Wall Street Journal Review of 2017 Raptor
02-05-2017, 10:33 AM
#1
Senior Member
Thread Starter
Wall Street Journal Review of 2017 Raptor
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ford-f-...ity-1486060421
If you hit their firewall, simply Google the title to get around it: Ford F-150 Raptor Review: A Substantially Frivolous Truck
Summary - good review, notes the truck is 1/2 foot wider which is an issue on narrow trails or in tight city driving. Otherwise, great.
If you hit their firewall, simply Google the title to get around it: Ford F-150 Raptor Review: A Substantially Frivolous Truck
Summary - good review, notes the truck is 1/2 foot wider which is an issue on narrow trails or in tight city driving. Otherwise, great.
02-06-2017, 12:14 AM
#3
Senior Member
The article is just missing the photos.
Ford F-150 Raptor Review: A Substantially Frivolous Truck
The 2017 Ford F-150 Raptor is sprawling beast of a pickup truck—and undeniably fun to drive
WHILE IT’S MAJESTIC in every direction, the 2017 Ford F-150 Raptor pickup is especially awing in width, in its improbable distance from one shining headlamp to the other. This, the second coming of Ford’s delightfully frivolous man-toy, or “high-performance off-road truck,” starts life with an already ample F-150 steel frame, widened with a half-foot gusset of structural steel down the middle.
2017 Ford F-150 Raptor SuperCrew
2017 Ford F-150 Raptor
2017 Ford F-150 Raptor Photo: Ford
Base price: $53,140
Price, as tested: $65,965
Powertrain: Twin turbocharged/intercooled, direct- and port-injection 3.5-liter V6, with stop/start; 10-speed automatic transmission with manual-shift mode; two-speed transfer case, with clutch-based AWD and mechanically locked 4WD; rear-biased all-wheel drive, with locking center and rear differentials and optional limited slip front differential.
Power/torque:450 hp at 5,000 rpm/510 lb-ft at 3,500 rpm
Length/weight:231.5 inches/5,924 pounds
Wheelbase:145.0 inches
0-60 mph:5.1 seconds (Car and Driver)
EPA fuel economy:15/18/16 mpg, city/highway/combined
Interior cabin volume:136 cubic feet
Truck nuts—you don’t mind if I call you that?—will recognize the Raptor’s widescreen aesthetic as inspired by Baja trophy trucks, which are not trucks at all but specialized tube-frame racers, driven by insane millionaires who have lost all feeling in their buttocks. The added span between the wheels has distinct mechanical advantages having to do with high-speed off-roading and wheel articulation, which I’ll get to as soon as the Raptor brings back the sun.
Oh man, somebody took their girthy pills. The front fenders bulge bigly over the BF Goodrich all-terrain tires, which themselves stand almost 3 feet tall. The truck’s self-love is celebrated with blueprint-like block lettering, FORD, spanning the grille as if it were written in Panavision (and at night, bracketed by torrid amber light bars).
At 7.2 feet between the front fenders, the Raptor has the broadest shoulders of any light-duty vehicle on the market, as wide as the original, military-style Hummer H1, and you remember how beloved they were.
Also, tall, by way of the factory lift kit. The roof height is 6.5 feet and the driver seat’s comes to about mid-thorax on me when I stand in the door. Thusly jacked, the new Raptor offers 11.5 inches of ground clearance and 13.0/13.9 inches wheel travel, front/rear. Full-size luxury sedans look like Raptor droppings.
There’s big and there’s damn big. The Raptor SuperCab (starting at $49,520) is a mere 220 inches long, over a 131.5-inch wheelbase. Our tester was the SuperCrew version ($51,845), with four full-size doors and vast rear cabin, measuring 231 inches nose to tail, over a 145-inch wheelbase. It’s Johnny Long Torso.
The Ford F-150
The Ford F-150 Photo: Dan Neil/The Wall Street Journal
Hoisting myself into the cab for the first time, I was keen that I not take off a side mirror or inadvertently crush a mailbox. To my surprise, the Raptor drives narrower than it is, thanks to its commanding seat height, vast windows and the human-aquarium outward views. The multi-mode electric-assist steering system is nicely dialed in, too, well centered and direct, so narrow lanes are negotiated confidently.
In many of the best ways the Raptor is just like any other F-150: well-sorted, comfortable, quiet (minus the dull roar of A/T tires), and available with fine electronic amenities (trailer-backup assist!) and creature comforts. With the help of the optional 360-degree cameras, animated guidelines, parking sensors, our Raptor was even fairly usable around town, though I wouldn’t want to deliver pizzas in it.
Other motorists may need time to adjust. At night the Raptor’s lane-filling girth and elaborate exterior lighting make it look like the rescue squad. The truck’s high-set LED headlamps always seem to blaze into the rearview mirror of the car ahead, causing insanity.
