No More Mr.Nice

Roush Transforms F-150s From Nice to Nasty.

- Scott Burgess

Today, we went from 0 to dirt bag in less than 6 seconds, and we find the new Roush F-150 SC guilty of our supercharged misbehavior—the horn-honking, fist-waving, get-out-of-my-way-you-slow-poking-fast-lane-hogging imbecile.

Roush has transformed a pretty awesome Ford F-150 into an incredible machine. It took Ford’s venerable 5.0L V-8—the same one found in the Mustang— and bolted a 2.3L supercharger to it. This thing sucks in more air than Nyquist on the last 10 furlongs. The superchargers feature Eaton’s Twin Vortices Series technology with twin four-lobe rotors twisted 160-degrees and tweaked by Roush engineers to produce 600 hp and 557 lb-ft of torque at 5,000 rpm. And you always drive this pickup at 5,000 rpm. You can’t help yourself.

The Roush F-150 RC snaps your head back into the headrest with every start. Its engine barks and intimidates you into driving faster. It makes you angry. Suddenly, you’re barreling up behind someone, the special Roush front grille, with three yellow lights marking the top of it, filling up some unsuspecting driver’s window. They’ll move over. They always do.

Roush charges $22,600 on top of the 5.0L F-150 (a Super Crew model starts at $34,650) to ship it from the River Rouge plant a few miles away to Roush’s manufacturing facility in metro Detroit. It then does exactly the same thing the final product did to us: make it mean. The supercharger is just one aspect to this pickup. (Note the intake at the base of the grille—more than a few customers have wondered where their winch should go. Hint: You don’t need one.)