Video: The New Ford F-150 Tremor Takes On The World’s Toughest Towing Test — Here’s How It Scores!

2021 2022 ford f-150 tremor ike gauntlet towing test

We are kicking off our 2022 Gold Hitch awards season with this new Ford F-150 Tremor towing a heavy trailer on the Ike Gauntlet™ – the world’s toughest towing test. The new F-150 Tremor is supposed to combine good off-road capability with good towing and hauling capacity. We already tested it off-road, now it’s time to see how it performs with a trailer.

Ike Gauntlet™

This is an 8-mile stretch of I-70 in Colorado that crosses the Continental Divide. It’s a 7% grade with a maximum elevation of 11,158 feet above sea level. There is about 32% less air density at the top of this highway than at sea level. It a truck can tow well on this highway – it can tow well anywhere.

Ford F-150 Tremor

This is a new trim for the F-150 which ratchets up the truck’s off-road capability without taking away too much payload and towing capacity. The F-150 Tremor has a one-inch suspension lift, specially tuned suspension, rear locking differential, Raptor’s AWD/4Lo transfer case, and an optional front TORSEN limited-slip differential. This truck is also about one inch wider than a regular F-150 4×4 due to wheel offset and 33-inch all-terrain tires.

Under the hood of the Tremor is the only engine option – the 3.5-liter twin-turbo V6 with 400 hp and 500 lb-ft of torque. The engine is mated to a 10-speed automatic transmission. The truck is equipped with a 3.73 rear axle ratio.

For this test, we are towing an 8,100 lbs trailer.

Spoiler Alert:

Here is how the truck performed. Here is the Gold Hitch score.

On the downhill, the F-150 Tremor needed 6 brake applications to maintain the speed limit. Downhill points: 25 pts – 6 = 19 pts.

On the uphill, the truck registered 7min 45 sec. The benchmark time is 8 minutes up the mountain (8 miles at 60 mph speed limit). It gets a perfect 25 pts for maintaining the speed limit.

The trip meter showed 3.7 MPG for the uphill run. The midsize and half-ton truck benchmark is 6.0 MPG and a truck loses one point for every 0.2 MPG below the benchmark. The truck gets 25 – 11.5 = 13.5 pts.

For the subjective scores, both reviews (MrTruck and I) get a maximum of 25 pts. We are judging the truck’s: comfort, visibility, technology, suspension squat, and value. The average of our scores is 21.5 pts.

The Ford F-150 Tremor gets a Gold Hitch score of 79 pts.