Video: 2023 Ford Super Duty Review: Subtle Upgrades, More Jaw-Dropping Tech

(car engine revving) (upbeat music) So while 90% of Super Duty owners tow with their big trucks, you can also go off road in these big trucks as well. Like in this one. This one is the Tremor package. It's got bigger wheels and tires, it's got a different suspension, and it's got a number of different tips, tricks and systems that help it go off road like a smaller vehicle. You've got things like the Trail Turn Assist that we've seen on the Bronco in the past, which selectively locks one of the wheels to help the vehicle get around a corner a lot more tightly than it would without it, basically. This is a long vehicle with a really long wheel base. And so when you're trying to get around obstacles, out in the fields, well, having that Trail Turn Assist is actually pretty useful. It does help. You've also got things like Trail Control, which is basically an off-road cruise control that allows you to maintain a set speed, even over off-road terrain. And also does help with hill descent as well. I am personally not used to driving such a large vehicle off-road. I do most of my off-road time in Jeeps. But this thing is still extremely capable. Ford has put a lot of the control systems into the new drive modes, like off-road mode, which will automatically put you in four wheel high and helps you go off road, well, more easily than you otherwise would. There's also a ton of cameras all around the vehicle as well, which help in order to see what's over the hood if my hood happens to be pointing at the sky. Cameras in the front, cameras in the back, you can see down the sides as well. There's even some that monitor the position of the tires. So as you're coming up to an obstacle, or climbing over a boulder, the cameras can help you position the wheel on that obstacle or around that obstacle, well, better than you could without actually employing a spotter outside of the vehicle. But as much fun as these things are off-road, really on-road and towing, I think is where they really shine. This is our first chance to get behind the wheel of the new 2023 Ford Super Duty. This one in particular is the Platinum trim F250. And it's running one of the optional new engines as well. This one has the 6.7 liter high output diesel engine, making 500 horsepower and 1,200 pound feet of torque. That is quite a lot. Now, one of the things we notice about the new Super Duty is that it has an all new interior in here. One of the things it was criticized for in the past is the fact that the interior, mm, wasn't necessarily up to snub. Especially in the higher trim luxury versions. This one is the Platinum trim, which is fairly high up in the pantheon, but it is still a little bit plastic in here. There's some wood trim, there's some metal-look trim, but it doesn't especially feel like actual metal. This is not quite on par with what we've seen from some competitors like Ram, and even the new GMC Sierra Denali Ultimate has a little bit nicer trim than this inside. One advantage that the Super Duty does have over some of its competitors, however, is visibility. I've been recently driven a new 2024 GMC Sierra 2500 HD. I can actually tell you that the visibility out of the Super Duty, the Ford, is better. You've got a lower dash. You've got a larger windshield, especially to the sides. You've got these cutouts in the doors that really help you see out the side windows a lot better than you would in a number of the competitor vehicles. So you feel like you're driving something that's a little bit smaller than a lot of the competitors'. Is that a benefit to you? I don't know. I think it is. Because driving some of the competitor vehicles like the new GM trucks? They're massive. And they feel massive. This one is still plenty big, but it doesn't have that massive unusable feel. It still has a nimbleness to it and an ease of viewing out that really does improve the experience a lot, I think. So comparing this Ford F250 Platinum with a number of the other new competitors that have just been revised, like the new GMC Sierra Denali Ultimate, the driving experience is similar in some ways in that this is also exceptionally quiet. That's got the 6.7 liter high output diesel V8 under hood, but you hear the diesel clatter, but only really when you're under power. At cruising speeds like this, it's just calm, it's quiet, it's really quite nice. The steering feel in this is also considerably better than I've experienced in previous HD trucks. It's direct, it's not flighty at all. It's not having issues, it's not jumping in my hands. It's relatively easy to make a big heavy duty truck ride and handle well when it has a big load in the bed or when it's towing something. Because then you've got a lot of the stress and a lot of the weight on the vehicle to smooth things out. It's less easy to do that when the vehicle is totally unloaded like this one is. Then you really start to experience the bounciness of the heavy duty suspension, or the unusual weirdness of a slow ratio or quick ratio steering, depending on how they've tuned it. But this has been tuned for comfort, even unloaded. This thing is comfortable. It's quiet, even under full throttle. This 6.7 liter diesel engine is smooth and pleasant. It's got more torque than you're ever going to need. But it just drives really quite nicely. And that makes sense. Because these are America's premium luxury vehicles. I mean, they can easily start to top 90, 100, 1,000 dollars for a vehicle like this. And at that price point, it had better be comfortable, and luxurious. Because if you're spending that much money on something that isn't a BMW Seven series, well, it should still, I think, have similar qualities. The styling of this new Super Duty has changed a little bit for a 2023 model year. It looks kind of like a great big Ranger. The new next generation Ranger shares a lot of the same front end styling. But in addition to the styling and the interior of the cabin there's also a number of new technological innovations that Ford has included with the new Super Duty redesign. And one of them is the tailgate down camera feature. And this is one of these things that you think, "Why hasn't somebody done this before?" When you put the tailgate down in most pickup trucks, you lose your backup camera. Because the backup camera is typically mounted in the middle of the tailgate. Ford has included a second camera and radar sensors along the top of the tailgate so that when you fold the tailgate down, say, like you're backing up to load a bunch of bags of horse feed or something into the back of your Super Duty, you still have now the ability to see behind you. You still have the backup camera and you still have the backup sensors as well. So you can get really close to whatever loading dock you're backing up to without actually hitting it or having to get out and look and then get back in the vehicle and get out and get back in. It's one of those features, like I said, you're thinking to yourself, "Well, why didn't they do this before?" Well, cost