Ford goes all-in with its aluminum F-150 pickup

 2015 Ford F-150

The magnitude of Ford’s bet on the new aluminum-based F-150 pickup truck is sometimes lost in the details. Would Coca-Cola  change its formula (again)? Would Apple rip the little electronic heart out of the iPhone and rebuild it? Would McDonald's  take the special sauce out of the Big Mac?

That’s sort of what Ford did with its strategy to substitute “military-grade aluminum alloy” for steel in stripping a net 700 pounds out of the best-selling vehicle in the country, changing how it builds the vehicle “Ford Tough,” and gambling that discriminating truck buyers would flock to the transformed new model instead of galloping away from it in favor of worthy competitors.

In its marketing campaign for the new F-150, initially Ford is soft-pedaling the weight savings and the resulting significant jump in fuel economy, up to as high as 26 mpg on the highway from a top highway yield of 23 mpg for its predecessor. Ford marketers want to get truck buyers first to trust that the “aluminized” F-150 is every bit as capable, strong and durable as its predecessor, crowing in ads that “every single square millimeter” is tougher than before.

 2015 Ford F-150

But all of that is just code for attacking this quandary: Are pickup truck buyers going to trust an F-150 with an aluminum soul as much as they trusted the proven-Ford Tough, previous F-150? That’s why much of Ford’s early marketing has focused on the ability of the new vehicle to stand up to abuse, including a webisode in which the bed of the F-150 is pelted with projectiles like a baseball and a hockey puck.

 2015 Ford F-150

“It’s just educating consumers on the benefits,” Eric Peterson, F-150 marketing manager, told me. “Many people’s relationship with aluminum is just a pop can. I don’t think they know it’s also in the ladder that they stand on to get into the rafters of their house, and the flashlight on their tool belt. It’s in Mustangs and other vehicles today in certain parts. And many are unaware that that there have been aluminum hoods on the F-150 back to 1997.”

At the same time, Peterson said, “Many people got it faster than we imagined. They know that aluminum is the basis of spacecraft and airplanes and things that they trust to do heavy work. We have a ‘Built Ford Tough’ standard; we can make it out of aluminum, but it still has to be the most reliable and toughest truck out there.”

Ford is able to brag that the bed of the lighter new F-150 actually is more damage-resistant than older versions that relied on steel. One reason is that Ford used some thicker gauges of material because aluminum is lighter than steel, Peterson explained. And, he said, “aluminum has a memory that will pop back more than steel; it’s in the nature of the material itself.”

Only after truck buyers embrace F-15o on that level will many of them lock in on Ford’s other messages about the truck, such as its higher towing capacity and bigger payload, and “more than 100 patents” for improvements in the model that have been enabled in large part by the weight savings from the aluminum components. And, yes, it gets much better mileage with the 2.7-liter EcoBoost engine.