0-60 Raptor R
Lupita Calvi
If you ask most people, the biggest issue with the third-gen Raptor is the lack of a V8, and I agree to an extent. I, too, miss the harmonic sound of a 6.2 V8 rumbling and the thing it provides just more of an overall visceral experience when behind the wheel. But truthfully, the Ecoboost 3.5L V6 has proven to be a somewhat reliable, efficient, and powerful drivetrain throughout the years with the 3.5 V6 making 450hp and 510 510lb-ft of torque, it will go 0-60 in just 5.4 seconds. The V8 in the Raptor R is a great way to fill the void left by the departure of the 6.2V8 from the first-gen Raptor if you are willing to shell out the cash for horsepower.
While I love that Ford made this truck after touting it, I find it hard to come up with a reason anyone would buy a Raptor R over a normal Raptor 37 other than for status, and you have some serious coin to throw around. But at the end of the day, the biggest issue with the Raptor R is itself, and I love this truck.
From the perspective of an outdoorsperson, I hope this really is the last internal combustion engine super truck. The crazy thing is, from the perspective of a truck enthusiast, I also really hope this is the last dinosaur-powered super truck.
So I think this thing is going to be the last of the ICE super trucks simply because it has to be. Burning fossil fuels can no longer deliver the same off-road thrills unleashing a whole lot of electrons does. And maybe, just maybe, this marks a small win for the ability of trucks like these to continue to be able to exist on a planet capable of supporting human life.
Great article Wes, love the differentiation between trucks as tools and trucks as toys! Sadly most environmentally conscious folks would put your Ranger and this Raptor R in the same category.... not the same. Keep pumping out great content, and I owe you a beer for the intro to GFC campers (your original ranger build out article on outside), such an amazing tool to get me and the family outside more often.
One of the fun things about being a writer is that your words don\u2019t always reach the page as you wrote them. My computer\u2019s acting up this morning, I\u2019m moving a bunch of old files around to try and fix that, and came across this first draft of my Raptor R review from last year. Probably motivated by my own ego, I figured it might be worth sharing.
I just drove the fastest internal combust engine off-road truck that will ever be sold in a showroom. How was it? In a word: underwhelming. That is not a ding on Ford. Packing 700 horsepower into the Raptor R, and doing it so seamlessly that the vehicle never feels like it\u2019s getting out of control is an incredible achievement. No, the reason I\u2019m underwhelmed isn't through any problem or fault with the vehicle itself, it\u2019s simply due to the fact that the world has moved on. There\u2019s already something faster, and more exciting out there. It just isn\u2019t powered by dead dinosaurs.
I should state right from the beginning that Ford hasn\u2019t said the 2023 Raptor R will be the last internal combustion engine (ICE) Raptor. The company has a hard policy of not commenting on future product whatsoever. But, it has stated publicly that electric vehicles will account for fully 40 percent of its entire production volume by 2030. That $22 billion transition is already underway, and already changing the very structure of the company itself. Ford announced in March that it\u2019s splitting the company into two divisions: one focussed on technology and growth, the other focussed on generating short term cash. Profits from the latter will help pay for the former. You can guess which one is responsible for the EVs, and it\u2019s not the division that\u2019s being forced to cut costs, and fire workers.
And that transition has already resulted in an electric pickup. In fact, that electric pickup shares its frame with this Raptor R. And it\u2019s quicker. MotorTrend pegs the 0-60 time of the fastest Ford F-150 Lightning at just 3.8 seconds. No one\u2019s performed instrumented, independent performance tests on the Raptor R yet, but initial estimates peg its time at around 4.5 seconds.
But the Lightning isn\u2019t really intended for off-roading. It\u2019s a practical, hard-working, relatively green pickup that asks everyday truck buyers to make few compromises in the pursuit of reduced emissions. That point of the Raptor R isn\u2019t to perform work, it\u2019s to create thrills. It\u2019s the ultimate expression of truck as toy.
