I’ve been so busy stumbling over myself in a haze of stokedness over the new Ford Bronco that I forgot that we’re almost due for an F-150 update. Check out this freshly leaked set of pictures, showing what sure looks like the next Ford pickup cab interior. And there’s more to look at than the big swaths of screens.
The pictures, shared today on the F150gen14.com forum, seem to show the Lariat trim of a next-gen F-150. We can tell by “Lariat” engraved in a piece of leather and “F-150” on the rubber floormat. For those of you who maybe aren’t big Ford truck followers, Lariat is the low lux spec: Significantly more comfortably appointed than a work truck, not as ornate as a King Ranch or Platinum range-topper.
I only mention this because it’s worth noting there will be both fancier and less-fancy versions of this truck if and when it does come out. The forum is identifying it as a 2021 model, but with the current state of the world and the auto industry who knows.
Anyway, let’s get into interesting details. The most visually striking evolution from the current Lariat cab is the enlargening of the dashboard screen and the conversion of the analogue gauge cluster to digital.
Here’s what the 2020 F-150 Lariat looks like, for context:
For what it’s worth, I think the new design is less interesting to look at. The current model has some neat angles and edges; the truck in the spy shot is all just… squares.
But people love phones, automakers know this, and so the quest to make all car interiors look like iDevices marches on.
I do like that the new truck hangs on to hard keys for climate control, audio, and has a quick screen-off switch that will probably be nice for nighttime driving.
Where there’s currently a knob for reverse steering while connecting a trailer looks to be a drive mode selector on the new truck, and I’m also curious about what appears to be a “put away the console shifter” button. I prefer column shift myself for pickups, but maybe this will allow users to be able to pick between a traditional console shifter and some other alternative on the fly.
At this point, I’m convinced these “leaks” are intentional. The timing of all the Bronco teasers we’ve seen over the last few months felt like a tactical decision on the automaker’s part. Today I got an email from F150gen14.com’s administrators saying we were welcome to share these pictures with attribution and links… Nothing wrong with that, but the pictures were posted to the forum by user “Sequoia Sam” who made their account today. This was their first and, as of this writing, only post.
I also find it suspicious that the only readily available interior photo of the current F-150 cab on Ford’s media website happened to be the same angle of the same trim.
Or, who knows, maybe somebody took advantage of the fact that Ford’s facilities are on skeleton crews, snagged this image, and got inspired to join the forum. Either way, the images are real enough to give us an honest look at the next F-150 interior and that’s all I’m really interested in at the moment.
I know I’m not going to surprise any regular readers by saying this, but let the record show, I think we’re all going to be missing the three-dimensional elegance of analogue gauges soon.