Factory Five XTF Reframes the Truck Conversation (2024)

From the November 2023 issue of Car and Driver.

Say, are you handy with a wrench? Do you think the Ford F-150 Raptor would be a great truck if only it had a better suspension? Got about $25,000 of extra cash and a late-model Ford F-150? Well then, Factory Five Racing has the perfect project for you. The XTF, its newest kit, transforms a stock F-150 into something you could drive down to Ensenada and enter in the next Baja 1000. We're not sure which class it would land in, but you'll have plenty of time to research that while you're figuring out what to do with a stock F-150 frame. Because you won't be needing that anymore.

Prior Factory Five offerings hewed to the time-honored kit-car practice of scavenging donor hardware from a production car to build something entirely different—like using Subaru WRX guts to create the 818 or Corvette parts to animate the GTM supercar. The XTF is different in that you start with an F-150 and end up with an F-150, albeit one with newly acquired off-road superpowers. This requires building the truck from the frame up.

When your idea of a proper suspension means 16 inches of travel up front and 20 inches at the rear, the stock Ford frame isn't wide enough or strong enough (for reference, a Raptor R manages 13.0 inches of front travel and 14.1 inches at the rear). Thus, the centerpiece of the XTF kit is an entirely new tube frame that replaces the stock ladder frame. Factory Five claims its frame weighs 100 pounds more than the Ford item but is nearly twice as strong, using 327 total feet of tubing. Installing it might not be as daunting as you'd expect, given that the 2015 and later F-150's cab is a self-contained unit—unbolt it, unplug the wiring harnesses, and pluck it out of the way with an engine hoist or lift. The cab is watertight, so an XTF intender who's short on space could leave it outside while working on the frame and suspension in the garage.

The $24,990 kit is intended for 2015–20 F-150 four-by-fours with the 5.0-liter V-8 or the turbocharged 3.5-liter V-6 (newer trucks have changes that make Factory Five's kit incompatible). You'll need the crew cab with the 5.5-foot bed and 26-gallon fuel tank. And yes, the ideal prerunner truck would likely be a two-wheel-drive regular cab with the V-8, but Factory Five wanted to design the kit around a truck people actually buy. Indeed, this first finished XTF is based on an everyday 3.5-liter EcoBoost Lariat, which once upon a time left the line in Dearborn as a nice family truck. It's a little different now.

At a glance, you could mistake the XTF for a Raptor R, with its flared fenders and 37-inch tires. But after anything more than a cursory look, that tube frame gives away the game, its welded latticework peeking out from below the rocker panels and leading back to the four-link, coil-spring rear suspension with its towering remote-reservoir Fox dampers. The bed is aluminum and, on this truck, mostly filled by the optional spare tire (the mount goes for $199). Those fiberglass fenders are part of the kit and inflate the XTF to a yawning 90-inch width, three inches wider than a Raptor R. Consequently, the hood, grille, and tailgate all are Factory Five items as well.

For $6990, the body components are available in clear-coat carbon fiber, which, if left unpainted, might not be that far off the cost of paint-matching the fiberglass panels to the cab. (The nose panel is carbon fiber, no matter what.) Other options include a rear anti-roll bar for $465 and a tow package for $675. The latter includes more than a hitch, bringing axle-limiting straps and a Panhard rod into the equation to tame the contortionist rear suspension during towing.

The carbon-fiber parts trim 34 pounds from the build, helping offset the 388-pound weight gain we recorded versus a similarly optioned 2017 F-150 crew cab with the same powertrain. The Factory Five truck weighs in at 5862 pounds, 130 of which are accounted for by the massive spare-tire assembly and its bed mount. So it's not surprising that the XTF was a little bit in arrears of the stock truck at the drag strip—even with a mild tune that added about 60 horsepower—recording a 5.9-second 60-mph time, 0.2 second behind the grocery getter. The Factory Five's stadium-size frontal area comes into play at higher speeds, with the quarter-mile requiring 14.8 seconds at 88 mph versus the stock truck's 14.3 seconds at 97 mph. But the XTF had no problem bulldozing enough atmosphere to get to the 110-mph top-speed limiter. We should note that we do not conduct our acceleration tests across fields strewn with loose cinder blocks, but if we did, we're pretty sure the XTF would be at a distinct advantage.

To give the XTF an actual off-road workout, we headed from Factory Five's headquarters in Wareham, Massachusetts, up to the Team O'Neil rally school in Dalton, New Hampshire. Over 200-plus miles of highway driving, the truck proved itself a competent pavement cruiser in the vein of a Raptor. Lots of tire sidewall and suspension travel make for a cushy ride, and the stock interior retains its factory fripperies (ventilated seats, panoramic roof) and refinement. With the rear anti-roll bar installed, the truck is civil on pavement, though the all-terrain 37-inch Toyo Open Country M/T tires contribute to the XTF's 0.70-g skidpad result and 201-foot stop from 70 mph. After the rear anti-roll bar is manually disconnected, the truck is capable of extreme off-road axle articulation, as we soon found out.

The main challenge, both on-road and in the woods, is the width of the thing. If you were wondering how wide the street parking spaces are in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, it turns out they're just a little bit less than 90 inches. Out on the trail, about the only obstacle that will stop an XTF would be two trees spaced 89 inches apart.

Since we wanted to exercise that Slinky-on-the-stairs suspension travel, we put the XTF in the hands of rally driver Wyatt Knox and told him to point the truck toward the nearest jump. After some acclimation on the dirt skidpad and slalom course, he aimed the truck uphill toward a steep crest that's designed to send rally cars into low orbit. But rally cars don't have 20 inches of suspension travel, and instead of flight, the XTF's suspension extended to maximum droop, like a cat clinging to a fabric sofa, and the front contact patches barely got a taste of daylight. "Well, normally, that's a jump," Knox said.

Foiled there, we headed to a mudhole specifically designed to cross up axles and put tires in the air, training drivers to deal with that particular off-road situation. Except, again, the XTF refused to play by the rules, stuffing its high-side rear tire up under the fender and dangling the low side impossibly far into the rut to maintain contact with the ground. If the rear axle were any more articulate, it would be defending its thesis on modern juxtapositions of the patriarchal monarchy to the American frontier, as exemplified by King Ranch.

If you've got the requisite mechanical skills, the XTF kit is an intriguing value proposition: For about the price of a Raptor, you might build a truck with far wilder looks and capability while maintaining stock Ford interior amenities and powertrain reliability. (Hiring some-one to build it will likely add nearly $20K.) And when it comes time to register, insure, or finance the truck, it's just an F-150 with a factory VIN rather than a homebuilt kit car. Of course, Raptors are also upgraded under the hood. But easy mods are there for the taking—this EcoBoost truck included a low-restriction intake and exhaust that gave it a Ford GT soundtrack, and Factory Five is already building a supercharged V-8 truck to see what happens when 700 or so horsepower join the party.

For small manufacturers looking for a niche, part of the peril is that an OEM might decide to pursue the same concept on a factory production line. The Jeep Gladiator killed the AEV Brute, and Factory Five's own GTM was usurped when GM finally built a mid-engine Corvette. But the XTF pushes the desert-racer truck concept further than it's ever gone or is likely to go. Ford won't build this. But you can.