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Why we ran it: To see if a Baja-ready pick-up truck can handle the Wild West that is British roads

Month 1 - Month 2 - Month 3 - Final report - Specs

Life with a Ford Ranger Raptor: Final Report

To the disappointment of many people around these parts, including me but not Steve Cropley (see p17 to find out why), the Ranger Raptor's time on our fleet has come to an end. What an incredibly likeable 'car' it has been.

The Raptor arrived with us early in the year with a light spec uplift over its comprehensive standard kit. It had a 3.0-litre twin-turbo petrol V6 (a four-cylinder turbo diesel is available too), and orange paint, decals and a Dress Up Pack adding £720, £600 and £2160 to its £60,064 base price.

What sets the V6 Raptor apart from not just the diesel but every other pick-up on the market is the seriousness of its suspension hardware.

With adjustable dampers by off-road racing expert fox, it has Baja Rally-capable suspension, combined with 17in alloy wheels and exceptionally serious all-terrain tyres developed by BF Goodrich for the Raptor exclusively.

It was designed in and for the outback to pummel dirt tracks and sand dunes into mile-upon-lonely-mile submission. Slight overkill for the UK, then? Like with a supercar, that depends on how you use it. As soon as it arrived, I took it to some green lanes - on byways not local to me, because not many are.

Depending on how it affected you, you might remember there was copious flooding at the start of the year, which left parts of these lanes underwater.

The Raptor has a 'handbook' available through its central touchscreen, which will tell you its wade depth (850mm), and if you don't have a ruler to hand, helpfully that's basically to the top of the tyres, so you just need to open a window and have a look outside.

The standard Ranger's wade depth is shallower, but its tyres are smaller, so you can also use them as depth gauges. I don't think I would advise it, but if you have to, the Raptor will hang around in water, with the door seals letting nothing into the cabin, even though the doors themselves start to pool in their insides.

It quickly drains out later and if the door is open pours neatly through a hole in the side step that appears made for the job. I wonder if it is - if so, it's a thoughtful touch. Water would splash everywhere otherwise. And on rough ground, wet or otherwise, the Raptor 1s an exceptionally capable off-roader.

Its standard mode is rear-wheel drive, but you can select four-wheel drive and then there are a range of driving modes to complement it.

The springs are via coils, not air, so there's no ride height/spring rate to adjust, and the anti-roll bars are passive too, but the different modes alter the drivetrain, stability control and throttle response.

The exhaust too, if you let it, up to and including a mode that says it's for off-highway activity only. Brap. Shrinking violet that I am, I didn't really use it.

A bit like some sports cars will do things that others won't, the Raptor has its stronger points off road, like its ground clearance (272mm), its surplus of torque in fast sandy conditions, the traction of those KO3 tyres and suspension that absorbs high-speed bumps with ease.

Then on the other side it has its 5.4m length, which limits its breakover and departure angles, plus its 2.0m width and its 13.2m turning circle (kerb to kerb), which makes it less able to manoeuvre around a tree or through a field gate than, say, a Suzuki Jimny. (Maybe just take a long run-up?)

The short of it is that the Raptor has its uses. What's maybe more surprising is how it combines this ability with more on-road sophistication than I think any other large pick-up does, riding with absorbency and very little of the body shimmy that can affect separate-chassis vehicles.

If this is your all-purpose wagon, it deals with every job with ease. It's even quite good fun on a back road (noting that its single-carriageway speed limit is 50mph, because it's registered as a commercial vehicle.

What it isn't, mind, is economical. That's no great surprise, of course, and thinking of this as an all-condition sports car makes it more palatable. In the way that you would be contented with 20-odd MPG out of a supercar, maybe you should be equally happy to see 22mpg in a Raptor.

Ultimately, it is still a Ford pick-up, too, so has service intervals of 12 months or 12,500 miles and nothing went wrong with it.

The Raptor is an expensive truck when new, but they're holding their value well. On a forecourt, this one, with its nice spec and some options, would still command £54,000.

And if I were in the market for something big, fun and - let's admit it - a bit silly, I would be tempted.

