2021 Ford F-150 Raptor first drive review: American badass

There is anything wholly satisfying about making use of a effectively-created instrument to its comprehensive prospective. The best applications are arguably individuals that deliver greater success the tougher they are labored. Connect with it grace below tension, get in touch with it fitness of intent, get in touch with it whatever you like, it is distinct the 2021 Ford F-150 Raptor 4×4 has accurately this sort of virtue baked into the marrow of its body, and boy, is it a thrill to find and exploit.

Even though it arguably won’t glance significantly different from past year’s product, this Raptor is indeed substantially new. This pickup truck not only gains from virtually all of the 2021 F-150 product line’s significant interior and tech improvements, it also gains even additional spectacular off-street chops many thanks to a complex new 5-website link rear suspension and the availability of hulking 37-inch tires. 

In advance of you inquire, just one detail that remains largely unchanged is the three.five-liter twin-turbo EcoBoost V6, after once again matched to a ten-velocity computerized transmission and tuned for 450 horsepower and 510-pound-feet of torque. There is a greater compression ratio, revised software for greater throttle reaction and new higher-energy cooling enthusiasts for additional self-confident off-roading and towing, but that is about the scope of the variations underhood.

Now moving into its 3rd era and lastly struggling with its 1st genuine competitors in the form of Ram’s formidable 1500 TRX, this is the product that will carry the Raptor nameplate into its teenage many years. Thankfully, a day of pounding by means of the Mojave desert, assaulting sand dunes, blitzing in excess of whoops and galloping across rock-strewn washes reveals not a trace of uncomfortable adolescence. Better nonetheless, many thanks to an all-new multi-method exhaust procedure, the Raptor’s voice has dropped appreciably, bellowing additional loudly and additional authoritatively in a reduced register. 

37-inch tires on the street

My 1st drive of the Michigan-constructed 2021 Ford Raptor commences off innocuously sufficient, in the shadow of the casinos and motels of Las Vegas. I set off from Sin Metropolis, driving on paved roadways an hour out to Pahrump, a city of all around 40,000 whose noteworthy economic motorists contain — [checks Wikipedia] — Spring Mountain Motor Sporting activities Ranch, Front Sight Firearms Instruction Institute and a pair of authorized brothels. 

The drive, like a detour to test out Nevada’s lovely Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Place, provides me a prospect to get acquainted with my exam auto, which is using on mondo meats: a set of recently optional 37×12.five-inch BFGoodrich T/A K02s, the most significant tires I have ever seen equipped to a generation pickup (they’re truly greater than the Sasquatch feet on Ford’s new Bronco SUV). These tires occur as element of the Raptor 37 Performance Package, a multifaceted $7,500 option team that features beadlock-able wheels, unique shock absorbers, fetching Rhapsody Blue Recaro seats and a slew of interior and exterior trim tweaks. The tires deliver killer seems to be and greater floor clearance, albeit at the price of some suspension travel and unsprung body weight (all around 6 kilos for each corner).

Big cabin and tech upgrades

Like most roadways in Nevada that usually are not in the mountains, the street to Pahrump is featurelessly flat, straight and sunbaked. But though it isn’t a great area to exam the Raptor’s managing, it is a excellent time to take note the Raptor’s supple journey top quality and really effectively-controlled NVH (sound, vibration and harshness). The significant tread blocks on the BFGs do not deliver abnormal tire roar and though the steering is light on truly feel and a tiny squishy just off heart, it is just fantastic and should not be off-placing to any individual utilised to driving a comprehensive-sizing pickup.

It truly is also a excellent time to just take stock of the most important news for the Raptor’s on-street manners, which have nothing to do with the vehicle’s dynamics: the new cabin. Like the rest of its F-150 siblings, it is here where Ford experienced fallen behind its arch rival, the Ram 1500 (and fairly substantially, at that). For 2021, the 14th-era F-150’s interior is of noticeably greater top quality. 

The dashboard is completely new and it is anything of a tech bonanza. With a common 12-inch digital gauge cluster and a matching 12-inch touchscreen operating Sync 4 infotainment, you’re wanting at a major top quality-of-everyday living update versus the 2020 product. The graphics are sharper, the reaction occasions are snappier and the element set is deeper, bringing conveniences like wi-fi Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Importantly, the procedure also incorporates a 4G LTE Wi-Fi hotspot, enabling bumper-to-bumper in excess of-the-air updates for the 1st time. This assures that not only will the Sync 4 carry on to provide the latest and best infotainment options, new functions and bug fixes can be downloaded for the rest of the truck, as well — powertrain provided. Supplemental options like the $765 360-degree digital camera bundle (which demonstrates actual-time tire paths for smarter off-roading), a deployable heart console table and an available 18-speaker Bang & Olufsen Unleashed audio procedure are actual pot sweeteners, as well.

