This truck redesign hauls big stakes for Ford

With investors questioning Ford (F)'s near-term outlook, the American automaker heads into the fourth quarter needing a shot in the arm from its bread-and-butter truck: the F-Series.

The new pickup, which is a dramatic shift incorporating aluminum panels, rolls into showrooms later this year and comes at a time when Ford is dialing back earnings expectations.

Monday afternoon the automaker told analysts it expects to earn at least $1 billion less in 2014 due to a series of setbacks , including weaker profits in Europe and the recall of 850,000 vehicles with defective air bags. The recall will cost the automaker $500 million.

"We're looking at about a $6 billion year with very strong cash flow and continuing to invest in a future that, as we outlined today, is going to be much better in 2015," Ford CFO Bob Shanks said.

Ford may be optimistic about growing its business in 2015 and beyond, but in the near term, investors have decided to park the stock. It finished Monday down more than 7 percent and was down more than 2½ percent Tuesday morning.

F-Series gamble

If ever there was a time when Ford needed its bet on an aluminum F-Series to pay off, it's now.

Read More Ford shares screech on investor day news

The new F-Series is 700 pounds lighter and promises to be far more fuel efficient than the F-Series it's replacing, or the latest pickups from Chevy (GM), GMC and Ram (F-IT).

While Ford is careful to say the new truck's official fuel economy has yet to be established, the expectation is the new, lighter F-Series will deliver at least 27 or 28 miles per gallon on the highway.

That fuel efficiency is one benefit of having a lighter pickup with aluminum, not steel panels.

"When you go from an all-steel body to an aluminum alloy body, it is a big, big change, and you know this is a buyer base that is very traditional," Kelley Blue Book's Jack Nerad said. "They are used to traditional things so you are potentially throwing something different at them. That is kind of radical in a way."

"Radical" is rarely a word that companies use when they refresh their best products, especially one that dominates an industry as the F-Series has since the early '80s.

In fact, the F-Series has been the best-selling vehicle in America for 32 straight years.

Ford could have played it safe and refreshed the pickup with steel panels and it would likely have seen solid sales for the next few years.

"That is the big gamble with changing something as radical as they are changing it. Not only could it affect sales in the short term, but sales down the road," Nerad said.