Over thundering exhaust noise, I can almost hear Steve Saleen talking loudly behind my right shoulder. With his hands clenching my headrest, he's probably explaining how it is that I've just accelerated to 100 mph before realizing I had so much as pushed the pedal. In a 5500-pound pickup truck.

The first-generation Ford Explorer Sport Trac rode on the bones of the 1991 Explorer (which was itself derived from the 1980s-era Ranger), and while its combination of an SUV cabin and a short pickup bed was intriguing, its meager underpinnings betrayed its appeal. Fortunately, about the only things the all-new 2007 Sport Trac has in common with the old model are its name, its packaging concept, and its base engine. Riding on a stretched version of the new Explorer's frame-its wheelbase is 16.8 inches longer than the Explorer's-the Sport Trac is now five inches longer and two inches wider than its predecessor.

After three years of production, the Ford SVT Lightning still does not care about you. It does not want to hear you complain about the lack of a rear seat. It will not chip in $10 at the gas pump. It will not tolerate your trepidation behind the wheel whenever rain starts to fall. Like the drill sergeant to the new recruit, when the Lightning tells you hit the gas, you will ask how hard. Thank you sir, may I have another?

The Nissan Frontier S/C is supercharged. Lest you forget, the front fenders are adorned with "SuperCharged" badges. If you missed those, fat decals on the rear flanks repeat the message. Inside, the leather sport seats wear stitching that reiterates the truck's superchargedness.

Laguna Beach, California So we're driving a Lincoln Blackwood on the Pacific Coast Highway late on a Friday evening. A twenty-something guy in a stepped-on white GMC Sierra pickup with matching hard tonneau races up alongside, appraises the 'Wood, and gives us an emphatic thumbs up. "Hmmm," we think. "Maybe this is the vehicle that will finally rescue Lincoln from the Town Car demographic abyss." This four-door, four-passenger, sybaritic, seemingly purposeless pickup may not represent the immediate future of Lincoln, but it's an indication of how the division wants to reinterpret the concept of American luxury.

San Antonio, Texas - Fright'ning might be a better name for the SVT version of Ford's F-150 pickup. Increased power, new shocks, and a few minor appearance updates are all that distinguish the 2001 Lightning from last year's model, but some of these changes are worth noting if you plan to test Newton's Laws of Motion from the bench seat of a pickup.

Ann Arbor - Our founder and editor emeritus, David E. Davis, Jr., had a new idea for the Toyota Tundra pickup truck we added to our Four Seasons test fleet in late 1999. He would send it to northern Michigan for use as a real live workhorse at Red's Bog, his idyllic retreat on the west side of the state. His ranch foreman, Jerry Keie, would have charge of Toyota's big new truck and keep notes from a real working man's perspective.

Ann Arbor - If sport-utilities can dress up as luxury cars (the GMC Yukon Denali, for instance), why can't a pickup truck do the same? Why, indeed, asks GMC, which has outfitted its light-duty Sierra pickup with luxury bits to create the Sierra C3.