New 10-speed auto delights in 2017 Ford F-150

Less than 200 feet after leaving my driveway, the F-150's transmission is already in 3rd gear. A half-block later it has upshifted into 5th. Merging into the main drag on light throttle, the transmission upshifts two gears at a time. The gear changes up and down are so seamless and hushed, I have to watch the indicator lights on the cluster to know what gear is engaged.

It took perhaps five minutes of driving this 2017 Ford pickup, a King Ranch-spec crew cab with the new 3.5-L twin-turbocharged V6 and equally new 10-speed automatic, to realize this is the future for full-size truck transmissions. More ratios are better, as long as they're calibrated as exquisitely as in this early production test truck. And 10 of them feel ideal in a 5000-lb (2268-kg) vehicle propelled by 375 SAE-rated horsepower (280 kW) and 470 lb·ft (637 N·m).