2004 Ford F-150 in Alvin

Kingman, Arizona—

Frank Davis received clear marching orders with his appointment as chief engineer for the 2004 Ford F-150 pickup: Make it bigger, make it badder, but make sure it sells. In the aftermath of faulty Firestones and tipping Explorers, Davis's truck faces the daunting task of hitching up to the Ford Motor Company and restoring its lost momentum.

The F-150 has been Ford's golden tow horse and America's sweetheart for decades. For twenty-five years, it has trumped full-size pickup competitors in the sales race, and it has hogged pole position among all vehicles since 1982. The F-series accounts for nearly one-fourth of Ford's entire U.S. volume. Three assembly plants work overtime, in a good year cranking out nearly a million units (including Super Duty models).

So Davis's army of engineers had their work cut out for them. With a budget of $1.8 billion (a speculative figure Ford won't confirm) and a "bigger, badder, better" mantra, they set about refurbishing a pickup last remodeled in 1997. To make it bigger, they stretched the wheelbase nearly six inches to add vestigial rear doors to the regular cab (for storage space access) and to improve rear-seat accommodations in SuperCab and SuperCrew models. In place of the wimpy aero-style nose, there's a more assertive trapezoidal grille beneath a muscled-up hoodline. The beltline is also elevated, there's a door notch borrowed from the muy macho Super Duty, and the top edges of the box are raised 2.3 inches to increase both cargo volume and visual mass. Underneath is the real mass: a fully boxed frame that's nine times stiffer in torsion, new rack-and-pinion power steering, a coil-over-damper control-arm front suspension, and straddle-mounted three-inch-wide rear leaf springs.... Read full article