Yahoo Autos 2024 Ford Raptor R First Drive: 720 horses of sand-blasting fury
JOHNSON VALLEY, Calif. – Sorry, but rock crawling is boring. It’s just … so … slow. And nerve-wracking, with jagged boulders and sharp branches standing by to bash this, scratch that and dump you on your lid. It’s hard to comprehend how it’s supposed to be fun.
On the other hand, the 2024 Ford F-150 Raptor R and its brand of off-roading are much easier to wrap my head around. The speedometer is pegged at 80, and yet there’s not a patch of pavement in sight. I brake hard(ish) as a new “road” appears ahead, and feel the rear end squirm as the gigantic 37-inch tires fight for grip on the dirt below. I cut left, feel the rear end gain traction and plant the throttle. Talk all you want about the four-mode exhaust, including the “off-road-only” Baja mode (hah, sure, good luck enforcing that), but it’s the supercharger whine that steals the show. It’s heavenly. As in I literally expect whatever conveyance brings you to heaven to make noises like this.
And sure, that conveyance may end up being a Raptor R if you’re not too careful, but out here in the desert north of Palm Springs, there’s plenty of room for error. Especially as the “road” reveals a great big sand dune ahead that makes the various Raptors in our little convoy look like a kid’s dump truck at the beach. Getting stuck is a real possibility (just don’t lift!), but that seems a lot better than dangling off a cliff the wrong way up. Not that I needed it (I just didn’t lift), but had I gotten stuck, the Raptor now offers a modular front bumper (a concept shared with the revised Tremor) that features bigger, enlarged tow hooks and the option for a Warn winch protected by an integrated brush guard. This would be one of the potential modules in question, but the bumper’s pinched outermost edges are always there to reveal as much of those jumbo 37s as possible.
It is here on the Dunes, though, where the Raptor R really starts to make sense – well, as much as a Raptor R can make sense. Up to that point in the drive, I was ready to mostly dismiss its king-of-the-hill, 720-horsepower, 5.2-liter supercharged V8 as just a way to prove to owners of the 702-hp Ram TRX that you’re more toxically masculine (smashes Monster can on forehead). When the sand keeps getting deeper, though, and your planted foot keeps demanding more and more and more power to keep the truck’s momentum going, suddenly having 270 more horses than the standard Raptor without the possibility of turbo lag doesn’t seem so nuts. Getting 12 mpg combined on the other hand …
No need to worry about that now, nor the 7.3 mpg reading in the all-digital instrument panel that changes its vibrant designs depending on drive mode. “Off-road” mode remains engaged for much of the lengthy, all-off-road drive, including on the sand dunes. Ford’s engineers on hand suggest engaging “Baja mode” once speeds started staying in the highway range as well as on the vast, Soggy Dry Lake bed where some cones were set up for a quasi-autocross course. Instead of squealing tires around a parking lot, though, this autocross consisted of turning in, feeling the rear end come loose, gunning it, reveling in that supercharger whine again, letting the wheel slip back in the opposite direction and holding it there, continuing to gun it, glimpsing a plume of dust filling the rearview mirror and holding the slide until the next cones appear, at which point, prepare to start it all again. Oh, and smiling. Lots and lots of smiling.
Never mind rock crawling and autocrossing, bombing a Raptor R around the desert proved to be more fun than lapping any number of high-dollar sports cars around legit race tracks. The track experience is highly rewarding and certainly fun in its way, but then there’s that whole nerve-wracking thing again. Palms (and other bits) end up quite sweaty. Out here in the Raptor R? It may be 100 degrees outside, but no perspiration here. It’s so much damn fun, not to mention a whole lot cheaper than a track day.
