This $400,000 Ford Ute Is Australia’s Least Subtle Car

Dual-cab utes are the most popular type of car in Australia, and they’re typically pretty bloody big. But what about a triple-cab ute? Yes, such a thing exists – if you’ve got a fair amount of spare change, that is…

You might be familiar with Ford’s famous F-150 ute (or ‘truck’, as the Americans call them). Even though it’s never been consistently sold in Australia, it’s easily the best-selling ute of all time, as well as one of the best-selling cars of all time, with over 40 million of the things sold.

What you might not know is what the ‘150’ stands for in the F-150’s name. Traditionally, it used to refer to its payload capacity: an F-150 could haul 1,500 pounds, an F-250 could haul 2,500 pounds, and so on. As payload capacities have increased over the years (a modern F-150 can haul well in excess of 1,500 pounds), those numbers have stuck around, even though they don’t really mean much any more except telling you how big a truck is.

With that in mind, did you know there’s such a thing as a Ford F-650? And that it’s absolutely bloody massive? It’s the absolute pinnacle of American automotive excess… And there’s one on sale in Australia.

Typically, F-650s are used as medium-duty trucks – that is, they’re typically sold as cab chassis and are used as small semi-trailers, dump trucks, cherry pickers, that sort of thing. They’re proper commercial vehicles. Well, most of them are.

A few F-650s have also been turned into rather outrageous triple-cab passenger vehicles, complete with six doors, two huge external fuel tanks with in-built steps and the bed from an F-250 or F-350.

RELATED: Ford’s New Ranger Could End Toyota’s Ute Dominance

This example dials up the ridiculous factor to 11 with quad side-exit exhaust pipes (on both sides of the car), mud flaps bigger than some car’s entire grilles and a truly enormous amount of chrome.

Inside, this F-650 is swathed in leather and features 8 seats across three rows as well as two individual roof-mounted DVD players. You know. In case your passengers would get bored getting driven around in the largest car Australia has ever seen.

Under the hood beats a meaty 6.7L Cummins turbo diesel engine attached to a heavy-duty Allison automatic transmission. It’s not clear how much power this F-650 makes – it won’t be winning any land-speed records or fuel efficiency awards, that’s for sure – but it does have a payload capacity of 17,000 pounds (~7,711kgs, or about 5 times that of an F-150).

The only thing bigger than this Ford F-650 is its price tag: $398,990. You’d probably spend that sum again just to put fuel in the damn thing. But can you really put a price tag on being the biggest motherfucker in the Bunnings parking lot?

Check out this unbelievable ute on Carsales here.

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