ICMC - August's Featured Car

For the last two plus years Liz, my long-suffering significant other, has been waiting for her special vehicle to come along. She would tell me that she wanted to have a vehicle that she could look at and get that feeling that only a "car person" can get in the pit of their stomach when they look at a special set of wheels and say to themselves "it's mine!!" In her particular case, this longing has always been directed at Ford four-wheel drive trucks. Most specifically late model Broncos and crew cab pick-ups. That all changed one Wednesday night on the way home from an ICMC meeting. As we headed out of Oak Harbor on our way home to La Conner I spied a white pickup sitting in a car lot and said "that looks like a Lightning." Her response was "let's stop and look". Sure enough, under the fiberglass canopy and tacked on sidesteps was a very straight, clean 1994 F-150 Lightning pickup.

In November of 1991 John Coletti was appointed head mogul of a new division of Ford Motor Company called Special Vehicle Engineering or SVE. Round about the same time a gentleman by the name of John Plant was made manager of Special Vehicle Team or SVT. SVE was charged with designing a new breed of performance vehicle and SVT was designated to build it. From this group came three vehicles in 1993: The Cobra, a high performance Mustang with 20 more horses under the hood than the run of the mill FOX-body; The Cobra R, a factory race-prepared screamer; And the F-150 Lightning pickup. The first generation Lightning lasted from 1993 through the 1995 model years. It was initially offered in red and black only, but white was added in 1994. For power, it had a high-performance 240 hp 351 Windsor engine generating 340 lb-ft of torque channeled through a built up E40D automatic transmission to a limited slip 8.8 inch axle with 4.10 gears. All this added up to a package that would take the truck from 0 to 60 in 7.6 seconds and run the quarter mile in the mid-14 second range. Not bad for a truck that can still haul 700 pounds.

Back to the year 2000: The following weekend we stopped into the dealership and took a test drive. The interior of the truck was in great shape including the special multi-adjustable Lightning specific seats and factory AM-FM-CD player. Liz drove first and babied it a couple of miles before pulling over to let me drive. When we swapped seats, I drove a block or so then mashed the go-fast pedal to get onto highway 20. The back end pitched a little to the left, the 275/60R17 tires hooked up and that truck took off like a cruise missile!! When Liz was able to lift her head off of the headrest, she looked at me and said "I want it!!!!!!" Unfortunately the dealer was asking a totally unreasonable price and wouldn't budge on it.

Three months went by with the little white truck languishing on the lot. Each month when we went to our meetings, we watched the price in the window drop. Finally, on August 5th, we were able to strike a deal for a much more realistic price and the little white truck came home with us. Within an hour of arriving in our driveway the canopy and sidesteps were off and it was getting a much needed bath. The following day Liz spent 3 hours detailing the interior. The seats were shampooed, the carpet cleaned and the dash and door panels gone over. The 17-inch wheels were polished. The BF Goodrich Comp T/A's were dressed and the Oxford white paint was buffed. By the end of the day, it was "hers". Her "special" vehicle and special it is: only 4,007 Lightnings were built in 1994 and just 1,460 were Oxford white. After the 1995 model year the Lightning disappeared, not to return until 1999 as a supercharged 340 horsepower monster. For now, Liz is content with just 240 horsepower. For now...

By David Clem

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