Ford F-150 pickup gets mixed results in crash tests - Press Examiner
The test is important because the F-150 is the nation’s best selling vehicle and Ford took a huge gamble by switching from steel to aluminum in its construction in a bid to save fuel of the metal’s lighter weight. The SuperCab – or extended cab – accounts for about 12 percent of sales and the regular cab 5 percent. In total, the necessary repairs were 26-percent greater for the 2015 truck, based on work conducted at a Ford dealership certified to perform the repairs. “After we tested the crew cab in the spring, questions were raised about the extended cab’s ability to match the crew cab’s good small overlap performance”. “As most know early on controversy swirled around cost and complexity of repairing the new aluminum alloy-bodied 2015 Ford F-150 compared to its steel-bodied predecessor”. This is all because the American automaker added structural elements to the crew cab’s front frame to earn a good small overlap rating but didn’t do the same for the extended cab model. Nair said the Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker is the first to outfit its full-sized pickups with the safety structure to withstand the small overlap test. Source: www.pressexaminer.com
