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These cabovers, the Ford 9000s, get a fair amount of approval from truckers when they talk about the now-classic tractors.
Now, the ones that survived the cannibalizing / gutting phase after cabover popularity waned depend on restoration.
We’ve featured at least one restored COE here, that was TV personality (from “American Trucker”) Robb Mariani’s 70s cabover W9000, which he customized with a black, blue and grey theme (the one with the sheriff star on the side) and custom chrome. People really liked that one.
With their W9000 line, Ford was going after the OTR owner-operator market of the late 70s — aggressively, too, from what people say.
They were ranked with Peterbilt and Kenworth and Freightliner for this model, by some people — this cabover and the conventional model as well.
But besides the driver-friendliness of the Ford COE, they’re remembered to have had their own issues. For example, an air ride cab that would fail sometimes, causing them to lean badly when they travelled down the road.
Also, the doghouse on them might have been a little big, with their air cleaner almost mounted on the slits.
But besides a few drawbacks — what vehicle doesn’t have a few? — they’re widely considered nice drives and nice looking trucks — modern at the time they came out when compared with W1000 and W9000s. They had modern paint schemes from the factory to appeal to the eye and were quiet trucks.
How do you remember these the Ford 9000s?
