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- What's up? MKBHD here.
And I today now have a new favorite
two-door electric vehicle.
And when I say that out loud,
you probably picture one thing.
This is very different.
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So I've been talking
about these electric vehicle prototypes for a bit.
You know, how I've been saying they're easy to build.
You can make one, 'cause it's true.
We see car companies all the time just build one single car
with a custom chassis on some electric motors and a battery,
and boom, they parade that around.
But the hard part is building and shipping them in mass.
But all that being said,
this is easily one of the coolest electric car builds
I've ever seen.
So it's made by Ford and this is actually a concept car
so they don't even have plans to ship it.
But after seeing all the reactions to this
and driving it around for myself for a day,
I think it would be amazing if they reconsidered it.
But either way, let me show you around this thing.
So, basically, what you're looking at right now
is a 1978 Ford F-100 Eluminator
but under the hood is the guts
of a 2022 Ford Mustang Mach-E GT,
that's the Performance Edition.
It is a wild juxtaposition of brand-new 2022 things
alongside the 40-year-old solid metal and glass things
of this older truck.
I swear, this was a Doug Miro video,
there'd be endless quirks and features.
But yeah, the final result here is an electric truck
that not only looks like really nothing else on the road,
but it actually drives basically the same
as the Performance Edition Mach-E,
which is one of the faster ones out there.
480 horsepower, over 600-pound feet of torque.
Yes, you can brake hold launch.
Yes, it does 0 to 60 in 3.5 seconds.
And yeah, it does feel and look
and sound ridiculous while doing it.
(Man whooping) (wind whooshing)
Now, I don't know about you,
but I don't get a chance to look at trucks
from 1978 very often,
so sorry if this is super unsurprising.
But pretty much everything about the outside of this truck
is either in awesome shape or custom rebuilt as new.
So it's got the style and the lines of the times.
It's got the silver and copper paint colors.
The old school wheels are also custom to match.
They also happen to hide the bright red performance calipers
of the Mach-E's brakes under there pretty well.
Just poking around this thing, it's fun to see how much
of the original body is left untouched.
The six-foot bed is basically completely solid metal
and the tailgate's super heavy to open and close
'cause there's no mechanical assistance like modern trucks.
Even the doors, when you open them,
I don't know, I just find it fascinating
that you can just look
at the mechanical method right in there
for holding the door open at two different amounts.
Probably the only way you would know
that this is a restomod if you saw it on the street would be
if maybe you noticed the camera cutouts.
There is one in the back license plate here
for the reverse camera
and there's another one up at the front
in the grille cutout up here,
at which point you realize the whole grille is fake.
It's just a black plastic in there
like the rest of the Mustang Mach-Es.
Well, either that or you happen
to see it plugged in and charging
because that's a giveaway.
That flap at the front left bumper is, in fact,
a normal CCS charging port.
The inside though, okay, this is where it goes crazy.
There is a healthy combination of old and new
and even some new that's disguised as old
to fit better with the general aesthetic.
I think it's super cool.
Now, obviously there's no hiding the dashboard.
It's got the Mach-E's huge vertical touchscreen
with the knob and everything,
and there's also a display
as the dash behind the steering wheel,
so not the original dash.
I think some people would've wanted the original dash,
but there's so many new systems and things going on here
like the fact that it's showing me 200 miles of range,
for example, that I just don't know
how they could convert all of that stuff.
So all the software is in here; it's working.
The backup and forward cameras are functional.
They also brought in the headlight controls from the Mach-E
but I did notice they're sideways,
so maybe they didn't fit in the normal spot.
And then the more you look around,
the more you see parts cleverly disguised as old.
The steering wheel, for example,
it's new, but it says F-100 on it
and it's got the brown color.
And the seats are all new
but with the tan color to match the rest of the interior,
which is completely decidedly old school.
So you get the plaid stitching at the bottom of the door,
little metal pieces everywhere
for adjusting the side view mirrors.
The glove compartment is just a metal box,
like nothing fancy at all.
And the entire ceiling too is stitched with leather.
And the sun visors are just like metal wires
with leather pieces on them.
There's also old school speakers behind the seats
that are hooked up
and seem to be playing great quality audio,
which leads me to believe they're also new disguised as old.
You better believe this car has manual rolling up windows.
There's no way they could get rid of that.
It's mandatory for a car of this style.
So, yeah, a little bit of old and a little bit of new,
and this is the combo you get.
It's just so funny seeing this old whip rolling around
through the windshield
but you can still see the top half of a huge touchscreen
that's only in new cars.
It seems sacrilegious to have a center console
with wireless chargers
right next to manual roll up windows and door locks,
but that's really what this is all about.
It's adding the modern creature comforts
to a comfortable, familiar old truck.
So I did get to drive this thing around the studio a bit
for a day before Ford went and took it away to the,
I think they brought it straight to the New York Auto Show.
But I really got three main questions
from people that I showed this to.
One, what's under the hood?
Which is an interesting question.
Two, how does it drive?
And three, can I get one?
All good questions.
So, first of all,
literally under the hood is Mustang Mach-E.
So this is a custom chassis holding things together
by a company called Roadster Shop.
But, yeah, basically all the electronics
and HVAC and wiring, things that are normally
in the front of a Mach-E and hidden,
they're all still here.
Plus, basically that open bucket
for storage where the front trunk is.
So, yeah, this thing still has a real front trunk.
This 1978 restomod Ford F-100 has a bigger front trunk
than most other electric cars on the road right now.
So, okay, how does it drive? This is a funny one.
So it's quite a character, as you can imagine.
Very livable and smooth and normal at low speeds,
like around a neighborhood.
This would actually be totally fun to drive.
Maybe forgive me if this is sacrilegious,
but I think I'd prefer to drive this over the '70s version
because you've got the electric torque,
it's smooth and silent, no gear shifting,
you've got regenerative braking, one-pedal driving.
It's great but it's also a massively wide metal truck
that can lurch from 0 to 60 in 3.5 seconds.
And if you really pin it and start playing with it,
it has very impressive acceleration,
but it's obviously not gonna handle great.
You can feel the dipping and swaying of the chassis more
than pretty much anything else capable of going this fast.
I didn't have it long enough
to see how well the range holds up,
but, hey, if it's quoting me about 200 miles of range,
that's not amazing but that's also not terrible
considering this thing has the aerodynamics
of a block of cheese.
So after playing with it, like I said, people were like,
"Where can I actually get one of these?"
And like I said, it is a concept car
so this isn't an actual version
that you'll ever be able to buy.
But Ford is selling a crate motor
that you can actually use
to convert other older cars to electric,
so you don't have to build everything by hand
like Zack is with his Hummer EV.
And it's only $4,000.
It's 3,900 bucks for that,
which was lower than I expected it to be.
So I think that's the big takeaway of this.
This concept truck, which is so cool,
is really just a proof of concept,
and I think it's awesome.
I wanna shout out Ford
for making something so fun like this.
Definitely tag or send someone this video
who would want a retro modern truck like this.
That's really what this is, the ultimate retro modern truck.
Thanks for watching, subscribe for more.
I'll see you guys in the next one.
Peace!
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