SVT Team Changes High Performance Pickup Plans from F-150 to Sport Trac
Truck enthusiasts, the new Sport Trac Adrenalin might just be your new dream ride. That is, this will be your new dream ride,
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| Ford showed its SVT-tuned Explorer Sport Trac Adrenalin in New York to gauge public interest and opinion. (Photo: Ford Motor Company of Canada) |
The group responsible for this high performance truck is Ford's Special Vehicle Team (SVT), an internal organization that has been tuning Ford products for nearly two decades (previously Specialty Vehicle Operations or SVO). They've successfully produced quicker, faster and better handling versions of everything from otherwise boring sedans, run of the mill hatchbacks, sports coupes and even pickup trucks. Aside from the Mustang Cobra, SVT's second most famous work has been the first and second generation F-150 Lightning, which had, prior to
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| SVT has shifted gears from the F-150 Lightning to the next-generation Explorer Sport Trac. (Photo: Ford Motor Company of Canada) |
But where has the Lightning gone? Ford decided to skip out on the earth-trembling performance version of the current generation F-150, introduced at the Detroit show in 2003. Despite the success of the 500-horsepower 2003 concept, it was deemed that the vehicle's poor fuel consumption and expensive development costs would be counter-productive to SVT's agenda of developing a hot variant of the Mustang. The project was shelved, leaving Chevrolet's Silverado SS, to a lesser extent, and the record-setting Ram SRT-10 to keep pickup enthusiasts drooling.