Back in 2021, I wrote about the most horsepower your dollar would buy from a dealer: A new Ford F-150 with a supercharger kit. Back then, a base-model F-150 started at $29,290 before destination, and you could option the 5.0-liter V8 for less than $2,000. Now, today, that same base-model F-150 XL comes with that V8 as standard — as well as with an $8,160 price jump from just four years ago. Car fetishists, your time is now. Truck inflation is real.
The Jalopnik slack was talking about horsepower per dollar the other day, trying to figure out the cheapest way to cross the 600-horsepower mark. I brought up the F-150 and its supercharger kit as a competitor, only to find that the price had skyrocketed since I last did the math. The cheapest truck, once $29,290, now costs $37,450. In an odd reversal, the long-bed configuration of the F-150 commanded a $300 premium in 2021 according to historical MotorTrend data — now it's the cheap one, and the 6.5-foot bed costs an extra $1,360.
Ford
Based on that $29,290 number, the entry cost of an F-150 has risen nearly 28% in four years. Comparing spec-for-spec, the entry cost of an F-150 with a shorter 6.5-foot bed has risen by over 32% — nearly a third, over the same duration as a presidential administration or the gap between Summer Olympics. Inflation can be blamed for much of that rise, with the dollar having dropped about 15% in value over that period according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, but not all of it. The F-250 Super Duty outpaces inflation just as much, with its entry-level configuration having jumped from $34,230 to $45,300 over the same period. That's a 32% jump, just like the F-150.
For a comparison, wages increased about 15% over that same period, with average weekly earnings rising from $1,074.31 in 2021 to $1,231.20 today according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The F-150 is further out of financial reach now than it was in 2021, at the height of the chip shortage's effects on the American automotive market — that's a terrifying trend, and one that isn't likely to slow down any time soon. The humble F-150, once the work truck of choice, is getting ever harder for Americans to afford.
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