Ford’s partnership with the Harley Davidson brand goes back to 1999, when they made their first F150 pick up and debuted it as a 2000 model at that big motorcycle shin-dig in South Dakota called Sturgis. It wasn’t until 2004 that they rolled out Super Duty Harley Davidson trucks to match. You could get one of these in your choice of 3 paint options: Monotone black, black over Dark Shadow Grey two tone, or black over Competition Orange two tone. Harley trucks come adorned with special badges and chrome accents like chromed tubular step rails, exhaust tips and some trim. Brand new in 2004, one of the Harley Davidson Super Duty diesel trucks would have cost right around $50,000.
Most commonly seen in the Super Duty Harley Davidson trucks were the Super Crew 4 doors, and much less so, the supercabs -to the point that my dealership’s owner insisted that the truck I wanted to take in on trade was an imposter. He swore up and down that as long as he’d been in the business, Ford never made Super Duty Harley trucks in Supercab versions -he was wrong, and to prove it, we broke down the VIN on the truck digit by digit to determine what we were dealing with. Dwayne’s truck had the optional 6.0L Powerstroke Turbo Diesel engine that was good for 325 HP and 560 lb ft of torque, and was paired with a 5 speed automatic transmission.
It was a showy truck. One can certainly understand why Dwayne insisted he couldn’t get away with anything while driving it. On the other hand, I thought it would make a good piece for our lot, as trucks were kind of my bread and butter when I sold vehicles. We used to have custom lift trucks built from our new F-series pickups, and they drew people into the lot better than anything else. Sometimes, those people would take one of them home -but that’s for another posting.
Dwayne didn’t just want rid of his super noticeable Harley truck because he was racking up citations with it. There was something else he wanted. I’d talked to him a couple weeks before he finally came in ready to deal. At that time he had been on the lot with his friend who was a Mustang enthusiast and had a garage full of tuned up ponies to race around in. Dwayne had his eye on a Tungsten Grey Mustang GT convertible with a black top and, aside from having a 5 speed manual transmission instead of an automatic, featured pretty much every conceivable option loaded into it. In 2006, the GT Mustang (like mine) came with a 4.6L V8 that put out 300HP and 320 lb ft of torque, which is plenty, but pales in comparison to what the new 5.0 coyote engine will do, and is actually less brawny than the new V6 that you can get these days.
The thing was, Dwayne was also practical. He only wanted to take his Mustang on the road in summer, so he would need a secondary vehicle for winter driving. He wanted something with 4x4 but didn’t want to have to spend too much money over what his trade in would be worth. I told him I’d try to find something to make it work, and with that, I crammed into the back seat of the convertible and went for a spin with Dwayne and his girlfriend. They loved the Mustang, and I knew they really wanted it, but I needed to pair the brand new Mustang with a used winter driver. Nothing on our used lot would work with the numbers that Dwayne wanted to see. It was late in 2006, and there were lots of manufacturer incentives available on that Mustang, which gave me a little room to work with, but that convertible had originally clocked in with a sticker price of around $40,000, and Dwayne’s truck was valuable, but not that valuable.
I sat Dwayne and his girlfriend down at my desk and told them I’d be back with a vehicle for them to check out. I snagged a fist full of keys out of the bowl where we threw the keys to cars we had just taken in on trade and hot-footed it over to the fresh trade row. We had a couple of 2001 Ford Expedition XLT 4x4s sitting there, and a quick peek at the odometers and the coded listing of how much we owned them for made me decide to hop into the black one. I drove it into a detailing bay and tossed out any and all of its former owner’s left behind stuff before bringing it around front for Dwayne. This time, Dwayne’s girlfriend did the driving on the test spin first, and she gave it an enthusiastic thumbs up. Sure, it had around 100,000 miles on its odometer, but it ran strong and everything worked just as it should. It wasn’t as flashy as the Harley truck, but it was black, which Dwayne liked. The trim featured cloth interior instead of leather, but so what? The new Mustang convertible had the premium interior, so at least one of the two vehicles kept them at the trim level they were used to.
In 2001, the Ford Expedition was offered with a 4.6L V8 much like the Mustang’s, but it was only tuned for 215HP and 290 lb ft of torque. Really though, Dwayne was trading in 325 HP and 560 lb ft of torque, and getting a total of 515HP and 610 lb ft of torque in exchange, so when he looked at it that way, the numbers made sense. So, Dwayne, who had come in with one big black and orange truck, left with a black 4x4 and a grey Mustang GT convertible. Who knows how well he fared in terms of speeding tickets after leaving behind his less than subtle truck, but I bet when it's a beautiful summer day and he drives around with the top dropped on that Mustang, he’s glad he made the swap.
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