2004 Super Truck Comparison Test: Dodge Ram SRT-10 vs. Ford F-150 SVT Lightning

Talk about the most hopelessly pointless vehicles on the planet — these two must qualify at the head of the class. Let's see, a pickup truck with a huge gas-guzzling engine, tons of horsepower and virtually no ability to go off-road — doesn't sound too appealing, does it? That is, until you jump behind the wheel of one of these things where it's non-stop fun and ear-to-ear grins. For now, there are really only two of these monsters to choose from, so we limited our test to the 2004 Dodge Ram SRT-10 and the 2004 Ford F-150 SVT Lightning. The Silverado SS was excluded because it's just too much like a regular Silverado. If Chevy decides to drop the new 'Vette engine under the hood of a Silverado 1500 standard cab and add the appropriate wheels, tires, brakes and suspension, then we'll talk about a three-truck comparison test. Until then, Ford and Dodge have the baddest muscle trucks around.

But as similar as the two trucks are, their approach is very different. Dodge's solution is to shoe-horn the Viper's V10 under the hood of an otherwise perfectly good Ram 1500 and add huge 22-inch wheels, monstrous brakes and various interior upgrades. The Ford formula is to take the previous-generation F-150, install a supercharged and intercooled 5.4-liter V8 motor, add some mild wheels and tires and special seats and call it a day. Both work well, but the Ford has a little more stealth to it.

While we're sure these trucks will be wildly popular with the NASCAR set, there's no arguing that both can kick some serious tail alongside the best performance cars, let alone other trucks. The real comparison here is two-fold: Any hopped-up truck should deliver tons of performance but it should do so in a budget-friendly manner. The second and most obvious (and just plain fun) aspect is all-out performance — which truck is the baddest of the bad? Although very similar in concept, these trucks wind up on opposite sides of the road in real-world driving.