Nothing beats old school trucks!
Get out your mud flaps and trailer hitches, it's time to talk about how hardcore American trucks are again. With a focus on versatility, American trucks have become a lot simpler for the driver. If you want to get the best fuel economy while driving through the city you turn a knob. Extreme off-roading it? Simply turn the knob the other way. Climbing a 30-degree incline is no problem and with Hill Descent Assist, coming down is just as effortless. All of these electronics and semi-autonomous features can really make you wonder how off-roaders made it before the modern era. For those that don’t remember having to get out and manually lock the hubs before climbing a hill, TFLClassics took a trip back to 1989 to test out their Ford F350 truck, Gunsmoke.
If you’re not familiar with project Gunsmoke, the truck was donated by viewer David Marrow to TFLClassics so that they could rebuild it and auction it off to benefit Mountain States Children’s Home. In the meantime, the crew took the truck up to the Colorado mountains to see just how capable it is. What they found out is that the trucks Ford used to make in 1989 were more akin to tractors. In fact, with this truck’s manually locked hubs, super large displacement diesel engine, and incredibly low first gear, it didn’t need any input at all from the driver past releasing the clutch to climb the hill. How’s that for semi-autonomous?
Like all good videos, the real conclusion to this one is made in the comments section. With a good majority of trucks on today’s roads being newer and a good bit of those making it on the mountain trails, it’s hard not to disagree when someone makes a statement like, “they sure don’t make them like they used to.” To be fair though, they don’t, But that doesn’t mean that fancy new truck isn’t just as capable. I guess it just all comes down to opinion.
