I had a better picture than this, a silver one sitting right upside down. The bed was ripped in half side-to-side, but the cab was so square I’m pretty sure rear glass could have been re-installed without issue. Sadly, I’m not organized enough to remember where I saved it to or from.
That being said, the new Raptor is pretty cool. When they first came out just over a decade ago, they were okay, but they weren’t that spectacular. For an off-the-showroom-floor truck, they were pretty tough. They weren’t overpowered, they weren’t nearly rugged enough to fly, they were kind of heavy, and they didn’t look that much more impressive than an FX4 with big tires. Honestly, I was disappointed when I pulled up next to one in my gutless pig of a 2007 FX4. In fact, I recall mine sounding meaner thanks to a Pypes Violator muffler that was about five percent the size of the stock one. Fast-forward a decade to just a few months ago. I was driving down the highway when a fairly new Raptor passed me. I was in a car, so it looked tough from my lower viewpoint. It sounded okay, but what really impressed me is when it went down the ditch at highway speed, slowed slightly, and went up the other side and out into the field where it needed to go. Had I tried that in my FX4 back in the day, I would have needed new ball joints, back surgery, and the airbags repacked. No longer could I ignore the Raptor. Ford did it. They built a stout off-road truck with a warranty.
I’ve watched a ridiculous amount of videos showing Raptor fails online. People are sending them well past their limit through the air in the desert. The launch is always glorious. The landing is always catastrophic. That being said, your run-of-the-mill F150, Ram, or Silverado wouldn’t have even got the launch off quite as proper as the Raptor. The only real criticism of the Raptor, one I hear time and time again, is that none of them ever have cages installed. Some have decorative, bed-mounted, thin-walled “roll bars” that are mostly there for decoration or to mount some lights or spare tires, but that’s the best there is. If I were racing across the desert for fun on the weekend, I think I’d want a cage, but in that scenario, I’d also want a helmet. What about the other five or six days of the week spent in traffic or on the freeway? Those are places where a helmet just isn’t practical. A cage is fine and dandy until you smack your bare skull into it on a fast corner, over a speed bump, or in a minor fender bender. Ford thought of that somehow, as every Raptor that I’ve ever seen flipped has survived incredibly well. The bed is usually destroyed, the tailgate a distant memory, the hood and fenders munched, and anything plastic shattered at every fastener. The doors, however, are usually still latched, and the cab is rarely buckled past the top of the windshield. I guess the whole “Military-grade aluminum” thing actually works, and the ridiculous amount of airbags are icing on the cake. If you’re thinking about buying a Raptor, I say go for it. There’s not much for sand dunes, mountains or mud holes here, but they’d be a great machine for bouncing across some rough pasture.
Have a question or comment for Kelly? Post it at lmtimes.ca/kirk