The ultimate off-road runner is back, with the all-new 2017 Ford F-150 Raptor. A twin-turbo Ecoboost V6 engine. A 10-speed transmission. And it's six inches wider than the standard model. This is the one truck everyone will have a burning, yearning desire for.
The Raptor is still the biggest answer to everyone who's ever wanted to go running through rocky, dirty, barren deserts at absurdly high speeds, while still maintaining some semblance of road legality. The last model was a huge hit, so it seemed an inevitability that there would be another one. But this really is a huge update.
Ford's not saying how much power the new Raptor has, but only that the turbo V6 will have "more" than the last generation's 411-horsepower, 434-lb.-ft. 6.2-liter V8. But the story of the Raptor was never really about the power, as lots of things have power. It was about sheer mind-boggling off-road speed capability.
To help out with that, it's got a new steel frame underneath the aluminum body tech it shares with all new Ford F-150s, helping it save more than 500 pounds of heavy metal. It's got even beefier FOX Racing shocks, presumably to help it stop cracking under the most extreme pressures. And it's got more suspension travel, too.
It's got new technology, too, to help you drive as fast as is humanly sane across vast expanses of wasteland, including a new transfer case, a Torsen differential up front, and, with perhaps the best feature of any vehicle anywhere ever, a computer with a pre-programmed Baja mode.
For, you know, when you want to run the Baja.
That will be a fun button to press.
The only real question is how bad do you want it?