Ford selling more than a million Ranger-based vehicles around the world in 2013, while the F-Series marked its 37th year running as the top-selling truck in the US. Ironically, Bandt died after an accident while he was at the wheel of a restored version of his coupe-utility in 1987.This reporter is on Twitter: @KarlaPincott

When Brenton Hill took his 1964 XM Falcon coupe to a car show in 2004, little did he know he would meet his future wife, Katrina, owner of a 1965 XP Falcon coupe."They were very similar vehicles, just different colours," the 31-year-old electrician says. "I just got to talking to her and asked her about her car. It was lower than mine and I wanted to know how she managed to do that. A week later we were seeing each other and we were married in 2006."They now have a happy family of seven cars including 2006 Ford F250 and 1984 Ford F100 pick-ups which are their daily drivers and three-year-old daughter Prudence's vintage toy car. There are also a couple of future projects in the garage."We've got a 1950 Pontiac Silver Streak sedan which is a long way off getting on the road and a 1970 Mk I Escort drag car which my father-in-law last raced at Surfers Paradise in 1976," he says. "I bought it off my brother-in-law as he couldn't afford to keep it and I couldn't stand to see it leave the family."He plans to restore it to its original racing livery and enter it in nostalgia drag competitions "if Katrina will allow me". "It's a pretty dangerous motorsport," he says. "But first I'd have to spend quite a bit of money upgrading it to modern competition safety standards."Katrina is not surprised Brenton wants to go drag racing. "That's the household I was brought up in, so I spent my whole life in that so it doesn't surprise me at all," she says. "He's a sparkie so everything he does is dangerous, anyway."They also have a restored 1957 Cadillac of which they are very proud."My wife's had her XP for 21 years. It was her first car, but she was getting bored with it and I wouldn't let her sell it. It's a cool car," Brenton says."She always liked Caddys and big American cars so we hunted one down for $20,000 from Victoria a couple of years ago. We called it a 30-footer as it looks good from 30 feet away, but when you get close it has some imperfections. However, we haven't spent a lot on it. We drive it. It's not really a show car. We just lowered it, cleaned it up a little bit, a bit of TLC for the engine and that's pretty much it. If it ever wins an award I'll be shocked."Brenton bought his XM about eight years ago for $6000 and spent another $6000 rebuilding the engine, replacing the differential, fixing the front end and steering, lowering the suspension, fitting a new exhaust, adding some custom features and replacing the trim."The trim is not cheap nor easy to find," he says. "Ford only ever produced about 3500 and they only made about 5500 XPs, so finding parts is difficult."Katrina's car required a more comprehensive rebuild."That thing's been pulled apart and restored from scratch," she says. "It had a four-speed gearbox and 1985 XF Falcon 4.1 crossflow motor in it, so we pulled that out and put in the original 170 cubic inch six cylinder and three on the tree. It was also repainted, lowered and had pretty much everything done."Katrina bought it for $3000 from a Redcliffe surfer who carried his surfboards on the car. "It was a terrible pile of rubbish.There was plenty of rust through it," she says. "It's disappointing what some people do to cars. They don't respect what they've got."The couple will show their Caddy and XM at the annual GreazeFest Kustom Kulture Festival at the Rocklea Showground on August 1. Visit: www.greazefest.com.

The top end of the working ute business has been barren since Ford ran out of F-Series trucks, following the end of right-hand drive production in South America, which has created an opportunity for Chrysler.The American company is now mounting a detailed investigation into the potential for the Ram in Australia, as it prepares for the next all-new model, and the chance of right-hand drive trucks for overseas sales."There’s an opportunity with the Ram. I think it's worth investigating," Chrysler's senior manager for international product, Kevin Tourneur, says.He attended the Australian press preview of the new Jeep Patriot and Dodge Avenger in New Zealand last week and now has a strong understanding of the opportunityl for the Ram.“We don’t know if the time is right yet to bring it in, but this would be the time to start thinking about it. It's a matter of working with the markets," Tourneur says.He believes Australia's traditional support for both commercial and sports utes, over more than 40 years, points to the potential with Chrysler's long-running rival to Ford's F-Series, which is the world's favourite truck."But you need to have sustainable demand, because the Ram is not right-hand drive and was not developed with right-hand drive in mind, so there would be a lot of engineering work," he says.Chrysler Group Australia’s managing director, Gerry Jenkins, believes the Ram has a place on our roads and is keen to see it here."We’d love to have Ram here . . . I’m really excited about the idea,” Jenkins says."It’s not entirely about the numbers, but there probably needs to be demand for about 10,000 a year right-hand drive in the international market before it’s viable.""I think we could sell 3000 a year in Australia, especially with the Cummins diesel engine. There’s really nobody in that large ute market, there’s no competition.”The commercial market has big potential for the Ram, according to Chrysler spokesman, David McCarthy."If we brought the Ram here, more than half would be cab-chassis for ambulance and food delivery use,” McCarthy says.Jenkins says he has already had a stream of inquiries about the Ram from a mining company in Western Australia, and impressed by their persistence, eventually flew over and met with them."We’re going to supply some to them, but they will be left-hand drive," he says.However, Jenkins says converting Rams to right-hand drive is not an option he wants to consider for the broader Australian market.`"We’re not going to do conversions . . . we’re only interested in getting one that’s ADR compliant. People want the authentic product.”Jenkins says the same approach would apply if there was a chance to bring the latest Dodge Charger here, which will be unlikely as long as demand for the left-hand drive version continues to outstrip supply."Could we sell it in Australia? Of course we could,” he says."I think it’s the best-looking car we have. But it’s not really a possibility right now.”Tourneur says the strong American styling of Dodge vehicles, including the Ram and Charger, is the key to the brand's growing success.There’s no point in us trying to follow European design. If people want European, they’ll buy European," he says."We need to stay true to the US style. That unique design, that’s what we can bring. People all over the world want to be different."The character about Dodge is DNA from the trucks and the 70s muscle car phase . . . strong emotions and passion. Every product has to have a certain `Dodgeness.’