Auto of the week: 1987 Ford F-250 from X-Men

From: boxwish.com

We’re taking a break from racing around with those Fast & Furious guys Vin Diesel and Paul Walker for this week’s auto spot, preferring a dose of superhero nostalgia from 2000 comic book classic – X-Men. This Wednesday marks the return to cinemas of probably the most popular mutant to live under Charles Xavier’s roof – the sideburned berserker Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) in prequel X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and so to celebrate this, the first big summer event movie of 2009 we’re taking a trip back to Logan’s motoring roots with the first vehicle we see him drive in the Marvel movies – his 1987 Ford F-250 truck.

Being a hefty pick-up truck, one of Ford’s ever-popular F-Series (we talked about the 250’s sister truck, the 150 SuperCab XLT as seen in Nicolas Cage thriller Knowing recently), it’s not the usual glamorous ride we expect from action blockbusters, but is 100 percent Wolverine through and through. We first meet the muscled mutant while in Canada, driving around in his truck before he meets up with teenage runaway Marie (aka Rogue, played by Anna Paquin) and the pair is attacked by Magneto (Ian McKellen’s) gang of baddie mutants.

Prior to hooking up with Rogue, Wolverine had lived on the road and out of his truck which he modified to resemble a motorhome rather than a pick-up. The two-door motor itself is part of Ford’s eighth generation of F-250s which ran from 1987 (this model) to 1991 and boasts all the new features from this stage in the truck’s evolution – rear antilock brakes (useful in the snowy wilds of Canada and incidentally, the first truck to include the feature), five speed transmission and no flareside box. There were to be more important changes to the 250 before the ninth generation launch in 1992, but being a simple kinda guy, Logan happily stuck with what he knew.