Creating the Raptor R was fairly simple. I\u2019ll let my friend David Tracy describe the finer points of what it took to do this over at his blog, The Autopian, but Ford basically just took the supercharged V8 out of its fastest Shelby Mustang and stuck it in the existing non-R Raptor chassis, then stopped there. After three generations and 13 years, this finally gives the Raptor the power it needs to exploit its incredible suspension system. The result is simply more speed over open off-road terrain like the sand dunes you\u2019re looking at in these pictures than any other ICE truck ever. At least one that you can put on a finance payment and that comes with a warranty. It starts at about $110,000, and during my time behind the wheel, returned about 10.5 miles per gallon both on-road and off.
Why would anyone ever pay that much money for a toy? Because they find driving fast off-road to be thrilling. I\u2019m one of those people. I like fast cars and trucks enough that I dropped out of college to make them the focus of my first career\u2014reviewing them for car magazines\u2014way back in 2002. But I also get why a lot of people find trucks like these so problematic. Eight years ago I quit my gig writing about vehicles to start writing about the outdoors. And like anyone else with eyeballs, I can see the damage the unfurling climate disaster is already wreaking on the natural world. And it\u2019s going to get worse. In the rest of my lifetime alone, I\u2019m going to see the wholesale collapse of animal populations, the disappearance of glaciers from the mountains I like to climb and hike, the forests where I camp are going to burn down, and rivers where I fish are going to dry up. If we\u2019re to preserve the ability for this planet to support future generations of humans at all, then all of us must work to be a part of a solution. And the Raptor R is very much a part of the problem.
Back in April, I drove the new 1,000 horsepower GMC Hummer EV. There\u2019s a lot of dry, analytical metrics by which you can judge the performance of a vehicle, on-road and off, and I\u2019m sure my former colleagues at those car magazines will be conducting those tests soon. But what I can tell you right now is that people who buy crazy fast super trucks aren\u2019t doing it because there\u2019s a tenth of a second difference to be found between one or another, they\u2019re doing it for the thrill they\u2019re capable of creating. And the Hummer EV is considerably more thrilling than the Raptor R.
Take a full-speed acceleration run on either vehicle for instance. Lift off the brake and stomp on the gas in the Raptor R, and you\u2019ll be greeted by a lot of wheelspin, a little bit of sideways action, then some pretty impressive acceleration for such a big truck. Ford\u2019s engineers are proud of the work they\u2019ve put into making this third-generation Raptor chassis better able to put that power down on off-road surfaces, but the new five-link rear end still hops and chatters over rough surfaces, and ultimately fails to allow you to take full advantage of that supercharged V8. Doing the same thing in the Hummer EV dropped my stomach, blurred my vision, and loosened my bowls. The feeling of acceleration was so intense that this former professional vehicle tester wasn\u2019t even able to make it all the way to 60 MPH before lifting off the throttle.
Which toy would you rather play with? The one I\u2019m able to describe analytically, or the one I\u2019m not ashamed to admit caused me to leak a few drops of urine? The $112,500 Hummer EV is not without its issues (and nor is the Ford), but it\u2019s definitively the faster, wilder, scarier, more impressive experience. And if that\u2019s the entire point of these things, then the Raptor R is inarguably inferior.
The good folks at Ford Motor Company gave me 14 days behind two 2022 Ford Broncos. This was not the first time I was handed the keys to the new Bronco. In the Spring, I took an Outer Banks series to the beach, which was tons of fun and was turning heads. This month, I started my first seven days behind the Everglades series, followed by a Raptor series. Both vehicles offered a completely different riding experience.
The Everglades exterior color is impressive in person, and the offroad accessories give it a more visually pleasing stance in contrast to the overly aggressive and toy-ish Raptor series seen in the same blue offered on the F-150 Raptors.
These two Broncos had two different powertrains. The Everglades series was equipped with a 2.3L EcoBoost I-4 Engine, giving us that sweet turbo tone. It is matched with a 10-Speed Automatic Transmission pushing out 300 horsepower and 326 lb-ft of torque on premium fuel. On the streets, we were averaging 17.5 MPG. Additionally, it is equipped with electronic-locking front and rear axles, a 4.7 final drive ratio, high-clearance suspension, position-sensitive Bilstein shock absorbers, and high-clearance fender flares. Despite being heavier and slower, it is made for fearless offroading.
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