I'm not totally convinced of that...I know the 3.5 Ecoboost will smoke the Hemi but I don't think the 2.7 will. That's what I think the kid had.
I think aside from the 3.5 high output ecotoot, the 2.7L veesix is actually the fastest to 60. Light in weight, the torqueband is on the low end. The ford trucks (with their aluminum bed floors of course) are also pretty light weight. That lends itself well to stoplight to stoplight racing.
The rams are also heavy.
If the "race" occurred when the 2 trucks were rolling? or at 40mph or over? I can see a case for the hemi.
I think your friend was the better driver of the 2 drivers. And of course the hemi isn't chopped liver.
The ecoboosts are pretty good at 3 things.
1) Making the EPA happy.
Were it not for the CAFE/EPA stuff, this engine wouldn't exist. Period.
But, you see, when driven like a sleepy grandmother with nothing in it, it might give you those EPA MPG numbers.
The engine is either eco OR boost. Start giving it a bunch of gas pedal or put a load behind it, and that number will shoot down.
2) Letting the Ford Faithful think they've got some space age engine, after which they talk down to you about it not being 1950 or something.
Remember, the V6 with a turbo on it is all annnyone could want. It's not 1950, the V8 is dead, and all that jazz.
Proof? The $400,000 Ford GT has one, and so does the raptor, why would anyone want a V8?
Fast forward to 2020, the 700hp+ V8 Ram TRX is released and sells out, and the Ford guys are backpedalling saying, "W-w-w-well, the next Raptor MIGHT get a V8 so t-t-t-there!"
Not after all the whining about V8s being dead, for a few years before the release of the 7.3L V8 in the superduty.
Wow did those promises age like milk.
3) Lastly, stoplight to stoplight racing.
It is designed to go stoplight to stoplight, feeling like a V8, with numbers superior to the V8 that ford chooses to sell (this is on purpose), and of course: meet EPA/CAFE regs. Stoplight to stoplight is the thing it does well. Very well.
But there are reasons they didn't put one in the superduty, despite what people promised and promised for years. After all, need I remind you,
it's not 1950. IIRC the engineers stated the superduty got a big simple V8, because that was the engine of choice when considerations like fuel economy under load, longevity, reliability, and ease of maintenance were the primary concerns. You know, typical truck stuff.
The ecotoot might be the best at stoplight to stoplight, never mind, that's the TRX's hellcat engine.
So That engine family is good at stoplight to stoplight racing. But For longterm use? I prefer an engine that was sold for many years under the hood of 3/4ton trucks, the 5.7L Hemi. A truck engine designed to do truck stuff, for a long heavyduty truck's life, and keep ticking.
FYI the 2.7L ecoboost came out in 2015. This is year 5.
It's not totally known how "reliable" those are in the long term. 150,000 highway miles is a long ways from 10 years of hard use that goes beyond idling on a highway getting peak mpg on a beautiful flat roadway.
I believe the 3.5L Ecoboost started in the F-150s in 2011ish?
That would be year 9. No we don't know what those engines/turbos are like to maintain at year 10.
Not that hemis are perfect in all ways, but replacing things like turbos and intercoolers
in addition to the engine parts is probably not the cheapest thing to do.
