Well see your definition of mastery skills and mine are a bit different. 
My D-Max has chip, filter and exhaust. I wish I could say it runs 12s with the minimal work but it doesn't. But it probably does run somewhere in the 14s and is enough the beat a Mustang GT on the street. Ask the one I left in a huge plume of black smoke three weeks ago.
The bottom line is that the truck goes much faster than I feel safe about when the time comes to slow down 7000+ pounds. But that's really moot because its a truck and a truck is a poor platform for a hot rod.
You can tow a car across the country on an open deck trailer. I can tow mine in my enclosed 24' hauler (8,000lbs) driving all day long on a tank of fuel. I'd probably pass you 2 or 3 times at the pump but I'd be ahead of you the whole way.
Your stepside box can haul a bed of mulch home. My long box dually would haul two of your boxfulls at a time.
My DMax laughs at my 13,000 5th. The Lightning can be pushed up to maybe 7000....never enough to even pull my cars to the track.
My DMax can go off-road, where it actually sees frequent use. How far would your truck get off road?
My DMax is a machine in the Winter, which is most of the year up here. A RWD truck of any sort is not high on anyone's list for Winter driving.
So my point is that for a very narrow niche vehicle the Lightning is great. But push the envelope of what a light duty truck is capable of at this point in time and the Lightning doesn't make it very far up the scale. It reaches its limitations as a pickup truck far before those as a sports vehicle. At least for those of us who use trucks for their intended purpose. Still neat vehicles, and I am not trying to start a flame war. If it was a little faster or capable of a little more as a pickup truck I'd still have mine. And if you happen to fit in the niche it was designed for then there is nothing else that even comes close.
Then again, my DMax cost almost double what a Gen2 does, and new vehicle prices are the single reason I will not buy a new performance car. Come to think of it, the Lightning was stupidly cheap for what it did. A nicely equipped single cab short box 4X4 costs about the same. There, I said something good about a Lightning. Maybe they'll let me back in NLOC now.
My D-Max has chip, filter and exhaust. I wish I could say it runs 12s with the minimal work but it doesn't. But it probably does run somewhere in the 14s and is enough the beat a Mustang GT on the street. Ask the one I left in a huge plume of black smoke three weeks ago.
The bottom line is that the truck goes much faster than I feel safe about when the time comes to slow down 7000+ pounds. But that's really moot because its a truck and a truck is a poor platform for a hot rod.You can tow a car across the country on an open deck trailer. I can tow mine in my enclosed 24' hauler (8,000lbs) driving all day long on a tank of fuel. I'd probably pass you 2 or 3 times at the pump but I'd be ahead of you the whole way.
Your stepside box can haul a bed of mulch home. My long box dually would haul two of your boxfulls at a time.
My DMax laughs at my 13,000 5th. The Lightning can be pushed up to maybe 7000....never enough to even pull my cars to the track.
My DMax can go off-road, where it actually sees frequent use. How far would your truck get off road?
My DMax is a machine in the Winter, which is most of the year up here. A RWD truck of any sort is not high on anyone's list for Winter driving.
So my point is that for a very narrow niche vehicle the Lightning is great. But push the envelope of what a light duty truck is capable of at this point in time and the Lightning doesn't make it very far up the scale. It reaches its limitations as a pickup truck far before those as a sports vehicle. At least for those of us who use trucks for their intended purpose.
Still neat vehicles, and I am not trying to start a flame war. If it was a little faster or capable of a little more as a pickup truck I'd still have mine. And if you happen to fit in the niche it was designed for then there is nothing else that even comes close.Then again, my DMax cost almost double what a Gen2 does, and new vehicle prices are the single reason I will not buy a new performance car. Come to think of it, the Lightning was stupidly cheap for what it did. A nicely equipped single cab short box 4X4 costs about the same. There, I said something good about a Lightning. Maybe they'll let me back in NLOC now.