Second Opinion

It’s hard to think of a more pointless ‘car’ to own in the UK. It’s massive in a tiny land, thirsty in expensive times and best suited to an environment that doesn’t exist this side of the Pyrenees. Yet I find it irresistible. That’s partly due to its unexpectedly civilised road manners but mainly due to its total lack of seriousness and restraint. It encourages silliness above all, and I admire it for that.

Jack Harrison

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Love it:

Durability Not that it should, I suppose, but it needed nothing but fuel – and the tyres looked as fresh as on day one. 

Sense of fun Whether it’s the paint, decals, design or handling, the Raptor seems to want its owner to enjoy it.

Take a seat On a job or at an event, using the tailgate as a bench was curiously compelling. I’m not sure why.

Dialled in There’s a screen with temperature sliders but also dials that do the same job. Guess which I used more.

Loathe it

Plug problems My smartphone sometimes wouldn’t be recognised and the USB ports disappeared in the dark.

Final mileage: 12,320

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Life with a Ford Ranger Raptor: Month 3

Some extras command a £500 sticker price... - 22 May

The Raptor Splash Decal Pack (for those stickers) costs £500 plus VAT. There’s some debate in the office about whether one would personally add them. As usual, I’m on the fence: I would on an orange or blue Raptor but perhaps not on one of the more sombre, stealthy colours

Mileage: 11,590

Despite appearances, it feels like a car in many ways, including on the motorway - 8 May

I've been doing some serious commuting work alongside the practical stuff in my Ranger Raptor.

First, its biggest schlep yet, to Edinburgh: I stayed in a castle, found a tiny bit of snow, took in the big scenery and enjoyed the pick-up truck in what isn't the kind of activity you will find in the brochure, covering mega motorway miles and sweeping A-roads. But I enjoyed both just the same.

The Raptor is an unlikely motorway star. With very good forward visibility (unless you're driving behind it), good stability, the fanciest of dampers that work their best at speed and are entirely untroubled by anything on the road and an interior that's more car than commercial vehicle in feel, it's very relaxing.

The weighty steering likes pointing forward and, even though it rides on huge tyres with big treads, it's precise and stable enough in a straight line.

In some cars, settling into a long cruise can improve fuel economy no end. Particularly if you combine it with driving very calmly, slotting in between the trucks.

I once got comfortably over 40mpg out of a Toyota Land Cruiser that way. But the Ranger seems to return low-20s MPG almost regardless of what I do, pushing into the mid-20s if I have plenty of time in hand, even though there's a 10-speed automatic gearbox to keep that 3.0-litre petrol V6 out of its turbo-spooling zones.

There are steering wheel-mounted paddles if you do want to take control of gearshifts when windier roads arrive, but I don't find it that helpful. I don't know why this should be.

Having 10 speeds ought to make it easy to keep it in its comfort zone, but when using the 'box myself, I'm almost finding the opposite: that there's probably a ratio just a paddle flap away where it would be better. It's such a bright box at quickly kicking down to the most appropriate ratio that I'm inclined to leave it in auto mode.

Then, later, I did another, shorter, more towny commute to see the importer of Silence scooters and quadricycles, set on a busy Solihull street, where I was about to run out of parking options for a vehicle the Raptor's size until they kindly said I could leave it on the access road - because, naturally, the Silence S04 quadricycle would still be able to get past. The S04 is a more town-friendly vehicle. Although I'd rather tackle speed humps in the Raptor.

Love it 

Being prepared 

The Raptor has a spare wheel, as all vehicles of its type should, hanging beneath the body at the back. It seems unlikely I’ll need it, mind.

Loathe it

Poor communication 

One of the front USB ports sometimes decides not to let my phone talk to the infotainment system.

Mileage: 11,730

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The Raptor's wheels are almost kerb-proof - 1 May

Multi-storey car parks are daunting in a vehicle made for open country, but with familiarity it’s not so bad. The Raptor is 1923mm tall, which is fine for most, and you could unscrew the antenna if you were too worried (some owners fit a fin). It’s wide and its turning circle is large but its rims are unkerbable. I just find the end of a row and scooch into the corner.