Ripped and ’roided, stacked to the rafters, and armed to the teeth with Baja-style race-tech (long-travel coil suspension with dual-strut Fox shocks, beadlock rims, skid plates, and a bunch of auxiliary cooling circuits), the Raptor practically seethes bad-***. But like a 200-mph Lamborghini Aventador sitting in traffic, the Raptor looks more than a little ridiculous when it’s out of its element, like a guy on the elevator in full scuba gear.
The Ford F-150 Raptor features six terrain modes from off-road rock crawling and desert running to on-road sport mode.
The Ford F-150 Raptor features six terrain modes from off-road rock crawling and desert running to on-road sport mode. Photo: Ford
The irony is that few Raptor owners will dare exercise theirs properly off-road. Because that would be madness. It would only take one weekend of pounding trail to turn this glossy, high-tech terrabot into an old truck with a $1,200-a-month payment. Not only that, the residuals of Raptors are so strong they are practically instant collectibles. I’d keep mine under a mink blanket.
How about a little hardware? Under that storm drain-looking hood louver is Ford’s twin-turbo, 3.5-liter EcoBoost V6, reinforced top and bottom, and boosted to the stars for the occasion. The high-pressure turbocharging raises output to 450 hp (and 510 lb-ft of torque), 85 hp higher than the standard EcoBoost tune and even 39 hp more than the previous V8.
The 6.2-liter V8 is n’more. And even though the V6 produces more power and torque from roughly half the displacement, it doesn’t grumble and shout like a big V8 with dual pipes. I get people’s disappointment. If you are considering a truck as big as a railcar, attention is probably something you crave.
‘Our Raptor was fairly usable around town, though I wouldn’t want to deliver pizzas in it.’
Between the engine and heavy-duty wheel hubs are a brilliant 10-speed transmission and a state-of-the-art transfer case, combining clutch-based AWD operation (on-road operation), and 4x4 High and 4x4 Low, with 50:1 crawl ratio and mechanically locking center and rear diffs, and limited-slip front axle. Thanks to the terrain-sensing software, the workings of these systems are virtually automatic. Good to know if you have a coronary driving through Moab.
Peeking out from behind the mighty tires is, for my money, the Raptor’s secret ingredient: the dual-strut Fox shocks with bypass valving. These dual-stage shocks are the only things keeping the Raptor from wallowing in its own elasticity, a three-ton Shake Weight. The truck’s body control and ride refinement are quite good, actually, apart from a brief, pneumatic tremor when the big tires brush off a pothole, or Honda Civic.
Of course, trophy trucks live Out West. Here in the pine boonies of North Carolina, I found the Raptor to be a bit of mixed bag. It can climb, crawl and churn through the deep suck, no problem, and boil dust off a logging road at three-digit speeds. About the only thing it can’t do is follow a Jeep CJ down narrow trails between close-set pines. We have a lot of them around here. So wide is not a universal good.
Still, broadly speaking, the Raptor is awesome.
Ford F-150 Raptor Review: A Substantially Frivolous Truck
The 2017 Ford F-150 Raptor is sprawling beast of a pickup truck—and undeniably fun to drive
WHILE IT’S MAJESTIC in every direction, the 2017 Ford F-150 Raptor pickup is especially awing in width, in its improbable distance from one shining headlamp to the other. This, the second coming of Ford’s delightfully frivolous man-toy, or “high-performance off-road truck,” starts life with an already ample F-150 steel frame, widened with a half-foot gusset of structural steel down the middle.
2017 Ford F-150 Raptor SuperCrew
2017 Ford F-150 Raptor
2017 Ford F-150 Raptor Photo: Ford
Base price: $53,140
Price, as tested: $65,965
Powertrain: Twin turbocharged/intercooled, direct- and port-injection 3.5-liter V6, with stop/start; 10-speed automatic transmission with manual-shift mode; two-speed transfer case, with clutch-based AWD and mechanically locked 4WD; rear-biased all-wheel drive, with locking center and rear differentials and optional limited slip front differential.
Power/torque:450 hp at 5,000 rpm/510 lb-ft at 3,500 rpm
Length/weight:231.5 inches/5,924 pounds
Wheelbase:145.0 inches
0-60 mph:5.1 seconds (Car and Driver)
EPA fuel economy:15/18/16 mpg, city/highway/combined
Interior cabin volume:136 cubic feet
Truck nuts—you don’t mind if I call you that?—will recognize the Raptor’s widescreen aesthetic as inspired by Baja trophy trucks, which are not trucks at all but specialized tube-frame racers, driven by insane millionaires who have lost all feeling in their buttocks. The added span between the wheels has distinct mechanical advantages having to do with high-speed off-roading and wheel articulation, which I’ll get to as soon as the Raptor brings back the sun.
Oh man, somebody took their girthy pills. The front fenders bulge bigly over the BF Goodrich all-terrain tires, which themselves stand almost 3 feet tall. The truck’s self-love is celebrated with blueprint-like block lettering, FORD, spanning the grille as if it were written in Panavision (and at night, bracketed by torrid amber light bars).
