Ford's Cheapest V8 Engine Isn't In A Mustang

Over 50 years ago, a V8 was almost the default engine type for just about every American car. Now, it's reserved almost solely for high-end sports cars and trucks. That's not a bad thing in a practical sense. Smaller displacement V6s and four-cylinders are more than capable of making a lot of power and saving fuel, especially with the help of batteries, electric motors, and turbochargers. Still V8s are great at capturing the imagination. 

I was recently looking through Ford's lineup, curious as to what the least expensive V8 offered was. Big SUVs like the Expedition and Explorer have gone without V8s for years, and vans like the E-Series have gone to a chassis-cab-only configuration for commercial buyers. And given that most trucks you see on the road today are $60,000 quad-cab luxury vehicles, logic would dictate that the venerable Ford Mustang GT would be the cheapest V8, right? Well, not so fast. After a bit of digging through Ford's vehicle configurator, a stripped-down, bare-bones F-150 XL might take the frugal crown, at just over $42,000.

I didn't think it existed, but you can still order a single cab, 6 1/2-foot bed F-150 with only rear-wheel drive. That might be normal in 1981, but it's downright bizarre now. To make matters even weirder, the 400 horsepower 5.0-liter V8 is standard in this extremely specific configuration, not any one of the many EcoBoost V6s offered with the F-150. With the destination charge, such a Ford will cost $42,380. 

That's not a small amount of money, but compared to the $48,795 Mustang GT, one of the only other non-commercial vehicles Ford offers with a V8, it's a bargain. If you're a little more laissez-faire with definitions, a rear-wheel drive, two-door, V8-powered F-150 sounds a little like a muscle car to me. The 5.0 that sits in the F-150 also has a vast aftermarket (including a supercharger) for even more power. 

The F-150 XL might actually be one of the least expensive V8s period. I looked around Chevy, GMC, and Stellantis brands, and all the base-model trucks, like the Silverado and Ram 1500, came with six-cylinder engines or turbocharged four-cylinders as standard, with V8s being optional extras that put the price much higher. Japanese brands have mostly moved toward turbocharged V6s and big V8-powered Mercedes-AMGs, and BMW M-cars have prices reaching the stratosphere.