Mileage: 10,880

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Life with a Ford Ranger Raptor: Month 2

Confirmation from the horse’s mouth that it works on a farm - 17 April

I don't know anyone who has actually complained that a new Defender isn't a 'proper' Land Rover because you can't hose out its interior. Perhaps such people exist, but if they do, they're far outnumbered by those who seek to mock people who want to hose out a car's interior.

I mention this because I have an old Defender, full of hay and horse feed, and guess what: I'm not going to hose out its interior either. There's paperwork, a few CDs, electrical cables, shoes and coats and hats in there, and even if I clear those out, there are also carpets, switches and sockets, none of which appreciates being dowsed with water.

No, if you want an interior from which you can hose out mess, it ought to be outside, as in a pick-up truck. Which brings me to the Ford Ranger Raptor, which I occasionally use for feeding a dear old pony called Snowy (who you might just see in the background of the photo above, head in a bucket of food).

I think some kind of pick-up is the most sensible machine for looking after farm animals, because you can keep the bed as scruffy and filthy as you like but the cabin tidy and don't have to let one contaminate the other.

I keep hay in the back of my Defender 90, which inevitably means it ends up in the front too, and on my clothes. If I ran a Ranger all the time, I would look smarter. But probably only a little.

A pick-up, especially one like the Raptor, has a load bed situated high off the ground, around 900mm, which is pretty tall, and then there's the lowered tailgate, 500mm long, to reach across into the bed to retrieve things.

If any loads have slid towards the front of the bed under braking, up to another 1500mm away, I'm not reaching them without walking around the side of the Ford to lean over the top, which is shoulder height, or by climbing up into the bed, to drag it out. (I suppose one could reverse and brake sharply.) Either way, I'm not coming out of it as clean or as dry as when I started.

No wonder that for using around land, compact side-by-sides/UTVs like the John Deere Gator, lower and shorter and narrower and much easier to sling stuff into and out of, are the vehicles of choice. My Defender is probably easier, too, with a lower load bed and a side-swinging door.

Of course they and my Defender can't do the rest of what a Ranger Raptor will do, which is be a phenomenal all-purpose machine, as happy at a quick motorway cruise for hours on end as it is on rough ground.

The miles are creeping towards its 12,500-mile service interval but probably won't get there before the truck returns to Ford. In the meantime, if I'm steady, I'm seeing low-20s MPG, but the average is still hovering around 21.

Which is what you get if you drive a car designed for the best of the outback. An Australian mate of mine suggests he could drive a Raptor on loose surfaces until its tank ran dry and might not see another person. Alas, that's not a feature of Oxfordshire, but for me that hasn't dimmed the all-round appeal of this incredibly capable pick-up

Love it

Incase of emergency

It’s unlikely that I’ll need it, but there’s a full-size spare wheel under the back of the Raptor.

Loathe it 

Tall story

The Raptor is 1930mm tall in the body, and while that clears most multi-storey car parks, the roofmounted aerial can take a beating.

Mileage: 10,450

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A practical vehicle made impractical? We put that notion to bed - 3 April

It's amazing how quickly people remember they have large items that need moving when they learn a friend or relative drives a van or a pick-up truck.

Admiring the Ford Ranger Raptor, my son quickly realised he could do with a bed being moved from our flat to a house and that there was another bed which duly needed to make the return journey from the house to the flat.

Which makes me suspect somebody is getting a worse bed than the one they started their day with, but hey ho. No problem, I explained, the Raptor is available. I packed some bungees and ratchet straps.

It's as well that I did. As with most double-cab pick-ups, the Ranger's bed won't hold, er, a big bed, in its entirety. Its dimensions are 1.55m long by 1.14m wide. I didn't need to worry about the fact that the Raptor has a reduced payload compared with most pick-ups, owing to its fancy rear suspension, though.

Beds don't weigh 652kg, even though it feels like they do after several flights of stairs. It's still a big enough load bay that on the outward journey a small double mattress fitted inside it a little skewed, where it looked like it would make a nice summertime stargazing set-up. The rest of the disassembled base fitted around it.

