2012 Ford F-150 Xlt Crew Cab Pickup 4-door 5.0l on 2040-cars

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The big dune jump and the damage done

The Silver Lake sand dunes see their fair share of well-built trophy trucks executing impressive jumps. Drivers build insane pieces of machinery for the express purpose of sailing through the air like mad men and women.
Mike Higgins is no stranger to the area. His heavily modified Ford trophy truck has gone flying through the sky on more than one occasion, but he recently bit off more than he could chew. After hitting a particularly lofty dune, Higgins went airborne for a ridiculous 180 feet before becoming intimately familiar with the finer points of gravity.
While Higgins nailed the jump, his landing fell short of wowing the judges. The impact very nearly broke his truck in two. Despite the mechanical mayhem, the driver walked away without a scratch, proving that occasionally miracles really do happen. You can check out the jump and the subsequent destruction below for yourself. Be warned: there's a fair bit of foul language.

Ford leads top searched-for car brands on Google in 2014

With less than two weeks until 2014 takes its final bow, anyone and everyone is looking back on the past 50 or so weeks to see how they stacked up. For search giant Google, that means its time to check out its annual Trends report. Besides the most popular search term (the late, great Robin Williams), the most searched for gadget (the iPhone 6) and most searched for disease symptoms (quite worryingly, Ebola took the crown here), we have the most searched for automaker. With the long-awaited sixth-generation of one of America's most iconic vehicles, the Mustang, and a ground-breaking update for the US market's perennial best seller, the F-Series, it should come as no surprise at all that Ford was Google's most searched for automaker in 2014. Jeep captured second place, while Dodge, took third. We suspect introducing a pair of cars with 707 horsepower had something to do with that bronze medal... Scroll down to see the rest of this year's most searched for automakers, and then head into Comments and let us know if you're surprised by any of these. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Featured Gallery 2015 Ford Mustang: First Drive View 55 Photos News Source: Google via AutoGuideImage Credit: Copyright 2014 Drew Phillips / AOL Dodge Ford Jeep Technology

2021 Ford F-150 Raptor vs. 2021 Ram 1500 TRX | How they compare on paper

Yep, the F-150 Raptor is back, though you'd be forgiven for not noticing that it ever left. Ford's off-road model is taking a few months off to accommodate the broader 2021 F-150 redesign from which it benefits. And the fine folks over at Ram took full advantage of that lull to launch the new 702-horsepower TRX, which in one big way (hint: it's the engine) stands at the top of the performance pickup heap. Ford says that's all going to change in 2022, but for now, the Raptor returns with a familiar 3.5-liter EcoBoost V6 (albeit with an unspecified power figure) along with several other revisions to Ford's tried-and-true formula. The 2020 Raptor was already a worthy adversary to the beefy Ram despite the latter's definitive power advantage, so how has that picture evolved for 2021? Let's take a look.    Powertrain This is a big question mark for the Ford right now, but it seems reasonable to expect a bit more than the outgoing model's 450 horsepower and 510 pound-feet of torque. The TRX's Hellcat-sourced powerplant needs no introduction. Its 702 horsepower will easily eclipse whatever Ford has planned for its 3.5-liter twin-turbo V6, even if the V6 has more grunt than it did before, but that's OK. It's not the base-model Raptor's job to dethrone the TRX in straight-line speed; that honor will go to the 2022 Raptor R. We also don't know what the Raptor's fuel economy will be like, but we suspect it will be better than the TRX's, if only slightly.  Both these trucks come with four-wheel-drive standard, and they both have a number of drive modes that alter the powertrain’s characteristics depending on the terrain. Baja mode transforms the trucks into the desert runners that they both are at heart, but theyÂ’re plenty capable of crawling around rocks, too. We wonÂ’t know for certain which is best at specific tasks until we can get them both on (or off) equal ground. Suspension / off-roading capability And the ground is where things narrow significantly, both on- and off-paper. The specs are freakishly similar when we compare ground clearance, approach/departure angles and water fording, but the Raptor's leapfrog here is clearly evident. Both trucks utilize a coil-sprung rear suspension now, with Ford having abandoned the Raptor's previous leaf-spring setup with the redesign.  The two use different shocks to handle 100-mph-plus desert running.