Ford F-150 Lobo vs RAM 1500 TRX: an old-school slug fest for Truck of the Year

Fall – or autumn, as my tyrannical metric-system-minded overlords insist on calling it – is a nostalgic season. Perfect, it turns out, for our annual deliberations over what was this year’s best, and it happened to be a particularly interesting one when it comes to pickups. While it was indeed dominated by more of the usual, some stood out from the pack while a genuine disruptor kicked up the dirt around the truck yard, heralding big changes down the road.

We’re talking of course of the Slate Auto, which we finally got our hands on after a substantial amount of teasing. The bare-bones EV is meant to shake things up for both electrics and pickups, though we found it to be more of a large snap-on model kit on wheels than a monumental sea change for either segment. Bear in mind, it was a prototype, so it may yet make waves, but for now, we’ll wait and see how it’s received by the gen pop. Regardless, its mere presence has garnered the attention of legacy automakers keen to protect their territories.

Meanwhile, Toyota brought us updated versions of the stalwart Tundra, a golden TRD built to play with the big boys of truckdom. Robust Fox shocks within a proper truck-y suspension paired with a 437hp twin-turbo V6 engine make this Tundra comparatively less bombastic than its larger, louder contemporaries, but it’s just as useful, if not way more sensible. Its 20mpg would be laughably tragic if it wasn’t superior to the competition.

Photography: Mark Riccioni

… which neatly brings us to our Top Gear US Truck of the Year finalists. In the end, two industry mainstays demanded our attention more than the rest, simply by doing things a little old-school.

Runner-up: Ford F-150 Lobo

Here’s some inside baseball: the Ford Maverick Lobo nearly won this award last year. The standard Maverick had already charmed us with its plucky personality backed by the real-world utility it offered, all in a sensible package. It was a reminder that not all pickups need to be almighty behemoths used for every job and paved the way for things like the aforementioned Slate and Ford’s incoming Fathom.

Add some Focus ST bits to go with all the stylish exterior tweaks, and the Lobo was ready to walk away with the win, had it not been for the arrival of the Rivian R1T Quad, which effectively blitzed the Lobo’s victory the same way Star Wars ruined any other film’s shot at box office superiority in 1977.

With all this said, we were super jazzed for the perennial F-150 to receive the Lobo treatment. Part of the fairly bare-bones STX trim, the Lobo is a package that brings the expected attitude, with a glossy black mesh grille and a 10-piece ground appearance pack to spice up the pickup’s overall style. It also drops its rear suspension to give it a stance befitting a proper truck Vato.

With a 5.0-liter V8 engine as standard, it’s already quite the truck, and it has all the baked-in F-150 utility, too. We’re talking a roomy supercrew cabin, four-wheel drive and your choice of either a 5- or 6-1/2-foot box, just to name a few of the F-150’s myriad features.

The cherry on top of this hi-octane pie is the 3.0-liter Whipple supercharger as an available add-on. This does a great job backing up the Lobo’s bark with a whole lotta bite, upping the output from an already decent 400hp to a staggering 700hp. It also has the added side effect of pulling the corners of your mouth up into a monstrous grin every time you even brush the throttle.

So why is it the runner-up? Let’s be clear, the F-150 Lobo’s badassery isn’t up for debate, and for roughly 70 grand, you get a lot of truck for the money. What keeps it off the top spot is the fact that there isn’t much beyond the standard brakes,10-speed auto transmission and suspension to support the added grunt. 

With the Lobo Maverick, we at least got torque vectoring and a more fun-tuned suspension setup, giving it a different dynamic character to match the menacing exterior. While we appreciate this classic 'hot rod' approach on the F-150, we expected something a little more substantial from this lone wolf.

Winner: RAM 1500 TRX SRT

What chance would a wolf stand against a T-Rex? Perhaps pitting the RAM 1500 TRX against the F-150 Lobo wasn’t particularly fair to begin with, considering that it took all of the Raptor R’s tricks to just edge out a win over the RAM 1500 TRX during our head-to-head comparison earlier this summer – and that’s the most capable F-150 Ford’s ever built (but not eligible here as it launched over 12 months ago).

So long as no Raptors are in sight, though, the TRX is the most impressive new truck of the year, hands down, and it’s not just because of the noise it makes.

Okay, it does have lots to do with that, but the sound of its 777hp engine whirring and wailing like a steel-town valkyrie is backed up by some incredible capabilities. RAM's pickup isn’t impressive because it has a 3.5sec 0–60 time or that it can be ramped into the sky in perpetuity. It’s impressive because it can do all of that and then return to basic utility duty without missing a beat.

Similar to its lupine rival, RAM's showstopper truck is powered by a decidedly old-school V8 engine, specifically all the 6.2-liter HEMIs that were shelved when Stellantis made moves to downsize power units. Now that V8s are back on the menu, RAM wasted no time in tweaking the engine to blow the Raptor R’s 720hp off the spec sheet. Fitted with a twin-screw supercharger, the TRX states its intent for mayhem plainly.

Power is one thing, capability is another. A five-link coil suspension upfitted with the latest generation of Bilstein Black Hawk e2 performance shocks means that this high-powered full-size pickup can take a beating off-road. Naturally, the TRX has the innate 4x4 ability to crawl up and over most naturally occurring obstacles in the wild, but it can adapt at speed due to its Active Terrain Dynamics system and a litany of corresponding drive modes.

This all adds up, inexplicably, to a body-on-frame truck that can handle more ill-advised desert ramp launches than a grizzled stunt driver. A strange showcase of capability for those of us who are used to our trucks being decidedly more earthbound, but if anything, it speaks to the heartiness of RAM's F-150-fighter. That and it gives a little hope that it could get us out of scrapes when things finally do kick off in the Costco parking lot.