It wasn't so simple on the return run, when a bigger mattress wouldn't squeeze in and part of the frame wouldn't easily be disassembled, so they both got strapped to the bed top.

They hung over the back a little, but I was confident that following traffic could still see the rear lights, and I popped a high-vis strap onto it to warn people too - even though if I had been rear-ended, it would have given a softer landing than the tailgate or the scaffold poles that hang out of some heavily laden trucks carrying warning boards.

An afternoon's huffing up and down stairs and some swearing at a hex key later and it was all done. Truth be told, most cars with a roof rack could have done bulky lifting like the Raptor, but most cars don t have a roof rack, and there's no estate car that would have fitted a small double mattress into it so readily as a pick-up.

Score one for pick-ups over SUVs on that point, too, because had I tried to use the roof rack on my own Land Rover Defender or another big SUV, we would've had to lift everything 2.2m high to get on the rack, which would've been an arm ache.

The load cover, incidentally, is electrically operated via a big, albeit hard-to-spot-in-the-dark, rubber button on the left side of the load bay. It keeps whatever is in there pretty much dry, too: only after the most miserable of repeated downpours did one of the gulleys show ingress, I think from somewhere down the left side of the cover.

In my experience, nearly all of these pick-ups let in a bit of water unless they're wearing a tailgated hard top. It's inevitable with a sliding, multi-section roll-up cover, electric or manual. With more regular checking than I give it and a microfibre cloth, there would probably be only a few drops rolling around.

I don't routinely enough keep loads in there for it to be a bother. Which is another way in which the Raptor is slightly over-engineered for my daily needs, in a way that's only ever hugely appealing.

Love it 

Full dataset 

The excellent trip computer gives you your journey time, distance driven, average consumption and average speed.

Loathe it

Fumbling around 

The front USB ports are well hidden and all but unseeable in the dark.

Mileage: 9871

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Stepping out of a tiny roadster and into the largest car on our fleet - 20 March

After spending two weeks whizzing about in a glorious Mazda MX-5 before swapping into Matt Prior's Ford Ranger Raptor, I've come to realise that size does matter - but not in the way you might expect.

For example, say you're headed to Autocar HQ to pick up a vehicle that, due to our rather compact under-office car park, has been relegated to the multi-storey across the road - a narrow concrete hell full of square corners with little manoeuvring room, ramps with low walls on one side and metal railings on the other and very little head room.

I don't like multi-storeys at the best of times, but the MX-5 made it effortless. In fact, I was enjoying threading it through like I was on some sort of indoor rally stage (responsibly, of course), but the smile was wiped from my face when I reached the top floor, found the Raptor and realised I was going to have to squeeze it down seven floors.

Hauling yourself into the Raptor, it's impossible not to notice the height: the MX-5's roofline doesn't even make it to the base of the Raptor's windows and the top of the load bed alone is roughly the same height as a Fiat 500.

That said, I was pleasantly surprised from the off, noting how easy it was to make out the front corners from the driver's seat and keep track of the rear - as far away as it may be - through head-sized mirrors, and that was before I turned on the car to reveal the bird's-eye parking view created by the camera system.

The result? A surprisingly stress-free car park exit. I needn't have worried. The cameras make it easy to keep track of where everything is, but you scarcely need to use them, thanks to the aforementioned sightlines.

The very low walls on the edges of the garage's ramps didn't prove to be a problem, either. With so much tyre sidewall and ground clearance, I could just drive straight over them.

The Raptor's surprising ease of placement extended beyond the multi-storey walls, too. Almost immediately I took it to Swansea, a city that has suburbs full of slender streets with cars parked on both sides. Again, I was dreading it, but the formidable Ford handled it all with such ease, giving me the confidence to drive it like I would any other car in an environment it absolutely isn't designed for.

Thanks to those squared-off front corners, the skyscraper-tall driving position and the direct steering, I've honestly never felt more confident placing a car on the road.

