Two, maybe three times in the lead up to driving the new Ford Ranger Raptor, I heard it compared to a rally car. This something that car companies have been increasingly eager to say about their cars in the last few years, and it’s also something that trips the old switch in my brain marked “skepticism.” As I approached the end of my day driving the Ranger Raptor, my I was feeling pretty good about my skepticism and kind of weirdly bummed, or at least undecided about the truck which, as I was about to discover, rips. Or at least can rip, and is not at all a bummer.
Full disclosure: Ford wanted me to drive the Ranger Raptor, so I got to go to Utah. Utah is so beautiful.
When we first saw the F-150 Raptor in 2010, the high speed off-roader was a miracle of automaker exuberance, a truck that for a million reasons should and could not exist. You, or someone like you could walk into a Ford store and walk out with a machine capable of traveling at highway speeds in the open desert. Obviously, it sold like crazy and hasn’t been off the F-150 menu since.
With the American reintroduction of the Ranger nameplate in 2019, there were a lot of people kind of eyeballing the F-150 Raptor, then looking back to the Ranger and saying “EHHHH?, EHHHHH?” like a Ranger Raptor was the most obvious thing in the world. As it turned out, it was obvious in the world, but not in North America. We didn’t get one. But, we got one now.
The Ranger Raptor shares Ford’s T6 platform with the Bronco Raptor and its twin-turbo V6, making 405 horsepower and 430 pound-feet of torque here. The frame has been reinforced, lightened upper and lower control arms mounted, and Fox’s live-valve suspension installed. But, really, all the stuff is there: Two lockers, decent angles (approach 33 degrees, breakover 24.2 degrees, departure 26.4 degrees), manageable dimensions, 10.7 inches of ground clearance, two-speed transfer case, BFG KO3 tires. It looks cool too, though I’d have to pull the stickers off mine.
We started our day at the Raptor Assault School, a driving school that will be available for free to Ranger Raptor owners. I have to pause here and say, that’s not the name I would have picked for it. I am being one-hundred percent serious when I say that when I saw “Assault School” on the itinerary, I wondered if there’d be shooting involved and if I was going to to be asked to practice clearing a room. The word “assault” describes a felony, it does not make off-roading seem fun or approachable. Ford is generally very good about welcoming all kinds of people into their cars, into off-roading. It take pains to emphasize that off-roaders have a responsibility to the land they adventure on. The name just feels a little out of step with all that. Not a huge deal, but I feel compelled to meddle. Someone suggested you could call it the Ranger Raptor Flight school, as you get to do a fun little jump. Bingo bango.
Anyway, you wouldn’t know it from the name, but Raptor Assault School is a fun place. After a short on-road drive were I learned that the Raptor Ranger can drive on the road and has better steering than the standard Ranger, we got set up to do a little rock crawl into the mountains. We activated and deactivated the rear locker, tried the hill descent system, used the camera to place the tires, and generally kind of became aware that the Raptor Ranger was not exactly being challenged by any part of the course. In fact, we probably could have fully removed any two of the trucks wheels and still made it around. The program we were on hosted a lot of different people and they all had different levels of off-roading experience. I wasn’t expecting the Rubicon Trail, and the point, that the Ranger Raptor can handle crawling, was made.
We also learned about the many modes that are available to the driver of a Ranger Raptor. It’s not that the modes aren’t useful, or effective, they do what they say they do. It’s just that there are so many of them. In order, the modes are: Normal, Tow/Haul, Sport, Slippery, Off-Road, Rock Crawl, and Baja. I kept thinking of my CJ2A, GX470 and F-150, which have zero modes, or I guess one mode.
After the rock crawl, we did some familiarization exercises to get us used to how the Ranger Raptor performed at higher speeds on loose surfaces. This is why you buy a Raptor instead of say, a Wrangler Rubicon. Raptors don’t just trundle over rocks or through the woods, they go fast.
As I said, this program was designed to demonstrate the truck to people with varying levels of experience doing this sort of thing. We got strict instructions not to select gears with the paddle shifters and we got just a couple of chances to do each exercise. The first was more or less one of those loops you do at your first track day. Accelerate, turn, brake.
Pretty quickly, I became aware of a couple things. One, if you try to upset the Raptor and initiate a slide by braking with your left foot, you really, really have to jam it or the suspension just soaks it up. The other is that under certain circumstances, the Raptor is going to cut power on you, even in the most permissive “Baja” mode. I obviously haven’t read anyone else’s review of the truck, but there was some grumbling on-site about it, and some of the other journalists seemed a little less than in-love with the truck after their time on the high-speed course. The Ranger Raptor value proposition is big hooning on the gravel or in the desert.
I asked Ranger Raptor Program Manager and affable Australian, Justin Capicchiano what was going on. He said basically that the truck would let you have the your first big, satisfying slide, but that they didn’t want drivers chasing big slides and getting into trouble trying to correct them. So, once the wheel comes back to center from slide one, power is reduced and the truck settles down. He said that once you know this, you can drive around it and still have fun, which as I found out on the larger, faster Baja course, is true. It’s just a thing you have to learn.
Another thing you can learn about the Ranger Raptor (sorry) is that if you push, then release, then hold the traction control button on the center console, you can turn that off. I wasn’t explicitly told not to do that, but I understand that it was probably outside the spirit of the program, which again was first and foremost, focused on keeping everyone safe, regardless of their level of off-roading experience. You should not do it, and you should definitely not do it at Raptor Assault School. I was coming off a rally school and feeling pretty confident, so I did it.
What I learned by pressing the forbidden button is that the Ranger Raptor is everything you hope it is. It’s too tall an heavy to be exactly a rally car, but it slides beautifully and controllably, it will absolutely explode out of a corner and carry enough speed to leave the ground when you hit the dip on the back straight of the Ranger Assault School’s Baja course. It is a profoundly fun machine and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.
With destination, you’ll pay at least $56,960 for a Ranger Raptor. That’s the tough thing about mid-size trucks, it’s so easy to get out of whack on the value end of things. $60k buys a lot of pickup and for people who want to use their truck as a base for longer camping trips, choosing a Raptor reduces the Ranger’s payload to 1375 pounds.
But, if you want to use your pickup to go sideways or fly through the air, there’s the Ranger Raptor and it’s absolutely worth the price of admission. I haven’t driven a ZR2/AT4X, but as it stands right now, driving the Ranger Raptor is as much fun as I’ve had in a modern pickup truck.
