The bounce from the ninth-generation Ford F-150 to the tenth was jarring. It was when the Ford F-150 went from being a boxy truck with rounded edges to a truck that intentionally tried to appeared like a automotive. It was hit and miss at first, but it surely went on to be a best-seller, probably spurred on by the recognition of the four-door F-150, which ushered in a brand new period of vehicles as household automobiles within the early aughts. However earlier than the redesigned F-150 went all in on 4 doorways, it debuted as one of the crucial radical single cab vehicles ever with an idea referred to as the Ford Triton.

From the 1995 Triton idea, it’s simple to make out what would finally go on to turn into the tenth-generation F-150, which featured the primary main redesign to the pickup in over 20 years, as Motor Pattern stories. We will additionally simply see the define of the second-generation Ford SVT Lightning. Aside from just a few adjustments to the entrance finish, headlights and tail lights, the Triton idea made it to manufacturing roughly intact, however the adjustments are clear sufficient to warrant a double take.

The Triton idea has a stronger automotive vibe than the manufacturing pickup that adopted two years later when the brand new Ford F-150 got here out in 1997. The idea’s grill is extra distinguished and hood extra rounded compared to the manufacturing truck.

The Triton’s hood scoop additionally makes it appear extra about efficiency than work, and this theme would carry over when Ford marketed the most recent F-150 as a sleeker different to work-focused vehicles. The Triton identify would stay on within the 4.6-liter and 5.4-liter V8 engines that powered the F-150 for the subsequent decade.

At the same time as a single cab with a protracted mattress, the Triton was all about aerodynamics and softening the perimeters of the F-150 to make it extra car-like, which aligns with the brand new strategy amongst Ford’s designers that the New York Occasions described in 1991, earlier than the truck’s PN-96 platform was finalized:

Within the yr 2,000, pickup vehicles might look smooth, streamlined and sporty, and nonetheless have the ability to carry 4-by-8-foot sheets of plywood. That’s, if college students on the Artwork Middle Faculty of Design in Pasadena, Calif., have their manner.

Andy Jacobson, director of truck design at Ford, mentioned his firm has sponsored design tasks on the school because the 1960’s. “The varsity is one in all our biggest sources of younger contemporary designers,” Mr. Jacobson mentioned. “We rent a mean of three college students a yr.” […Most] of the designs are horny and extra carlike, with cabs that slope again aerodynamically and with extremely contoured sides, in order that the cab and truck mattress appear to mix collectively

To at the present time, the tenth-generation Ford F-150 appears to be like misplaced subsequent to its predecessors and successors. Finally, Ford corrected course and debuted a design that squared the F-150 and made it look “trucky” once more. The 1997-2004 Ford F-150 stays an outlier within the historical past of the mannequin, however I nonetheless keep in mind it because the truck that impressed the “LOBO” badge, which the F-150 wore in Mexico. And of all of the ideas or vehicles that Ford has ever launched, the muzzle of the Ford Triton suits the “LOBO” badging greatest.