There's no disguising the fact that it is a big old brute it's wider than the Lamborghini Aventador and only 20mm shorter than the gargantuan Mercedes-Benz 600), but you're never in any doubt of just how large it is, meaning that you can get it through gaps barely larger than itself with much less stress than most other things I've driven.

It's a cinch to park, too - provided you can find a space big enough. It's easy to swing in, thanks to that long wheelbase and what feels like a lot of steering lock, but it's impossible to position it badly in a bay, as it simply fills the whole thing line to line. However, in most situations, you have no choice but to leave it slightly overhanging at the front.

All this space isn't for nothing, though. The Raptor is fabulously roomy inside, especially in the rear section of the cab, which I tended to use as a boot instead of the bed (I'd rather not have my camera equipment sliding all over the place, thanks). The front cabin is a relaxing place, too: eight hours of driving in a day felt more like four.

One drive involved five of us - a perfectly comfortable experience in the Raptor - heading out for a hike. The lack of fragile items meant that all of our gear - walking boots, hiking poles, all that jazz-was simply thrown into the bed, and it didn't get especially jumbled up, despite a spirited morning drive across the Brecon Beacons.

The bed was even more useful on the way back. Being in Wales, our hike had been somewhat hampered by rain. All of our wet-weather kit could be contained out of the cabin with no fear of spoiling the interior, but it feels so robust that we trankly needn't have bothered.

Be prepared to be the centre of attention, though: I've never been stared at so much in my life.

You inevitably feel like a bit of a prat at first, but once you decide to lean into the whole experience use the excellent speakers to blast out Johnny Cash at all times and wear a flannel shirt and a Stetson hat wherever you go), you still look like a prat but are having so much fun that you just don't care. Yee and indeed haw.

Love it 

Self-storage facility

There are so many places to put things: a huge centre cubby, big door pockets and even a pair of gloveboxes separated by a shelf that’s perfect for a car park picnic.

Loathe it 

Go-go gadget arms

The HVAC and volume control switches are located incredibly far down in the centre console, so they’re always a bit further away than you expect.

Mileage: 9566

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Dials over buttons - every single time - 13 March

The Raptor has a novel answer to the button-versus-touchscreen issue when it comes to its climate controls, in that you can adjust the temperature with a dial, or on the screen. For me, the dial, which has half-degree notches so you know how much you’re winding it up by without looking, gets my vote roughly 99.9% of the time. 

Mileage: 9120

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Life with a Ford Ranger Raptor: Month 1

Welcoming the Raptor to the fleet - 28 February 2024 

As I write this, I've just stepped out of a Range Rover Sport SV. It's a tremendously able car, with the broadest abilities of any production vehicle on sale.

And yet, and yet: if I had to wake up every morning forever to find just one 4x4 outside my house, I'd still rather it were a Ford Ranger Raptor.

I'm hopelessly smitten by it, which is silly, because I really like small, light cars and this is a 5.4m-long, 2454kg off-roader that typically carries one person (me) and returns only 21mpg, even when I'm not using all of its capabilities, which is always, because it was made for an environment I don't live in.

The spiders, snakes, guns and bears of Australia or America have put me off emigrating so far, but the idea of having a Ranger Raptor and somewhere I could stretch its legs are the sort of things that could have me applying for a residency visa.

For the uninitiated, the Raptor is the Ford Performance variant of the company's staple 'compact pick-up truck. It's a double-cab one with five seats but very different suspension than usual. Its specialist set-up with three-way adjustable dampers by off-road racing expert Fox gives it Baja Rally-style gait, so it can go off road very, very fast.

It has been made even faster in this Raptor by a twin-turbocharged 3.0-litre V6 petrol engine, an option that Brits were denied last time around, when it was exclusively offered as a four-cylinder diesel. And was still great.

In other markets (such as Australia, where it was largely developed, this engine is allowed to make 392bhp, but for the UK, where we have petrol particulate filters and EU regulations to skirt around, it's limited to 288bhp.