Prodigious thirst apart, Raptors have constantly produced surprisingly great every day motorists, but this new interior and tech should really definitely make day to day everyday living significantly much easier, even if you do not decide for things like Pro Electrical power Onboard, a constructed-in 2.-kilowatt generator able of powering a smaller position site or a killer tailgate bash.

Off-street impressions

The convoy of exam Raptors spends the night in Pahrump in get to get an early begin to beat the late-summer warmth. How early? I am in the hotel’s lobby by 4:00 a.m., then caffeinated and on the street by 4:fifteen a.m. I have one more 50-mile drive to achieve California’s Dumont Dunes, a broad, 7,620-acre playland that lies in the shadow of volcanic hills and together the financial institutions of the Amargosa River. 

When I arrive, it is nonetheless pitch dim, giving me time air down the tires to about 24 psi and to bolt on higher-visibility dune flags, as effectively as don a helmet and HANS device for security. The solar speedily catches fire, illuminating a stunning martian backdrop that feels like someone clicked the “widescreen” button on my everyday living. It will be effectively in excess of one hundred ten degrees prior to the day is out, so I load in sufficient drinking water bottles to consume the advised liter or additional an hour and head for the several programs that Ford’s team set up.

Whoops! This effectiveness is no incident

Whilst it is not the 1st process I tackle, it is the Raptor’s effectiveness on the whoops — a lengthy subject of of smaller, rolling jumps that develop a promptly undulating area — that impress me most. Credit score goes to the engineers who developed the Raptor’s totally new rear suspension, which ditches the leaf springs utilised on all other F-Collection vans other than the Lightning EV. This all-new 5-website link set up employs lengthy rear trailing arms, a Panhard rod and gigundous 24-inch coil springs to supply critical travel (fifteen inches out back again on 35-inch-tire-outfitted types, or 14.one-inches on my pickup’s 37-inch BFGs). Ford claims this 2021 product has 25% additional suspension travel than the first Raptor, which was not accurately missing in that office. 

Maybe most importantly, this complex rear suspension enables significantly additional precise place of the axle during the suspension’s travel — not just up and down, but fore/aft and laterally, as effectively. The end result is that the truck has an much easier time placing the energy down and retaining it there, specifically with a set of much larger, next-era Fox Stay Valve shocks. These electronically controlled, inside-bypass models element much larger three.one-inch tubes to greater take care of the punishing thermal load of higher-velocity desert operating. 

How this functions out in actual everyday living is that the more quickly you go, the greater the Raptor performs across the whoops. What feels juddery at 40 mph smoothes out remarkably at 60-furthermore mph, the Raptor’s recently strengthened chassis being surprisingly level though its suspension executes a punishing higher-velocity dance as the truck streaks across the desert washboard. It truly is a extraordinary effectiveness at speeds that could effectively deliver the mattress on a lesser truck mule-kicking uncontrollably — frequent ol’ leaf springs might’ve subjected this Code Orange Raptor to a Code Brown second. Alternatively, I uncover myself pushing to accelerate to even greater speeds all the quicker, forcing me to depend ever tougher on Raptor’s able brakes (13.7-inch discs up front,13.2 inches out back again).

Beadlocks for all

Ford coned off a pair of substantial sand programs that run up and down Dumont’s substantial dunes, as well, giving me the prospect to kick up some critical rooster tails though evaluating small-grip managing on tires that have been aired down even further more to just fifteen psi. The essential here is momentum — you in no way want to gradual down for fear of burying the Raptor up to its axles. The ten-velocity gearbox is primed to hold the revs up in Baja method and it is remarkable fun to hang the tail out and leap ever greater and further more in excess of a crest. Or, at the very least it is until eventually I load up the outer front tire in a corner as well challenging, the BFG rolling in excess of on its sidewalls and popping a bead, deflating the tire and bringing the action a screeching halt. (Other workouts showcased the Raptor’s available beadlock-able wheels, but not this just one, oddly.) Ford minders speedily shuttle me to one more Raptor, later reuniting me with my first Code Orange tester immediately after a clean rubber swap.

