Smoked Truffle. If you’re building an F-150 on Ford’s online configurator, select the Platinum trim for a hundred grand, then select the Platinum Plus package on top of that, you’re locked into this very pretty two-tone interior called Smoked Truffle. Most truck interiors are called basic, manly-man names like black, grey, or baseball glove if you’re feeling fancy, but Smoked Truffle sounds more like something that would belong on a Lincoln option sheet. Then again, this 2025 Ford F-150 Platinum Powerboost is a far cry from the last F-150 I drove.
[Editor’s note: technically, this truck is a 2024 model-year unit. However, given that it hit the press fleet late last year and there are no significant changes for 2025, we’re running it as a ’25.]
I spent a lot of time thinking about the Lincoln Blackwood behind the wheel of the F-150 Platinum. The Blackwood was Ford’s first and failed attempt at building a full-fledged luxury truck. It featured every trick Ford had up their sleeve at the time, including air suspension and a bespoke bed, lined with ebony wood and pinstriping on the outside, stainless steel and carpet on the inside, and a unique clamshell tailgate and fixed tonneau cover. It was lovely—and useless. Who’s throwing serious cargo into a carpeted bed?
The retort was that someone spending that kind of money on a luxury vehicle didn’t have serious cargo; they had people and/or F-150s for that. Ford saw a growing trend towards luxury trucks and went all-in with the Blackwood, but production was canned after just 15 months and 3,300 vehicles sold. The Blackwood was a miserable failure, but they were definitely on to something. A luxury pickup truck—sounds familiar? Even today, most top-self trucks are seldom used for the grunt-work they’re capable of; people flock to them for the appearance of being able to do so, along with the sense of legitimacy that comes with it. I’m not just singling out the pickup community, either—owners of track-ready performance cars usually have their semi-slick tires age out before burning them off.
What’s under the hood?
With this in mind, the bourgeois 2025 Ford F-150 Platinum Powerboost is built to work as hard as any other F-150, so as to not alienate itself from the proles under its employ. All Platinums come with the Max Towing package, and this Platinum Plus-equipped test truck comes with the hybrid version of Ford’s venerable 3.5L EcoBoost V6, known as the Powerboost. It generates 430 horsepower, 570 pound-feet of torque, can tow up to 11,200 pounds, and haul up to 1,740 pounds in the bed. These last two figures are slight concessions over the F-150’s non-hybrid powertrains, but the Powerboost offers a 7.2 kW generator instead to deliver serious accessory power to run an entire job site.
You also obviously get way more locomotive power. Seriously, this truck can hustle. The Powerboost can run from zero to 100 km/h in about five and a half seconds, which is a little ridiculous for something this big and opulent, but no one’s going to complain. Perhaps more impressive is the tangible improvement in fuel economy—I averaged 13.1 L/100km in my week with it, and that was without trying. I didn’t baby it, I didn’t use Eco mode, and I did a fairly even split of city and highway driving. There’s no denying this hybrid nets real results.
How does the F-150 Platinum drive?
Despite the Powerboost’s clear advantages over both the non-hybrid 3.5L twin-turbo V6, and the 5.0L V8 which isn’t available on the Platinum, I don’t think it’s an option box I’d be ticking off, even if it’s only a $3,000 upcharge. Maybe the generator will be of real use to you, or maybe the fuel savings with the amount of urban driving you do will pay for itself quickly, but I found myself disappointed with the refinement of the powertrain. It killed the six-figure luxury feel I was hoping for pretty quickly.
In order to get the serious fuel savings the Powerboost is capable of, it takes every opportunity it can to kill the gas engine and roll on electric power. This isn’t unique to the F-150; every hybrid setup ever built operates on the same principle. In the case of something like, say, a Lincoln Nautilus, it works very well and feels seamless. But this is a big truck that can move more than five tons. Concessions need to be made, and those concessions come in the form of refinement—which matters on a luxury vehicle, however you define that.
