Aluminum cans are all the rage in the craft-brewing industry. Once a symbol of cheap and tasteless beer, cans seal more tightly than do glass bottles, better protect their contents from UV degradation, and reduce the expense and energy that come with shipping a truck full of brews to your local depot. Get past the stigma imprinted by 40-plus years of Miller Lite, and cans are the perfect vessel for high-end beer.
In the light-duty-truck world, beer cans are either all the rage or the ammunition for all of your rage, depending on which automaker's logo your Calvin decal is pissing on. The aluminum-bodied 2015 Ford F-150 brings huge weight savings for America’s bestselling vehicle. You’d think this would be universally accepted as innovation, progress, and a generally good thing. But in the vernacular of a Chevy or Ram loyalist, beer cans take on a condescending connotation, as in “I’d never drive a truck made out of beer cans.” These people prefer their trucks be made from SpaghettiOs cans, apparently.
They don’t take the beer-can analogy lightly at Ford. It’s to the point that F-150 marketing boss Doug Scott needs 13 syllables every time he mentions the lightweight metal. "High-strength, military-grade aluminum alloy" purged as much as 500 pounds from the cab and bed of the new truck. The single significant piece of steel in the body is the laminated firewall, designed to keep unseemly sounds out of the cabin. With more than three times as much high-strength steel as in the outgoing truck, the underlying frame sheds between 60 and 70 pounds. Lighter seats, leaf springs, and lower control arms contribute to a claimed total reduction of up to 700 pounds per truck.
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