Over the years, the Ford Special Vehicles Team built its reputation on how well its performance-tuned cars and trucks carved up the road. But the latest product from Dearborn's in-house skunkworks, the 2010 F-150 SVT Raptor, takes a sharp turn off-road and into terrain that its predecessor--the street-fighting supercharged F-150 SVT Lightning--never dared to tread.
Like any SVT vehicle, the Raptor is capable of mundane tasks such as flying to the grocery store or winging through commuter traffic.
But this SVT truck is at its best when it's swooping down the desert floor at full speed, dodging rocks and sailing over whoop-de-dos.
Based on the F-150 pickup, the Raptor body is widened by seven inches to accommodate honking 35-inch-tall desert tires and extra wheel travel--11.2 inches front and 13.4 inches rear. From the A-pillar forward, it gets all-new SMC body panels that wrap around the stock three-valve, 310-hp, 365-lb-ft, 5.4-liter Triton V8 (320 hp and 390 lb-ft on E85, if they sell it in your part of the Mojave). The black Raptor grille is wider than the stock F-150 grille, and the skid plate angled below the bumper replaces the stock air-dam lower panels.
A picture of Ford F-150 SVT Raptor
Ford
The Raptor launches like no other truck.
The Raptor comes in the five-seat, SuperCab 4x4 configuration, with rear-hinged rear-access doors opening wide to a racy orange-trimmed leather interior. We hear that a full four-door model is in the works, but for now, the extended cab is the only offering.
Engineers are proud of the fact that they kept all of the electronic programs: electronic locking differentials, AdvanceTrac with roll-stability control, even trailer-sway control and tow/haul mode. To those they added hill-descent control, which automatically applies the brakes to individual wheels for creeping down really steep trails safely, and a new off-road mode, which tailors the throttle map and shift schedule for off-road driving. There's even an auxiliary switchboard for easier installation of the 43 lights you'll want to wire into your light bar.
Our copilot on a 22-mile test careening through the California desert was engineer Gene Martindale, who was one of the lucky drivers when SVT entered a special Raptor in the Baja 1000 last year, where they finished third in Class Eight. For 22 miles, we felt as if we were in the Baja 1000 but with air conditioning.
“Very good, very good,” Martindale intoned as we roared across the dry washes. The impressive thing about driving the Raptor is the speed at which you can fly over the biggest road wallops the desert has to offer. Even at 60 mph to 80 mph over fairly uneven terrain, the suspension seemed to eat the dirt piles like a Jenny Craig dropout with a box of bonbons--and with the same degree of satisfaction.
We ran first in full-stock mode, without the off-road button and in two-wheel drive. Stability control kept intervening, and throttle pickup was slow. Then we hit the off-road-mode button and clicked it into four-wheel high via the dash-mounted knob. This made exits from deep sand much quicker and more efficient and increased the speed at which we were able to run. But torque still seemed lacking, as though the torque converter ate up too much of the rip when we wanted it most. This problem should be addressed when a 400-hp, 6.2-liter V8 for the Raptor arrives this winter.
SVT is particularly proud of the truck's triple-bypass Fox Racing shocks, which manage a remarkable balance between normal driving on pavement and the sort of high-speed hauling we were doing in the desert. A full-on race truck, with its 30-something inches of travel, would simply not be able to turn a corner on a paved road without flopping over and dying. The Fox shocks allow both on- and off-road cornering. In addition to the shocks, the Raptor gets three-inch-longer upper and lower arms in front and a piggy-back rear leaf-spring design with added shock fluid in an external reservoir and thicker shock tubes.
In road duty around our home office in Detroit, the Fox setup perfectly handled pavement, pockmarked or otherwise, and seemed unperturbed by loads, whether piled into the short box or heaped on a cargo trailer.
The Raptor succeeds as a styling exercise, too. It has that rugged exterior so many owners try to achieve through the aftermarket, with chassis improvements sorted out by a team of SVT engineers. Fellow truck lovers were drawn to the overall styling and the numerous marker lights at the corners and across the big grille. But we've never seen so many people look right past a vehicle's fenders to stare at the visible shocks and suspension bits tucked underneath.
That's an SVT of a different feather.
Bob Gritzinger contributed to this report.
