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DRIVEN: Raptor Romps, Muscles Desert Trail
Performance-tuned Ford SVT pickup truck again proves tough and able.
Bob Golfen  |  Posted August 05, 2010   Phoenix, Az.
With its extra-wide stance, Ford Raptor squeezes between rocks and desert plants on the narrow Arizona trail. (Photo: Bob Golfen)
The rocky desert trail where we often go to test off-road vehicles got pretty badly washed out earlier this year when storms raged through central Arizona. But that’s OK; it just makes it all the more challenging.

This time, I was driving one of the supreme beasts of high-performance desert running, the Ford SVT Raptor, a purpose-built F-150 4X4 pickup transformed into a mighty truck that could challenge the Baja 1000.

Actually, the SVT team did run the rugged Baja race last year with a Raptor in essentially stock form. They finished an impressive third against specially prepped competition machines.

A 410-horsepower, 6.2-liter V8 made Raptor unstoppable on steep climbs. (Photo: Bob Golfen)
But this gnarly Arizona trail is a whole different trip. It’s not about how fast you get through the daunting terrain as much as if you get through it. The trail starts off with a long, steep uphill grade over loose rocks and deep ruts, and it gets worse from there. Deeply eroded washes, large boulders, a narrow granite passageway, tight turns, prickly vegetation, all kinds of rugged stuff as the trail climbs up and over a high desert ridge.

Some of the 4X4s that we bring out here struggle with this trail, but the brawny Raptor shrugged off everything we threw at it. At one point when we thought we were hung up in a dry riverbed paved with good-sized boulders, I pulled the selector knob to lock the rear differential, and we came charging out.

The only issue, Raptor was a full-size, extra-wide truck on a fairly narrow trail. With its extreme suspension modifications and fender flares, Raptor is eight inches wider than a stock F-150, which comes out to about 86 inches, the approximate width of a military Humvee.

Which looks pretty damn cool, but it was often a tight squeeze through the narrower parts of the trail while trying to avoid paint-scraping branches and rock walls. Negotiating some of the sharper turns required white-knuckle concentration. We managed to get the Raptor through fairly unscathed aside from smacking the passenger-side running board on a large rock, which gave it a new contour. Well, it was either that or go tumbling down a hillside.

Raptor strikes a pose next to a towering ocotillo plant. (Photo: Bob Golfen)
This trail was a bit out of context for the Raptor, though. The specially built boondocker does a superb job at what it’s built for: specifically, roaring along fairly level desert terrain, shrugging off the bumps, gullies, sand and myriad obstacles while running at high speed. This is what we mostly tried out last year in dusty Borrego Springs, Calif., where Raptor was introduced to the media.

There were a few steep hills in the California test, including a sharp descent where we sampled Raptor’s Hill Descent Control, but mainly it was driving fast through the dry washes. Which obviously was a ton of fun and served to demonstrate the magic of Raptor’s trick suspension.

While Ford’s Specialty Vehicles Team is best known for its performance tuning of sports cars and trucks for the road and race track, the assignment this time was to build a go-anywhere pickup using the most advanced gear available. They came up with a turnkey monster truck that couldn’t possibly be built in the aftermarket for any place near the base price of around $38,000, even if you had the technical skill to do it.

Raptor’s extra width was needed to accommodate 11.2 inches of vertical wheel travel up front and 12.1 inches in the rear. Specially made front lower control arms made of cast aluminum jut far out from the chassis. A heavy, four-mil skid plate protects the underside.

Off-road enthusiasts are well-acquainted with Fox Racing Shox, which underpin all four corners of Raptor. These shock absorbers are massive, with huge reservoirs that contain three internal bypasses that stiffen them in stages as they compress. This provides a soft ride until the Shox need to react to harsh conditions.

This is the leading concept of Raptor’s suspension. The truck is actually sprung more softly than a standard F-150, which allows the suspension to absorb rough terrain at high speeds while the shock absorbers provide the necessary control.

The effect on the rocky Arizona trail was to tame the constantly jarring bumps and ruts, so that my passenger and I were treated to a relatively stress-free ride. Instead of the tiring and eventually annoyingly stiff trips that usually bounce us along these kinds of trails, we were comfortable and relaxed, and we could have gone at it all day.
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Bob Golfen

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