Among the whoops, the dune operating and piling together a higher-velocity course on a clean, it is distinct the Raptor is additional able than ever in the rough things. Even avid off-roaders are significantly additional likely to run out of expertise lengthy prior to this truck runs out of functionality. I am going to have to wait around for a long term engagement to see how the new suspension stands up to the rigors of rock crawling, but the change to a 5-website link set up and much larger tires has not appreciably hurt the Raptor’s on-street livability, possibly.

Audio views

As to the carryover powertrain’s new seem, Ford equipped a radically different exhaust set up to the 2021 F-150 Raptor, complete with a funky-wanting midpipe trombone loop in advance of the muffler to equalize the three-inch pipe lengths from side to side to ensure the best possible acoustics. Combined with active valves with four driver-selectable modes (Silent, Usual, Activity and Baja), the new exhaust assures the Raptor has a significantly additional assertive voice when you want it and a do not-wake-the-neighbors tone when you do not. Baja mode’s howl is a substantial advancement in excess of the fairly flaccid-sounding 2nd-era Raptor, but it remains a lengthy way from the intrinsically satisfying guttural V8 bellow of the Ram 1500 TRX.

Thirsty, but not TRX thirsty

On the furthermore side, the 2021 Raptor, though barely thrifty, handily outpoints the significantly additional effective Ram in gasoline financial state. Types outfitted with 35-inch tires should really see fifteen mpg town, 18 mpg freeway and sixteen mpg put together, though 37-inch-tire types fall to fifteen, sixteen and fifteen, respectively. The significantly heavier Mopar, in the meantime, nets a comparatively reprehensible ten mpg town, 14 mpg freeway and 12 mpg put together. 

As opposed to the TRX, the Raptor is happy to are living on frequent 87-octane gasoline and the Ford has a much larger 36-gallon gasoline tank, as well, enabling additional than 500 miles in between fill-ups. Your bladder might not past that lengthy on the freeway, but you can be grateful for the more potential when you’re caning the EcoBoost off-street in some remote place, having significantly significantly less than EPA estimates.

Big value maximize

I dislike to dwell on the selection comparison match with the Ram, but there is just one other essential set of figures I want to focus on: pricing. The outgoing Raptor held a substantial cost advantage versus the Ram, commencing about $fifteen,000 significantly less. That’s sufficient of a pricing gulf that just one could argue these two vehicles truly existed in different classes — supertruck versus hypertruck, perhaps. 

No more time the 2021 Raptor’s improvements have triggered a major value maximize. The outgoing 2020 Raptor began at $fifty five,090 like a steep $one,645 for delivery. For 2021, a foundation Raptor will set you back again $sixty five,840 (like $one,695 delivery) and a comprehensive-boat product can conveniently top $80,000. By contrast, the TRX commences at $seventy two,120 delivered and can climb previously mentioned $ninety four,000. There is nonetheless a significant value differential, but it is primarily visible on higher-information types and with only all around $6,000 separating foundation MSRPs, the Raptor’s benefit proposition is considerably significantly less evident than it after was.

How did this take place? In element, it is since Ford nixed past year’s significantly less-costly SuperCab system design immediately after just 4% of buyers chose the shorter model’s rear-hinged 50 %-doorways. For 2021, the only way you can get a Raptor is with Ford’s much larger four-door SuperCrew system paired with a five.five-foot mattress and its one,four hundred-pound max payload (towing sits at 8,200 kilos). Further bloating the bottom line is all of that new tech, like a brace of wise towing aids and Ford’s Co-Pilot 360 suite of active security equipment, which bundles common ahead-collision warning with computerized unexpected emergency braking, adaptive cruise control, blind-location monitoring, computerized higher beams and so on. A prep package for BlueCruise, Ford’s forthcoming partially automatic palms-free driving tech, is optional.

At the close of the day, the 2021 Ford Raptor is a substantially improved truck, setting up on what was by now a massively spectacular pickup. This truck’s significantly additional superior suspension will give hardcore off-roaders enough explanation to think about the new product, but it is the cabin’s significantly-needed overhaul and the substantial infusion of comfort and security tech that they’re going to take pleasure in most in every day everyday living. Unfortunately, the new model’s significant value maximize blunts the Raptor’s charm to some degree and it does have me questioning how stratospherically the forthcoming V8-run Raptor R will be priced when it arrives next yr. That apart, there are additional reasons than ever to think about parking this 4×4 in your garage. It truly is just one of the best, most expressive vehicles The us makes.

Editors’ take note: Travel expenditures associated to this tale were covered by the producer, which is widespread in the auto business. The judgments and views of Roadshow’s workers are our have and we do not settle for compensated editorial information.