That's enough for a 0-62mph time of 7.9sec, and I will admit that, on British public roads, that's enough. There are times exiting roundabouts when it wouldn't hurt to have more comph to push past a Volkswagen ID 3 driver who will accelerate quickly but stop at 60mph, but there's only so much power and torque the BF Goodrich rear tyres can deploy anyway, especially in the wet or extreme cold.

The Raptor has four-wheel drive, of course, and seven driving modes too, but in its default normal operating mode, it's rear-driven. Presumably that makes it more fuel efficient (although these things are relative) than it is when the front wheels are driven too.

More on how all of these change the rough-road demeanour in a later report, then, but it has coil springs, not air suspension, so the ride height is set and unchangeable, thus offering a tremendous ground clearance and wade depth and approach angle.

The long wheelbase and overhanging load bed reduce the breakover and departure angles to merely very good, but be in no doubt that the aggressive design and the graphics of this Raptor are backed up by its hardware.

Other than a tall clamber into the cabin via a chunky side step, you wouldn't know so much from the inside about the car's ruggedness. Materials and fit are of good quality. Until recently, you wouldn't have said the finish was up to a car of this price, but an electric Vauxhall Astra is £40,000 these days and a Range Rover Sport as much as £170,000, so this Raptor can pass for £60,000 easy.

To me, it feels more like an uprated performance saloon than an uprated pick-up inside, and the standard equipment list is generous too.

It means that the list price before options of 260,064, or £63,544 as tested, might seem expensive in the first instance, but given the amount of hardware and software and soft furnishings and sheer metal that you get for the money, and considering what everything else around it costs, it seems far more reasonable.

Anyway, I will talk more about the off-road hardware later, but for now I'm happy to say that it's the on-road performance I'm particularly taken with.

The Raptor has a separate chassis and body, but there's very little evidence from inside the cabin that this offers reduced torsional rigidity in a way that separate-chassis vehicles so often have.

There's no body shake, the interior mirror doesn't shimmy over lumps and bumps and as a result it's refined. Even though it wears potentially very noisy knobbly tyres (which would hum audibly into the cabin on cars like a Jeep Wrangler), the Raptor is quiet at speed and has excellent bump absorbency with it.

The steering is relatively heavy for a modern car (and you can make it even heavier if you push the right buttons), but it takes up weight and feel nicely and its straight-line stability is excellent. There's also a 10-speed automatic gearbox to reduce revs at speed.

As a result, size aside, it's an exceptionally relaxing car to spend time with. I'm not the first to notice its good refinement.

Chatting to my colleague Steve Cropley the other day, he thought he would have a Raptor and the change over a Range Rover, because it's so complete and so compelling. After my initial miles living with it, I'd be tempted to agree that I'd take it over a Range Rover too, regardless of whether or not I got the change.

Second Opinion

I always think the Raptor is a bit Caterham Seven. Owning one provides an angle on motoring that’s every bit as different and compelling as owning that tiny two-seater, and the fun is available on a far greater variety of roads, in all weathers. A crazy choice the gargantuan Ford may be, but it’s an oddly practical one too.

Steve Cropley

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Ford Ranger Raptor specification

Prices: List price new £60,064 List price new £62,556 List price new £63,544

Options Dress Up Pack 3 (cab roll-over bar and powered tonneau cover) £2160, Code Orange paint £720, Decal Pack £600

Fuel consumption and range: Claimed economy 20.4mpg Fuel tank 80 litres Test average 21.1mpg Test best 23.3mpg Test worst 20.0mpg Real-world range 371 miles

Tech highlights: 0-62mph 7.9sec Top speed 111mph Engine V6, 2956cc, twinturbocharged, petrol Max power 288bhp at 5500rpm Max torque 326lb ft at 2300rpm Transmission 10-spd automatic Boot capacity 1233 litres Wheels 8.5Jx17in Tyres 285/70 R17, BF Goodrich KO3 Kerb weight 2454kg

Service and running costs: Contract hire rate £485 CO2 315g/km Service costs None Other costs None Fuel costs £2931 Running costs inc fuel £2931 Cost per mile 32 pence Faults Intermittent refusal to pair with smartphone

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