My Christmas present to myself! In short, my 2001 F350 was sold in August because I had put a lot of money into fixing an issue (the Famous Triton Spark Plug Space Program issue) only to find out that the work I had done wasn't sufficient and I was looking at a potential $5500 repair bill to replace the heads on the engine. I decided to cut my losses, sold the truck to a guy who was thrilled to take it, and bought a 2002 Ford Ranger for dirt cheap because it was a beater with a heater, more or less. I sank a little bit of money into the Ranger to get it more up to snuff but had plenty more work to do on it. My intent was to keep it for a few years (no car payment!) and then trade it for something else, but on my way to my dad's and step mom's for Christmas last weekend I stopped and drove the beauty you see above, a 1 owner 2006 Ford F-150 FX4, fully loaded and immensely well taken care of for a price that was difficult to resist. They also offered my enough for the Ranger on trade to pay off the Mustang once and for all so if I did pick up this truck I'd still be low on the car payment front--so it made too much sense not to do.

It's virtually flawless, the black leather seats look like they've never seen butts, the guy who traded it in was an older guy and the funny thing was as I was thinking about it it dawned on me that all of the modifications he did to this truck, I would have done if I had been its first owner. Beefed up cold air intake, thunderous dual exhaust, the striping, all of it. I'm extremely happy with this purchase and so long as the 3-stroke Triton engine doesn't spit out plugs like my 2-stroke V10 did, I will keep this truck until the wheels fall off.

Never you mind the cruddy park job, it's tricky to fit a full sized pickup in the parking lot where I live and some nutter was parked in the space next to me taking up a ton of my space so I had no choice!

PS - The exhaust note of this pickup puts a smile on my face every time.