10 Biggest News Stories of the Week: Best of 2021 Ford F-150 Rises to the Top

On March 4, Cars.com revealed the recipient of its most prestigious annual honor, Best of 2021, and the newest addition to its long-term testing fleet: the 2021 Ford F-150 pickup truck. We also revealed that in the first nine days of ownership, our nearly $78,000 F-150 Limited with the hybrid powertrain had already experienced three malfunctions that required a service appointment. We also reported that our brand-new truck was already a little rusty. (Did we mention we dropped 78 stacks on that bad boy?)

Related: 10 Biggest News Stories of the Month: Cadillac Escalade, Ford F-150 Battle for Best of 2021

On the bright side: The entire point of purchasing our Best Of award-winning vehicle is to report on the ownership experience throughout a year of intensive driving. In that regard, our 2021 F-150 is fulfilling that expectation already: On our countdown of the most popular news stories of the past week, the F-150 dominates, snapping up four of the top five spots — including No. 1.

In the week’s first-place finisher, Cars.com Executive Editor Joe Wiesenfelder recounts the tale of the malfunctioning F-150. He had just finished an hourlong online meeting (already bad enough) in the F-150 when his cellphone started blowin’ up with alerts via the FordPass app for varied “regulatory” problems — including one for an error in the powertrain control module’s central processing unit, one for a fault detected in the engine and another for corrupted software in the powertrain control module.

For the full account of Wiesenfelder’s F-150 glitch sitch — including a loss of power steering assist, a botched app-assisted service appointment and further FordPass fun — follow the link below to our No. 1 news story of the week.

Coming in at No. 2 is a rundown on the rust issue we noticed with the underbody of our F-150, purchased in mid-January and showing just 1,200 miles on the odometer at the time of reporting. A Ford spokeswoman assured us that, although some of the steel components of the truck’s underbelly may be prone to rust, it would not affect performance or life span.

“Call us old-fashioned, but expecting a brand-new vehicle not to have notable rust doesn’t seem like too much to ask — especially when the vehicle in question cost nearly $78,000 as ours did,” Cars.com Senior Research Editor Mike Hanley noted in his rust report.

Since that spendy $78,000 figure keeps comin’ up (it’s slightly less when you subtract the $1,695 destination charge), you can read up on everything we get at that price by following the link below to our No. 4 article of the week. Finally, if you missed last week’s big announcement of the F-150 winning Best of 2021, you can find it at the No. 5 spot on this week’s countdown.

Beyond that, we’ve got headlines on the Kia Sorento, Ford Bronco Sport, Lexus ES, Kia Carnival, Mitsubishi Outlander and Volvo C40 Recharge, so pretend like you’re waiting for the stinger scene after the closing credits of a Marvel movie and stay to the very end. Here are the top 10 news stories Cars.com readers couldn’t get enough of in the past week:

1. Our 2021 F-150 Had Problems After 9 Days, 242 Miles

2. See the Rust Under Our Brand-New 2021 Ford F-150

3. 2021 Kia Sorento: 6 Things We Like and 3 Things We Don’t

4. We Bought a 2021 Ford F-150: See How Much We Paid

5. Best of 2021

6. How Does the 2021 Bronco Sport Badlands Handle the City?

7. 2021 Lexus ES 250 AWD Review: A Peculiar but Needed Lexus ES

8. 2022 Kia Carnival: The New Party Comes With a New Price

9. 2022 Mitsubishi Outlander Trim Levels: What You Get, What It Costs

10. 2022 Volvo C40 Recharge: Volvo Takes Ordering Online-Only With New EV

Related Video: Cars.com’s Best Pickup Truck of 2021

Cars.com’s Editorial department is your source for automotive news and reviews. In line with Cars.com’s long-standing ethics policy, editors and reviewers don’t accept gifts or free trips from automakers. The Editorial department is independent of Cars.com’s advertising, sales and sponsored content departments.