Daily Slideshow: TMI Turns the Clock Back on Cool With This 1985 F-150
This interior products company swims upstream with their bullnose F-150. See how they did it inside.
Turning to Trucks
If you want to make a splash is it better to do what everyone else is doing, only better, or is it smarter to take an abrupt left turn? Breaking with the pack is risky but the bigger the risk, the bigger the potential reward. When TMI Products, maker of seats, upholstery, and more for muscle cars, signaled their move into the classic truck market by showing exclusively custom trucks at SEMA 2015 they made quite a splash. Enough of a splash that they needed to top it the very next year at SEMA 2016. They were fully aware of the popularity of Chevys, so what did they decide to build next? As Larry Ashley, the Marketing Director at TMI, told Hot Rod, “Everybody is doing Chevys, so we decided to go after the Ford market.”
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Specimen Selection
Did TMI pick at least pick something popular from the '50s? Or from the '60s? Perhaps even a first-gen Bronco? Nope, they picked the 1985 F-150 you see here. Maybe that model was already living somewhere in the back of their minds because they'd been driving by one every day on their way to work in Corona, California, where TMI is based, for the last ten years. Once the decision was made they contacted the owner of that particular truck and made a sweet deal for the one-time gardener's pickup, which was now sitting on flat tires, and got down to work. As Larry says, “that’s what makes hot rodding, spending $500 on a vehicle and spending the rest of the money building it up. We knew that we could take something many people think of as ugly and turn it into a show machine that people think is beautiful—but it would take something really special.”
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Pantherizing
When Larry built his personal custom Ford truck, a 1970 F-100, he replaced the stock twin I-beam suspension with DJM Dream Beams. However, on this project, he wanted something more radical. Another vehicle he ran across on a regular basis served as inspiration for the next phase, a Ford Crown Vic Police Interceptor. “We bought a black-and-white 2008 Interceptor for $2,800 and threw away the body. Then we took the F-150 body off of its chassis, set it aside, and threw everything else away. The question then was, 'How do we mount the body to the Interceptor’s underpinnings?'” Larry contacted his buddies from his F-100 build, Ron Palmer and Gabe Bell at RnG Customs, to help him put together the remaining bits.
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Pantherizing, Part Deux
The problem was, RnG had never performed a full Panther swap before (which has since been done on Hot Rod Garage), they had only adapted the Crown Vic suspension parts to F-150s in the past. As Larry tells it, "When I told him I wanted to put the truck body on the Interceptor chassis, he told me it was too big and couldn’t be done. I pulled out the measuring tape and, guess what, it fits like a glove.” Of course, it wasn't a 100% match, and a few mods like shortening the Panther frame horns and raising the pickup's bed six inches (to accommodate the police car's suspension and fuel tank) had to be undertaken, in addition to fabrication of the expected brackets and mounts needed to adapt the two platforms. RnG utilized Eaton lowering springs, and Metco Motorsports control arms to up the performance quotient. Since the F-150 was meant to show off TMI's work and had to be done in time for the show, they retained the already quite capable Panther platform's engine, trans, rear end, and brakes.
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Touch of Tangerine
That doesn't mean they left the exterior of the pickup stock. The blacked-out Interceptor wheels were first on the chopping block, in their place roll TSW Alloy Wheels' Vale 19- and 22-inches, shod with low-pro Continental rubber. TMI shaved the trim and marker lights and deleted the fuel filler door, which they moved to the bed, and Johnny’s Auto Color and Body Werx in Riverside, California, sprayed the gold pearl tangerine color the truck now wears. Interceptor 4.6 badges from the dearly departed police car add the perfect finishing touches to the exterior.
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Raison D'être
Building a kick butt custom is impressive enough, but don't forget TMI needed to sell some interiors. To show what they could do they started by installing their dynamite Sport VXR Pro-Classic bucket seats done up in two-tone suede and vinyl, separated by their Sport-XR waterfall center console. The seats maintain a sleek and subtle outward appearance by fitting below the cab's rear window. TMI rounded out the inside of the F-150 by adding their German weave carpet, Sport R door panels, Sport R steering wheel, and Sport dashpad. The look is decidedly custom. TMI keeps the pickup on display at their building in Corona—when they aren't out flogging it. “With the F-150 cab and bed weighing a lot less than the Crown Vic body, it really hauls,” Larry enthused. “I hope this build inspires more ‘bullnose’ owners that this model is not the stepchild of the custom truck world and can hold its own at any show,” he added. If you're looking for a reason to break from the pack and go '80s, Panther-swaps and awesome-looking seats could be the added incentive you needed.
>>Join the conversation about the 1985 TMI F-150 right here in Ford-trucks.com.
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