Creating A Better Daily Driver: Part 1
| Starting with a fresh-off-the-dealer-lot 2012 F-150 Lariat, we were excited to see how much better we could make Ford’s $52,000 truck.
Don’t you love it when your friends who don’t own a truck call you up and ask for help moving, hauling, or transporting something that won’t fit in their econobox. With today’s incredible new trucks riding smoother than ever, getting impressive mileage, and providing room enough to sit five adults comfortably, there isn’t a good excuse for not having a pickup in your driveway. To prove this theory, we modified a 2012 F-150 Lariat with easy-to-install parts that added to, not took away from, the Ford’s everyday functionality.
Making the nation’s best-selling truck even better only took four hours and the total cost for the four upgrades totaled $1,725.00 (from www.autoanything.com). You only get one chance for a first impression, so to help the front end of our F-150 turn some heads, we added a T-Rex Upper Class mesh grille. Providing a weather-tight bed area, we moved to the rear of the truck and easily installed a Truxedo LoPro-QT low-profile soft roll-up tonneau cover. Saving our knees and protecting our bed floor and bed walls, 20 minutes was all we needed to upgrade our bed with a Bed Rug kit. Finishing off our four hours of work, we moved inside the Super Crew’s four doors and swapped the cheap warehouse store floor mats for a set that fit perfectly from Weather Tech. These upgrades don’t require much mechanical ability, don’t break the bank, and yet each one added both form and function to our daily driven F-150.