would be one answer. Because now you've got an entire second camera and an entire second set of radar sensors as well. So that does add cost. But I'm thinking somebody high up at Ford made the case for it and finally got it past the accountants because you're gonna see this idea proliferate across manufacturers. That's how good it is. Now, 90% of Super Duty owners actually use their vehicles for towing. Now that is a ridiculously high figure, but it's true. These are America's workhorses, as Ford likes to say. But that's what people use them for. They use them for towing. They use them for hauling. The fact that this has a luxurious leather interior is just kind of gravy on the biscuits. It is still to be used for towing. And as such, Ford has created a lot of really interesting and useful technology that combines a lot of the sensory inputs, the camera inputs, the radar inputs, to new technology that is genuinely useful for towing. Not just gimmicky stuff. Perhaps the most extraordinary new technology that Ford has introduced for the Super Duty is the Pro Trailer Hitch Assist system. Now what's that mean? While we are all familiar with Pro Trailer Backup Assist. That's where you can actually use this little knob on the dash here to help guide your trailer once you've already hitched it up. Pro Trailer Hitch Assist takes that a step further. It uses the cameras and the radar at the back of the vehicle to actually detect where the trailer's hitch is in relation to the pickup's hitch ball. So that allows you to actually back up to a trailer, not hitch up to it, but back up within sight of it. Push a few buttons on the central screen. Take your hands off the steering wheel, take your feet off the pedals and it will automatically back you up to exactly where the hitch receiver is. So you push a couple buttons, keep an eye on things, answer a few questions, truck just backs itself up, and stops right underneath the actual receiver. You lower the trailer down onto it. That has got to be the most ultimate marriage saving device I have ever heard of. Even more than the Pro Trailer Backup Assist was. This one is really gonna make things a lot easier for people who are not familiar with really hooking up a trailer or towing in general. First timers are gonna love this thing. Business owners are gonna love it as well, because it enables you to have a lot less experienced people hooking up trailers and making things work. And that should hopefully, improve your ability to hire people. That's the thinking anyway. There's a couple other features that are really quite nifty as well. The Smart Hitch Assist helps you to actually balance the load on the trailer by using a lot of the scales and the sensors in the vehicle that determine just where the load on the trailer is and how that affects the vehicle. It allows you to adjust it real time so that you have a much safer towing experience with a trailer that is loaded properly front to back. So that is just extraordinary technology. They've also got a number of new features in terms of like 360 degree cameras, 360 degree blind spot warning. Some of that you have to set up. And a lot of it is accessory stuff that you have to purchase aftermarket and install yourself on the trailer. And that can't necessarily be moved from trailer to trailer because a lot of it's hardwired into the trailer itself that then gets plugged into the back of the pickup. But if it's something that you do frequently, if you have a camper that has a lot of these systems that are now starting to be built into it. If you have a box trailer, if you have a flatbed, if you have something like that that you tow frequently with, a lot of these systems are about to make your towing experience a lot easier and quite frankly, a lot safer. Part of the Smart Hitch feature is also the new onboard scales feature, which is a system that we've used in the F150 before and found very useful. It uses the sensors and right height position sensors to determine exactly how much load you've put into the bed of the truck. And whether or not you are over the recommended payload amount for your truck. So that's very helpful in knowing exactly what everything weighs, the truck, the passengers, and the load altogether, to know whether or not you've exceeded your payload rating, which is easier to do than you might think. Ford has also started to incorporate some new features to the navigation system as well. If you have a trailer, you can tell the navigation system that you have a trailer and it will use machine learning to map you a route that accommodates that trailer. Things like lower bridges are gonna be left off. Or areas that have weight limits, or turns that are too tight. If you've got hairpin turns in some mountains and you've got a great big long trailer that's gonna be difficult to navigate, it'll actually route you around those kinds of things. So a lot of examples of machine learning and AI starting to pop up in the auto industry, specifically. All the tech we've seen has been about setting the trailer up for towing. Setting the truck up with the trailer for towing. Now we're actually towing with it. We've got a 30,000-pound load behind us. And this one is powered by the 6.7 liter high output version. 500 horsepower, 1,200 pounds feet of torque. I have my foot to the floor. We're going up a seven percent grade without any problem whatsoever. (laughing) I mean, all the technology that goes into making these things easy to use for towing doesn't really mean much if it can't actually do it. But this one certainly does. And does it really quite well. It's almost effortless. Towing something this heavy shouldn't be this easy to do. But it is. After towing the 30,000 pound trailer, you'd think that towing the 40,000 pound trailer would be just a piece of cake. And you know what? It is. Because it still has an incredible amount of power and an incredible amount of ability. Now, this tow vehicle specifically, this is a unicorn. They aren't gonna sell a whole lot of these things just because nobody really has a desire to have a two or three-seat short wheel base, dually pickup that yeah, can tow 40,000 pounds. But frankly, if you're starting to tow 40,000 pounds, you're starting to look into serious heavy duty trucks. Not necessarily something built off of a chassis like this. So that, it's a neat feature. It's bragging rights more than anything else. Next week, we're probably hear that Chevy's got a 41,000-pound capacity vehicle. So that's a neat point. And it does work and it does work relatively well. It is bouncy because it is a very short wheel based truck. But, it'll do it. It's built to do it. And it's got the technology and the safety equipment to actually do it quite well. So all the technology that Ford has packed into the new 2023 Super Duty, it's really quite impressive. It helps you tow better. It helps you go off-road better. And it helps you do it all more safely as well. It's all really quite extraordinary. If you'd like to learn more about the new 2023 Ford Super Duty, you can look everything up at Cars.com.