In June of this year, a Ford F-150 Lightning pulled up to the starting grid at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. This harrowing road has been challenging cars and drivers since 1916, with one simple goal: get to the top faster than anyone else. And that's exactly what Ford's all-electric entry did, screaming from start to finish in a time of eight minutes and 53 seconds, more than 10 seconds quicker than the next-fastest competitor. That's a remarkable feat for a truck, made more incredible by the fact that Ford's entry, dubbed the SuperTruck, lurched to a halt just a few feet after the start. It stood still for 26 seconds while pilot Romain Dumas ran through the reboot sequence.
But Ford's mission to spice up its EV efforts has resulted in some other, much wilder machines in some unusual shapes, so-called "demonstrators" that offer levels of performance so outrageous they're decidedly illegal for the street. It's a dual-pronged approach to bolstering the company's electrified efforts, but in many ways, it's just a continuation of the same theme that the company has been singing since its earliest days.
"Luckily, Romain had been studying the process of what to do in case that happened the night before," said David Root, exterior designer on the F-150 Lightning SuperTruck. "He knew exactly what to do."
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