There are few more enjoyable lines of scientific inquiry than a control question that begins with, “Will it… ?”, as in, “Will it blend?” or “Will it drift?” or, in Team O’Neil Rally School’s version, “Will it rally?” And when the unstoppable force of O’Neil’s rally query meets the immovable object of an 8,000-pound 2022 Ford F-450 Super Duty King Ranch dually diesel, we get to enjoy some sensational super-sized science. Without spoiling the experiment, we gotta say we’re impressed with every aspect of the experiment.
In one corner, the F-450 is powered by a 6.7-liter V8 oil-burner making 475 horsepower and 1,050 pound-feet of torque, shifting through a 10-speed automatic transmission.
Curb weight’s listed as 8,587 pounds, that’s in base spec. When Car and Driver tested a 2017 F-450 in the luxurified King Ranch trim, the scales registered 9,140 pounds. That “gargantuan size and locomotive mass” is spread over 266.2 inches of truck, about 22.2 feet of great white whale. Leviathan torque allowed it to his 60 miles per hour in 8.0 seconds, 0.3 second behind a Ford Escape. The grunt doesn’t like long fights, the quarter-mile taking in 16.1 seconds — though still, just 0.2 second behind the Escape. Tested on its change of direction, C/D called the Ford “surprisingly maneuverable.” Because trees are surprisingly hard, the stakes of a rally test are always surprisingly high.
In the other corner, we have the gravel savvy of lead instructor Wyatt Knox. That’s it.
We recommend a watch of the video above, and then a perusal of the series. This one’s a pretty fair and wild fight, perhaps the wildest aspect being that the King Ranch only took six seconds longer to do the course than a Dodge Charger police car. Which gives us some ideas about a getaway vehicle.