2010 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor
ON SALE: Now
BASE PRICE: $38,995
DRIVETRAIN: 5.4-liter, 310-hp, 365-lb-ft V8; 4WD, six-speed automatic CURB WEIGHT: 5,863 lb 0-60 MPH: 8.4 sec (mfr)
FUEL ECONOMY (EPA): 15 mpg
Like any SVT vehicle, the Raptor is capable of mundane tasks such as flying to the grocery store or winging through commuter traffic.
But this SVT truck is at its best when it's swooping down the desert floor at full speed, dodging rocks and sailing over whoop-de-dos.
Based on the F-150 pickup, the Raptor body is widened by seven inches to accommodate honking 35-inch-tall desert tires and extra wheel travel--11.2 inches front and 13.4 inches rear. From the A-pillar forward, it gets all-new SMC body panels that wrap around the stock three-valve, 310-hp, 365-lb-ft, 5.4-liter Triton V8 (320 hp and 390 lb-ft on E85, if they sell it in your part of the Mojave). The black Raptor grille is wider than the stock F-150 grille, and the skid plate angled below the bumper replaces the stock air-dam lower panels.
A picture of Ford F-150 SVT Raptor
Ford
The Raptor launches like no other truck.
The Raptor comes in the five-seat, SuperCab 4x4 configuration, with rear-hinged rear-access doors opening wide to a racy orange-trimmed leather interior. We hear that a full four-door model is in the works, but for now, the extended cab is the only offering.
Engineers are proud of the fact that they kept all of the electronic programs: electronic locking differentials, AdvanceTrac with roll-stability control, even trailer-sway control and tow/haul mode. To those they added hill-descent control, which automatically applies the brakes to individual wheels for creeping down really steep trails safely, and a new off-road mode, which tailors the throttle map and shift schedule for off-road driving. There's even an auxiliary switchboard for easier installation of the 43 lights you'll want to wire into your light bar.
Our copilot on a 22-mile test careening through the California desert was engineer Gene Martindale, who was one of the lucky drivers when SVT entered a special Raptor in the Baja 1000 last year, where they finished third in Class Eight. For 22 miles, we felt as if we were in the Baja 1000 but with air conditioning.
“Very good, very good,” Martindale intoned as we roared across the dry washes. The impressive thing about driving the Raptor is the speed at which you can fly over the biggest road wallops the desert has to offer. Even at 60 mph to 80 mph over fairly uneven terrain, the suspension seemed to eat the dirt piles like a Jenny Craig dropout with a box of bonbons--and with the same degree of satisfaction.
We ran first in full-stock mode, without the off-road button and in two-wheel drive. Stability control kept intervening, and throttle pickup was slow. Then we hit the off-road-mode button and clicked it into four-wheel high via the dash-mounted knob. This made exits from deep sand much quicker and more efficient and increased the speed at which we were able to run. But torque still seemed lacking, as though the torque converter ate up too much of the rip when we wanted it most. This problem should be addressed when a 400-hp, 6.2-liter V8 for the Raptor arrives this winter.
SVT is particularly proud of the truck's triple-bypass Fox Racing shocks, which manage a remarkable balance between normal driving on pavement and the sort of high-speed hauling we were doing in the desert. A full-on race truck, with its 30-something inches of travel, would simply not be able to turn a corner on a paved road without flopping over and dying. The Fox shocks allow both on- and off-road cornering. In addition to the shocks, the Raptor gets three-inch-longer upper and lower arms in front and a piggy-back rear leaf-spring design with added shock fluid in an external reservoir and thicker shock tubes.
In road duty around our home office in Detroit, the Fox setup perfectly handled pavement, pockmarked or otherwise, and seemed unperturbed by loads, whether piled into the short box or heaped on a cargo trailer.
The Raptor succeeds as a styling exercise, too. It has that rugged exterior so many owners try to achieve through the aftermarket, with chassis improvements sorted out by a team of SVT engineers. Fellow truck lovers were drawn to the overall styling and the numerous marker lights at the corners and across the big grille. But we've never seen so many people look right past a vehicle's fenders to stare at the visible shocks and suspension bits tucked underneath.
That's an SVT of a different feather.
Bob Gritzinger contributed to this report.
2010 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor
ON SALE: Now
BASE PRICE: $38,995
DRIVETRAIN: 5.4-liter, 310-hp, 365-lb-ft V8; 4WD, six-speed automatic CURB WEIGHT: 5,863 lb 0-60 MPH: 8.4 sec (mfr)
FUEL ECONOMY (EPA): 15 mpg
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