Ford F-150 Lightning review

It might accelerate like a sports car, but it doesn’t drive like one. Surprise, surprise, ey? The first thing you notice is wind noise: there’s a fair bit of it, which is to be expected when you’re trying to push a barn door through soupy air, there’s also some shudder through the chassis when you hit a bump or a crack, and the suspension clearly has a lot on its plate keeping all that mass in check. As a result the ride is floaty on gentle undulations then when you hit a compression, you really feel the weight.

How does it cope with bends?

Corners are interesting. On the plus side, there’s now newly designed independent rear suspension, which means the back end doesn’t pogo and skip around when you hit a mid-turn bump, but we found ourselves feeling sorry for the outside front tyre bearing the brunt of the forces. Fortunately, they don’t have many corners in America, so the key is to settle in, take your time, get your cruise on and enjoy the silence, smoothness and oiled precision with which it barrels down the road. As a way to traverse America’s largely flat and featureless interstates it’s a premium experience – so much so that you forget you’re in a pick-up at all.

Sounds quite sedate given the power available…

Well, you may look at that headline-grabbing 0-60mph time and assume this is some sort of tyre-chewing monster truck, but its character is far more subdued. It wants to be driven with a calm hand and a steady foot – and after an initial poke of the throttle to establish that, yes, it can gather a lot of momentum in not much time at all, you’ll only call upon full power on a slip road or for a swift overtake. We found using the one-pedal high-regen mode takes the stress out of stop-start traffic, but on the motorway you want to switch it off and coast along making the most of all that momentum, and maximising the range.

What’s it like off the beaten track?

Unsurprisingly, with four-wheel drive, a boat load of torque and a locking rear diff, it’s handy off road too. Thing is, if you just want to get the job done – to scale a mountain or escape a muddy car park – it’s more than capable, but if off-roading is your hobby, you’ll want something that offers more mechanical interaction with the process. It’s also quite good at pulling things – something that’s a huge priority to the Texans we met. Total towing capacity, if you get the big battery, is 10,000lb or 4.5 tonnes. If that means little to you, put it this way - we pulled a large speed boat on a trailer. We also pulled an Airstream caravan, and had to double check they were actually attached.