Autoblog

Pickuptruck.com, our favorite website about anything with a bed on four wheels that's been owned and operated by Mike Levine since 1995, was just bought out by automotive mega-site Cars.com in a move that we hope made our good friend a gajillion dollars. Levine now joins Autoblog alumnus Dave Thomas, who runs the Kicking Tires blog under the Cars.com umbrella of sites.

The first change that came down from Levine's new corporate overlords was to pluralize the name of his website to Pickuptrucks.com because, well, we don't know why really. We imagine Cars.com already owned the URL, but why it decided to rebrand its new property over one letter rather than just redirecting Pickuptrucks.com visitors to Pickuptruck.com is beyond our feeble minds. Those are corporate overloads for ya. Being owned by AOL, we know all about corporate overlords. Welcome to the club, Mike!

[Source: Pickuptrucks.com]

click above for more high-res images of the 2009 Ford F-150

The Ford F-Series has been the top-selling vehicle longer than most of us at Autoblog have been alive, and the Blue Oval designed the new 2009 F-150 to help keep that streak alive. In 2009, several new additions will be made to Ford's best-seller, including an easy access step for the pickup bed, a flat-load back seat, an improved powertrain lineup, and a new frame that features more high-strength steel. The truck experts at PickupTruck.com spent a whole day with F-Series Chief Engineer Matt O'Leary and Design Director Pat Schiavone, and the fruit of their labor is eight videos that detail every square inch of Ford's most important product. We've added a walk-through tour of the interior of the new F-150 Platinum after the jump, and you can click the Read link below to view videos ranging from tow information to design inspiration at PickupTruck.com.

[Source: PickupTruck.com]

Our friends over at Pickuptruck.com are extremely excited about their big project in 2008, which is to use input from readers to customize a 2008 Nissan Titan Crew Cab PRO-4X community project truck. So far readers have helped pick the paint scheme, which is a nice red-on-black affair with some silver accents as seen above. In the future, readers will get to pick other exterior elements as well, including the wheels and more aftermarket treatments for the truck. When all is said and done, Pickuptruck.com will be giving away its project Titan truck to a reader who enters its sweepstakes that just kicked off today. Like our own sweepstakes last spring for a 2007 Dodge Nitro R/T, you can enter once a day to win the Pickuptruck.com custom Nissan Titan. Unlike ours, you can do so through March 7th. That's right, increase your chances of winning this one-of-a-kind truck by entering every day for three months. Throughout that time the website will be updating readers on the truck's progress and asking for input as it's built up. Having suffered through our own sweepstakes without being able to enter, you can bet the entire Autoblog team will be entering everyday to win this one.

Click here to read about the Pickuptruck.com sweepstakes or click here to go straight to entering.

[Source: Pickuptruck.com]

When the Two-Mode Silverado Hybrid hits the market next fall, it will likely boast best in class fuel economy while still managing to tow 6,100 lbs. While it's not that hard to beat the most miserly of full-size pickups in the MPG dept., doing that without sacrificing very much of the truck's capabilities is what's most impressive about the Silverado Hybrid. GM quotes fuel savings to be 40% better in city driving, with a 25% improvement overall. The hybrid Silverado can also hit 30 mph in electric-only mode for up to one mile depending on battery's state of charge. We teamed up with Pickuptruck.com editor Mike Levine to interview Silverado Program Manager Carl Hillenbrand, and the long-time GM truck man had plenty to say about the general's greenest-ever pickup. Click the video above for more.

Our friends at PickupTruck.com have posted a "first drive" report on the new Holden VE Ute, and from the sounds of things, we really, really want Bob Lutz's GMC Caballero idea to come to fruition. The wheelman for PickupTruck.com was Aussie scribe James Stanford of GoAuto, and in addition to giving us the particulars about the slick, car-based pickup, he also gives us a quick backgrounder on Australian utes in general. It's interesting. For example, while Utes cost less and seat fewer humans than the sedans they're based on, they actually have better resale values. Where many people use the El Camino as a punchline here in the US, in the land of Oz, that's simply not the case. The Ute is a desirable vehicle Down Under, and it can be infused with a healthy dollop of badassedness.

The VE Ute makes no bones about its light-duty nature, with the SS boasting a peak cargo capacity of just a smidge over 1,300 pounds (less still if you go for the killer-looking 19" wheels). This isn't a shortcoming, however, as three-fourths of Holden Utes sold are sport-oriented, anyway. In this department, the VE Ute brings the goods, pumping out 362 horses in V8-powered SS trim via a six speed transmission (manual or automatic). Rear tires can be incinerated at will if that's your flavor, but the suspension is tuned so that attacking the curvy stuff's as fun as testing the Ute's straight-line capabilities. We won't steal the PickupTruck.com's thunder, beyond that. For the nitty gritty, you need to check out the review for yourself. Then, cross your fingers and hope that this Aussie beast follows its sedan cousin over here sometime in the future.

[Source: PickupTruck.com]

Mike Levine from PickupTruck.com is our go-to guy for truck news. His brain is like the bed of a Ford F-450 filled with the esoteric details of heavy duty diesel pickups and 3/4-ton gassers. Plus, he's from the old school of automotive journalism and has made a successful transition to the web, which means his reporting is always knowledgeable and balanced despite it being delivered digitally. When Levine told us he was planning on doing a comprehensive comparo of today's heavy duty pickups, however, we were unprepared for the depth of the final product.

The 2007 PickupTruck.com Heavy Duty Shootout pits six HD pickups from Chevy/GMC, Ford and Dodge against each other on a totally level and unbiased playing field. Levine went so far as to hire a third-party company to perform all of the instrumented testing to remove any trace of subjectivity in the results. The players are three gas-powered 3/4-ton pickups including the 2007 Dodge Ram 2500 SLT Quad Cab 4x4, 2008 Ford F-250 FX4 Super Duty Crew Cab 4x4 and 2007 GMC Sierra 2500 HD SLE Crew Cab 4x4, and three diesel-powered one-ton pickups including the 2007 Chevrolet Silverado 3500 LT Crew Cab 4x4, 2007 Dodge Ram 3500 SLT Quad Cab 4x4 and 2008 Ford F-350 King Ranch Super Duty Crew Cab 4x4. Ford also threw in a 2008 Ford F-450 Lariat Super Duty Crew Cab 4x4 so that Levine and his team could attempt to prove how powerful this big rig really is.

We've just finished reading Part 1 and 2 of the three-part series, which includes an extremely knowledgeable and fact-filled introduction as well as the first battery of tests, including a "squat" test and 1/4-mile performance runs. Each part may appear like a lot to read, but we flew threw it faster than an unloaded GMC Sierra 2500 through the quarter mile.

Check out Part 1 here and click here for Part 2. The final installment should be out sometime this week, and we'll be eager to find out definitively which of these pickups outperformed its competitors in PickupTruck.com's battle royale of heavy duty trucks.

[Source: PickupTruck.com]