At 7.2 feet between the front fenders, the Raptor has the broadest shoulders of any light-duty vehicle on the market, as wide as the original, military-style Hummer H1, and you remember how beloved they were.
Also, tall, by way of the factory lift kit. The roof height is 6.5 feet and the driver seat’s comes to about mid-thorax on me when I stand in the door. Thusly jacked, the new Raptor offers 11.5 inches of ground clearance and 13.0/13.9 inches wheel travel, front/rear. Full-size luxury sedans look like Raptor droppings.
There’s big and there’s damn big. The Raptor SuperCab (starting at $49,520) is a mere 220 inches long, over a 131.5-inch wheelbase. Our tester was the SuperCrew version ($51,845), with four full-size doors and vast rear cabin, measuring 231 inches nose to tail, over a 145-inch wheelbase. It’s Johnny Long Torso.
The Ford F-150
The Ford F-150 Photo: Dan Neil/The Wall Street Journal
Hoisting myself into the cab for the first time, I was keen that I not take off a side mirror or inadvertently crush a mailbox. To my surprise, the Raptor drives narrower than it is, thanks to its commanding seat height, vast windows and the human-aquarium outward views. The multi-mode electric-assist steering system is nicely dialed in, too, well centered and direct, so narrow lanes are negotiated confidently.
In many of the best ways the Raptor is just like any other F-150: well-sorted, comfortable, quiet (minus the dull roar of A/T tires), and available with fine electronic amenities (trailer-backup assist!) and creature comforts. With the help of the optional 360-degree cameras, animated guidelines, parking sensors, our Raptor was even fairly usable around town, though I wouldn’t want to deliver pizzas in it.
Other motorists may need time to adjust. At night the Raptor’s lane-filling girth and elaborate exterior lighting make it look like the rescue squad. The truck’s high-set LED headlamps always seem to blaze into the rearview mirror of the car ahead, causing insanity.
Ripped and ’roided, stacked to the rafters, and armed to the teeth with Baja-style race-tech (long-travel coil suspension with dual-strut Fox shocks, beadlock rims, skid plates, and a bunch of auxiliary cooling circuits), the Raptor practically seethes bad-***. But like a 200-mph Lamborghini Aventador sitting in traffic, the Raptor looks more than a little ridiculous when it’s out of its element, like a guy on the elevator in full scuba gear.
The Ford F-150 Raptor features six terrain modes from off-road rock crawling and desert running to on-road sport mode.
The Ford F-150 Raptor features six terrain modes from off-road rock crawling and desert running to on-road sport mode. Photo: Ford
The irony is that few Raptor owners will dare exercise theirs properly off-road. Because that would be madness. It would only take one weekend of pounding trail to turn this glossy, high-tech terrabot into an old truck with a $1,200-a-month payment. Not only that, the residuals of Raptors are so strong they are practically instant collectibles. I’d keep mine under a mink blanket.
How about a little hardware? Under that storm drain-looking hood louver is Ford’s twin-turbo, 3.5-liter EcoBoost V6, reinforced top and bottom, and boosted to the stars for the occasion. The high-pressure turbocharging raises output to 450 hp (and 510 lb-ft of torque), 85 hp higher than the standard EcoBoost tune and even 39 hp more than the previous V8.
The 6.2-liter V8 is n’more. And even though the V6 produces more power and torque from roughly half the displacement, it doesn’t grumble and shout like a big V8 with dual pipes. I get people’s disappointment. If you are considering a truck as big as a railcar, attention is probably something you crave.
‘Our Raptor was fairly usable around town, though I wouldn’t want to deliver pizzas in it.’
Between the engine and heavy-duty wheel hubs are a brilliant 10-speed transmission and a state-of-the-art transfer case, combining clutch-based AWD operation (on-road operation), and 4x4 High and 4x4 Low, with 50:1 crawl ratio and mechanically locking center and rear diffs, and limited-slip front axle. Thanks to the terrain-sensing software, the workings of these systems are virtually automatic. Good to know if you have a coronary driving through Moab.
Peeking out from behind the mighty tires is, for my money, the Raptor’s secret ingredient: the dual-strut Fox shocks with bypass valving. These dual-stage shocks are the only things keeping the Raptor from wallowing in its own elasticity, a three-ton Shake Weight. The truck’s body control and ride refinement are quite good, actually, apart from a brief, pneumatic tremor when the big tires brush off a pothole, or Honda Civic.
Of course, trophy trucks live Out West. Here in the pine boonies of North Carolina, I found the Raptor to be a bit of mixed bag. It can climb, crawl and churn through the deep suck, no problem, and boil dust off a logging road at three-digit speeds. About the only thing it can’t do is follow a Jeep CJ down narrow trails between close-set pines. We have a lot of them around here. So wide is not a universal good.
Still, broadly speaking, the Raptor is awesome.
Last edited by Harps; 02-06-2017 at 12:26 AM.