Roush Nitemare F-150 claims to be quickest production truck ever
Before launching the 2019 Roush Nitemare F-150 4×4 pickup truck, Roush took the truck down to Milan Dragway south of Detroit. A run down the quarter-mile drag strip established the Nitemare as the quickest production truck ever produced, Roush claims. The SuperCrew version clocked a 0–60 mph time of just 4.1 seconds. The regular cab version was even quicker, at 3.9 seconds, set with a production-spec engineering mule.
Some may quibble over the term “production” but the fact remains that you can buy a brand-new Nitemare from an authorized Ford dealer with a three-year new vehicle warranty. That Roush was able to set the mark with a heavier, four-wheel-drive truck is rather impressive.
To get full sized 4×4 pickup trucks to yield timing slips worthy of muscle cars, Roush took Ford’s 5.0-liter Ti-VCT V-8 and slapped on its Roush TVS R2650 Supercharger system, boosting power output to 650 horsepower and 610 lb-ft of torque. The $19,150 Nitemare package also comes with special interior appointments and exterior graphics.
The driving team included professional drifter and Roush endorsee Justin Pawlak, television personality Aaron Kaufman from Arclight Fabrication, journalist and racer Robb Holland, and Jack Roush Jr. (a successful road racer in his own right), along with some Roush Performance engineers to set up the trucks.
The SuperCrew Nitemare, though, wasn’t a ringer. It was a regular production version, albeit with a light fuel load, rear differential locked via user-selectable settings, and Continental tires inflated to 32 psi, and it was running on a prepared track. Times were measured with a VBOX DriftBox data logger, which is accurate to a one percent margin of error and rounds times to the nearest tenth of a second.
“It’s one thing to just add raw power to a vehicle, it’s another to truly engineer it,” Jack Roush Jr. said, “With 650 horsepower, the Nitemare delivers power unlike any other truck while retaining the reliability and refined feel you’d expect from any Roush vehicle.”
A Nitemare and a Roush Raptor would make for one mean Ford truck tag team.
