Tommy just bought a 1965 Ford F-100 4X4, and it’s the granddaddy of off-road badassery
Recently, TFL Studios acquired a 1965 Ford F-100 4×4, which started life as a U.S. Forestry Service truck, before becoming a farm truck. We can still see a lot of green under the coat of pumpkin orange, and a fan helped us decode the VIN. On top of that, there has been some tinkering with the underpinnings.
Many new goodies were introduced by Ford in 1965. They began to offer a crew cab option and they introduced their twin I-beam front suspension, which was only available on the 2WD truck. While not exactly revolutionary, the Ford F-series pickup trucks already had a following, but they were missing something – 4WD. So, in 1965, they introduced a 4×4 version – and that’s what Tommy is showing off.
There were others…
Other competitors, like the 1960 Chevrolet K10 Apache 4X4 pickup truck and extremely rare 1958 Dodge W100 Power Giant 4×4 already offered a 4×4 setup, but Ford was a little late to the game. Even the Jeep FC-150 predated the Ford by many years, still – the 1965 Ford F-100 4×4 was considered a success.
This old Ford has a 150 horsepower, 300 CID, straight six-cylinder. It’s mated to a four-speed manual transmission and a two-speed low-range transfer case. The I6 was considered by many to be one of the most reliable engines Ford ever produced, and they were built from 1965 to 1996 (with a few updates along the way).
Here is another (much newer) Ford F-150 truck with a straight-six engine.
At the end of this video, Tommy asks you – the viewer – about what you think we should do with this truck. Almost anything reasonable is on the table, like engine swaps and lifts, but Tommy may be resistant.
