Great review, I think you’ve really nailed it in terms of the appeal of the diesel V6/8 speed auto as a perfect engine/transmission combo for one of these sorts of vehicles over the V8. Even though I’m not usually a fan of diesel in smaller cars nor would associate them with “elegance”!, it just the perfect application for them here, for lugging a heavy vehicle round, haveing loads of torque for off roading and towing, and still being not too bad on fuel. A friend of mine has a Land Rover Discovery 4 Commercial which which he uses for work and he swears by it. It has the same engine/gearbox combo (though not sure if and it definitely isn’t short of poke for something so big. I actually kinda prefer the Discovery in a way, it’s a little more utilitarian, in a “get into it with muddy shoes” sort of way, while still being very comfortable inside, but then again I have low standards on that front as the sort of person who has happily uses sports cars as daily drivers and is still amazed that you can have conversations in modern cars without shouting. 🙂 ..like I said, the oily bits are similar and you even get the air suspension, so if
That might seem a little extravagant for what’s essentially a work truck in the US, but in Ireland, you can’t actually buy anything equivalent to a Ford F150, “trucks” tend to be either of the Taliban approved Toyota Hilux sort of variety or purely utilitarion cab-over things like a Mitsubishi Fuso or something, noting inbetween. Commercial fuel taxation favors diesel, which is much cheaper to begin with too, and relative to what cars cost here, a “commercial” discovery is no more extravagant than a high spec GMC Sierra. It’s not some foreman special though, most of the time the rear seats are folded down or taken out and it’s packed with gear, and often towing a very large multi axle trailer, on top of that, he needed to be able to go off road too, not rock crawling, but certainly up the muddy inclines where some sites happen to be, it handles it all. Thing is, that’s not even the top dog “turf burner” as we refer to diesels, there’s a TDV8 too,
The weirdest thing though, is that these are actually Ford (and PSA) engines. I’m not sure if Ford actually manufacture them now, but it’s an engine they stumped up the development costs for and don’t actually use in any ford product, so you kinda wonder why one of these isn’t in an F150 already, or perhaps perversely, a European market mustang. Yes, I know that’s sacrilege, but this is yurop with all it’s fuel costs and other crap where people buy Audi A5s with miserable little 4 cylinder TDIs, a V6/v8 diesel mustang with an autobox might appeal here and actually work in a continent crossing GT sorta way with an autobox and might even be preferable to the 4 banger ecoboost in some ways. Or not..in an ideal world it’d be just V8s.