Every time you take your foot off the gas on the highway, the engine cuts out and it kicks back on when you get back on the throttle. Every time you take off from a light, the electric motors get you rolling the first few feet before kicking the gas engine back on. Unfortunately, this engine on/off cycling isn’t the slickest in the industry, because it’s a huge engine moving a huge vehicle. There’s a soft but noticeable clunk as the F-150 transitions between electric and gas power, almost feeling like driveline lash from a worn out u-joint. Maybe you won’t notice, or maybe you won’t care because of the very tangible advantages, but I did notice and care about this sort of thing, especially in a luxury vehicle carrying a hundred-grand-plus price tag. It sapped my enjoyment of this otherwise lovely and handsome truck.
Looks like a million bucks, doesn’t feel like it
Which is too bad, because its Darkened Bronze paint [A discontinued colour for 2025. —Ed.] with extra chrome trim everywhere, against its Smoked Truffle leather-and-suede interior make this hundred-grand-plus truck look like a million bucks. The quilted, heated, cooled, and massaging seats are magnificent. The Bang & Olufsen sound system is healthy. Ford’s BlueCruise hands-free driving assist has evolved into one of the best in the business, taking the laboriousness out of sitting in highway traffic.
Infotainment is handled by a 12-inch touchscreen running an updated version of Ford Sync 4; it’s capable of over-the-air updates, Android Auto and Apple CarPlay work very well, and the large heads-up display is a nice addition to the digital gauge cluster. None of this comes across as too fancy or overly complicated for its own good—the Platinum retains real buttons and knobs for every essential function, making the screen an accessory rather than a core feature. Everything is just as easy-to-use here in the Platinum as it is in a lower-spec F-150.
That reminds me: like any F-150, the Platinum does a fine job of masking its own heft, but it definitely gives up some refinement to its rivals. The wind noise and firm ride that I forgave on the relatively base-spec F-150 STX is quite noticeable. A lot of people are convinced that Ford builds the best truck in the world, and I’m in that camp, but its tough-truck roots override the Platinum’s genuinely luxurious leanings. Whether that’s for better or worse is for you to decide.
Another aspect that really hindered my enjoyment of this leather-laden leviathan were some pretty substantial build quality issues, which again are magnified by its price tag. The unlock button on the shift lever—a core touch point—was loose and rattled because it was installed incorrectly. One colleague observed that the grab handles appeared to have been installed upside down. But perhaps the most egregious is the paint—or lack thereof. On the leading edge of the hood, right in the dead-centre of the Platinum lettering, was a large area of what looked like a robotic paint arm missing a spot on its final pass. Around the back, the centre cutout of the Pro Access tailgate was blotchy, and in some light a visibly different shade of Darkened Bronze than the other side of the tailgate. It’s really disappointing stuff on a truck I really wanted to love.
The verdict: is the F-150 Platinum worth it?
I admired the honest character of the F-150 STX. It’s basically the opposite version of this truck, with an honest-to-God key and cloth seats that couldn’t even comprehend what a Smoked Truffle might be. It was really fun to drive and live with, the tech wasn’t sorely lacking given it had the same screen and cluster as the Platinum, and I had no qualms with its non-hybrid turbo-six power or its choppy ride—I’m almost inclined to say the FX4 rides better—all because it was a truck-flavoured-truck through and through. That truck, at $72,160 as-tested, made more sense to me than this does at nearly fifty grand more.
Build quality issues would be disappointing on any new vehicle, but they’re especially egregious on a vehicle of this calibre. I had high expectations for the 2025 Ford F-150 Platinum Powerboost, but I came away disappointed. I know Ford can do better—they recently fixed the Explorer, they nailed the Ranger so well that we named it Truck of the Year, and the F-150 STX and Lightning are two of my favourite half-ton trucks on the market. Even putting aside the issues affecting this specific truck, it still didn’t live up to its luxurious leanings as well as its competitors do. It seems like Ram and GM learned more from the Lincoln Blackwood than Ford did.
