Four doors for the 1999 F-Series; Ford's cash cow adds another portal, and gains lots of low end torque - new design for Ford pickup trucks

Automotive Industries, July, 1998 by Lindsay Brooke

Ford's cash cow adds another portal, and gains lost of now end torque.

Depending on how you view it, Ford Motor Co. is either one step behind in the emerging 4-door extended cab pickup market, or a quantum leap ahead of everybody else. The 1999 SuperCab adds a second rear door, on the driver's side, to the current 3-door F-Series cab, but it comes a full year after Dodge unleashed its Quad Cab Ram. The new SuperCab, however, completes Ford's strategy to become the first automaker to offer four doors on all of its pickups -- from the compact Ranger (launched last spring) to the big F-250, the first over-8,500-pound GVW trucks to have four portals.

What may count most is that the new F-Series cab is still a year ahead of arch-rival GM, which won't have 4-door versions of its new GMT800 trucks for sale until the 2000 model year.

Ford chose to make the 4-door cab standard on all SuperCab F-150/250 models (program code PN96/102), rather than make it an option, as Chrysler did on the Quad Cab ($750 extra) Ram. That move will help simplify customer ordering, production scheduling, and body assembly in the three F-Series plants in Kansas City, Mo., Norfolk, Va., and Ontario Truck in Canada, notes Susan Pacheco, F-150/250 chief program engineer.

If Dodge's first year of experience is an indication, the 4-door trend will dominate the pickup market. Fifty-three percent of Ram sales are now Quad Cabs, according to Chrysler. Ford expects the new SuperCab to grab 66% or more of F-Series sales -- over 500,000 units per year. That's more SuperCab trucks in a year than Dodge Division's total 1997 car sales.

While the two automakers are bullish, some industry observers are hesitant to declare total victory for the 4-door pickup just yet.

"It's a very profitable part of the truck market, and it will grow. But the danger in the pickup segment is rising prices, due to the spread of extra features -- like 4-door cabs," says Michael Schmall, managing partner of The Planning Edge, a Troy, Mich.-based auto industry consultancy. "Pickups don't have the seemingly endless price ceiling of the SUV segment."

Analyst Schmall says given their dependency on truck profits, Ford, Chrysler and GM can't risk getting caught outside a niche. Thus the rush to four doors.

"Ford needs to be there, and for the short nm, they'll do well. For the long term, we'll see. I'm just not sure we're seeing the total paradigm shift to the 4-door pickup that the automakers claim," he notes. "The question is, what kind of market we'll have."

18 Month Program

According to Pacheco and Roger Reger, F-150/250 body engineering manager, Ford began investigating a 4-door cab in the original PN96 program, but it wasn't part of the final design sign-off. The company opted to go to three doors for production.

"The go-ahead for the fourth door came purely from customer input," says Reger. "And the dealers made it very clear they wanted it!"

Because of its timing, the 4-door cab program was not nm as a full FPDS program -- Ford's Product Development System that's based on formal platform methods and organization. Reger claims it was an 18-month job, from concept approval to production. While he won't reveal cost, the program was "a moderate investment" which besides the body-in-white includes a new eggcrate-style grille, redesigned interior door trim panels (to relocate the door pulls), new window regulators (because of the new trim panels), and new, wider JCI seat-sets with a more supportive foam.

Like the Quad Cab Ram, Ford's new SuperCab forgoes traditional B-pillars for improved ingress/egress. The 25-inch rear doors are hinged on the cab's D-pillar, and swing open 90-degrees from the sill. The rear doors double-latch (top and bottom) to the header and sill, and the design requires that a front door be open in order for a rear door on the same side to be open, too. Both rear doors automatically lock when the front door is shut.

Ford stuck with all-steel architecture for the SuperCab, with the exception of the standard F-Series aluminum hood. "Although the push within Ford to reduce vehicle weight is really growing, we needed stiffness because of the extra-large door aperture," explains Reger. "It's easier and less expensive to achieve the stiffness we needed using steel, rather than lighter materials." That, he says, will come on the next full F-Series redesign. Ford insiders say that's slated for 2001, and will include increased use of tailor-welded and hydroformed steel, and perhaps increased use of aluminum and magnesium.

To compensate for the ultra-wide aperture, cab reinforcements for the added door are basically a mirror-image of those used to beef up the &door version, Reger says. Most of the extra metal went into the door header, both sides of the D-pillar, and fully-boxed rocker panels. The floorpan was revised and an under-cab crossmember adds rigidity to the door jamb areas. And the firewall was slightly altered to accommodate the upgraded 5.4L V-8.

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Powertrain: Much More Torque