Why we’re running it: To see if a Baja-ready pick-up truck can handle the Wild West that is British roads
Month 1 - Specs
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.
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Judging by the way I see these Rangers parked around town, parking them would appear to be a serious challenge because of their size...
Nah, we had a Wildtrak the other day. It's not that much bigger than 4WDs or luxury cars and the 360 degree cameras are amazing. Easier to park than my Cerato, just brilliant. Rides funny though and drones something awful (the diesel)!