I am one of those individuals who has this strange habit: boredom leads to research. It made me pretty popular in school when it came time to dig through encyclopedias. (Yes, I outdate the Internet, if only just.) And today, a few minutes of downtime brought up a gem from the early 1990s that I had never seen before: the 1990 Ford F-150 “Street” concept truck. And the timing couldn’t be better…during SEMA, Lohnes fell in love with a mid-1980s Ford pickup that had received a full build, looking on the surface like a track toy, but at a slightly lower-than-stock height. While I wasn’t quite as head-over-heels for the Ford as he was, I was impressed and intrigued that someone looked at a 1980s pickup of any vintage and didn’t automatically lift it and put it on whatever the mud tire of the moment is or pancake it to the ground on airbags. A two-inch drop on a two-wheel-drive truck, combined with the right rolling stock and a horsepower kick makes for a nice muscle-truck look in my eyes. But I had never heard of this vehicle, which looks to have been either a show-build or a possible teaser for the upcoming 1993 Lightning pickup.

Photo: Sport Truck

What little I know of the truck comes from a Popular Science blurb written by Cliff Gromer:

“Based on a full-size F-150 model, the Street gets its don’t-mess-with-me Hulk Hogan stance from a low profile and big 16-in. wheels. Roof height is chopped 3 1/2 in. The truck is lowered 4 in. in front and 3 in. at the rear. Then the suspension was set up to create a nose-down, “bad” attitude.

The California influence is also evident in the shaved door handles, frenched antenna and quad exhaust molded into the rocker panels. Ford doesn’t have anything special under the hood to back up the menacing look, but that may soon change.”

Which is where things get interesting. Searching some forums hinted that the F-150 Street just might have gotten something interesting in the form of a built-up 460ci V8, though there isn’t anything concrete proving that. In 1990, Ford still had all of the old blocks in service, so a wicked-up 351 Windsor or a 302 that had been tweaked wouldn’t be out of the question, either.

The Street concept has a lot of late-1980s/early 1990s touches, but overall the menacing stance and honest threat of true deep-torque big block power in something as otherwise mundane as a 1990 Ford pickup just seems awesome. If any of you readers have any more information on the F-150 Street, please share with the class!

Courtesy: flickr/Pete Stephens