AEV, American Expedition Vehicles, has been making bigger, better trucks from Jeep, Ram, Chevrolet, and GMC since 1997.Their latest product is this, the Ford FXL Super Duty.It’ll be available later this year for “around $130,000.”When Dave Harriton was a student at the University of Montana in Missoula, he decided the 1991 Jeep Wrangler YJ his dad had given him didn’t have enough room. So he stretched it. There was no template, no set of instructions on how to do that in the back of Popular Mechanics. He just did it.This was years before the factory stretched Jeep Wrangler Unlimited. People liked it. He started doing Wrangler stretches. Someone said he should show it at SEMA. He said, “What’s SEMA?” He showed it and, among the people crawling under and around it was what seemed like the entire Jeep engineering staff. He won an award. Then got some funding, then started stretching more Jeeps for fun and profit.One product he made was a stretched Wrangler with a pickup truck bed. Jeep bought one and, after that, started making Gladiators.Some time after that, while crawling around under a Ram pickup truck, he realized the Ram was within millimeters of the Jeep. So he started making parts for Rams. Then Chevies, then GMCs, and now, finally, Fords.AEV Ford Super Duty FXLAEV makes suspensions, bumpers, lighting, skid plates, snorkels, and wheels for just about every JL Wrangler and JT Gladiator, as well as almost all Chevrolet, GMC, and Ram pickups. But it’s not just a parts warehouse. AEV designs, engineers, and ships its parts directly to the factories of the major OEMs, and the parts are added to the vehicles right there on the assembly line. Ford is their latest customer, and the massive FXL Super Duty AEV Conversion you see here is AEV’s latest product. While the powertrain remains stock Ford, with the 6.7-liter Power Stroke V8 and 10-speed automatic on the truck you see here, there might not need to be more, since it makes 500 horsepower and 1,200 lb-ft of torque, good to tow up to 30,000 pounds. AEV worked over much of the rest of the truck.The design is built around those meaty 40-inch tires that more or less form the foundation of the build. In fact, the XL in FXL stands for 40, XL being 40 in Roman numerals. AEV has been building better trucks around 40-inch tires since their first Ram Prospector in 2013. So they’ve figured out a thing or two.The truck you see here has an AEV four-inch DualSport XP Suspension with AEV-tuned Bilstein shocks controlling 18-inch Katmai DualSport Wheels wrapped in those 40” BFGoodrich HD-Terrain KT Tires stuffed into those oversized wheel arch flares. “There’s a lot of trimming involved to make a 40-inch tire work with only 4 inches of lift,” said Harriton. “The key is keeping them low. The Ram Prospector is only a three-inch lift in front, this is four inches. It’s as low as we could possibly get it and keep all the wheel travel. The flare makes that possible.”AEV Ford Super Duty FXLHarriton is proud of the manufacturing processes. “Most flares are vacuum-molded plastic, this is roto-molded.”(Rotomolded, or rotational molded plastic is a manufacturing process used to create durable, hollow, single-piece plastic items by heating and rotating resin inside a mold. It is widely used for products needing high strength and uniform wall thickness, such as coolers, kayaks, tanks, and playground equipment.)“It’s exactly the same process used to make a white water kayak. You see those going down rocks. You can hit things and not damage it.” The FXL Super Duty also has unique springs in front, Bilstein 8100 shocks with reservoirs at all four corners, and new steering components. “It drives like a stock vehicle,” Harriton said. “Even though it has 40-inch tires.”Another standout AEV item is the stamped steel front and rear bumpers. Making a big bumper is not as easy as you might think, because they have to accommodate all the ADAS radar and sonar sensors in the OE bumpers. Precision is paramount.“We 3D scan every bumper to within one mm of spec,” Harriton said. “If the assembly line stops because a part is out of spec, it’s on you.”So far, no assembly line has stopped because of any defect in an AEV part. Knock on wood.AEV Ford Super Duty FXLThe result is a thoroughly integrated, well-balanced, nicely designed, big, honking truck. I got to drive the truck you see in the photos way the heck out in the mountains of Central Coast California. The first drive portion was on a dirt road. With tires aired up to 51 psi, small bumps were transferred into the cab, but if you were going to be doing any long-distance dirt-driving you would, of course, lower the tire pressures to absorb the smaller bumps and increase the footprint. We did six stream crossings without even lifting off, and put it into four-wheel low for some steep dirt trail climbing. Popping out of the wilderness onto a paved two-lane mountain road, the full tire pressures were appreciated. The truck felt perfectly at home on pavement, too. “Most owners wind up using this as their daily driver,” Hariton said. Indeed, the ginormous cabin could accommodate a nice family with plenty of room. Ours held the AEV marketing guy in the back seat and he never complained once. You couldn’t have a truck this big in the city, or even in the suburbs. Imagine navigating the Trader Joe’s parking lot with 40-inch tires. The hippies would throw their hackie sacks at you in revolt. But if you lived somewhere with a little elbow room, this would be perfect. Especially if you had a ranch and wanted to tow something. More parts are coming: a brush guard, spare tire mounts, different wheels.The official debut of the AEV FXL Super Duty will be at the Detroit Auto Show, but you can order yours now. Prices ain’t cheap. This one would likely sticker for around $130,000. But depending on where you live, like, say, most of rural America, this offers as much prestige as a Ferrari in Beverly Hills.“More than that,” Harriton corrected. “Everyone has a Ferrari in Beverly Hills.”
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