2024 Ford Ranger Raptor PVOTY Review: This Isn’t the Raptor We Expected
The Ranger Raptor isn’t cut from the same dirt as the F-150 and Bronco Raptors.
Pros
- Entertaining exhaust note
- Comfortable ride
- Fun to drive in average environments
Cons
- Doesn’t live up to its name off-road
- Some direct competitors are better
- Maddening shift lever and shift logic
Midsize trucks are once again well in vogue, and in the past few years across our various MotorTrend media platforms, we’ve seen an uptick in interest when it comes to off-road trucks and off-roading in general. The latter got us thinking about how to better incorporate pickup trucks like this into our Performance Vehicle of the Year program, so we devised a hybrid road/off-road course to aid our evaluations at Chuckwalla Raceway. The idea was to provide a more appropriate venue to highlight their abilities as their makers intended—not every performance vehicle has to be a racetrack-oriented sports car—and the judges arrived at the track eager to give the 2024 Ford Ranger Raptor a proper go.
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If you haven’t given the new Ranger Raptor much thought until now, the quick recap is that it’s the first-ever American-market Raptorized version of Ford’s midsize pickup, Dearborn’s answer to competitors like the Toyota Tacoma TRD Pro, Chevrolet Colorado ZR2, and Jeep Gladiator Mojave.
It’s powered by a modified Bronco Raptor engine featuring a longer exhaust and repositioned charge cooler—good for running in dirt, but both sap a small amount of power. In the Bronco Raptor, the 3.0-liter twin-turbo V-6 makes 418 hp and 440 lb-ft of torque; the Ranger version puts out 405 hp and 430 lb-ft. The pickup also uses a modified Bronco Raptor transfer case and front locking differential, plus the same locking rear differential. It boasts 10.7 inches of ground clearance, 1.4 more than your regular Ranger, plus an additional 1.4 and 2.7 inches of suspension travel front and rear. Further aiding the cause are a set of BFGoodrich’s new 33-inch All-Terrain T/A KO3 tires, rear coil-over shocks, a live rear axle with Watts linkage, 2.5-inch Fox Live Valve Internal Bypass electronically controlled shocks all around, and steel skidplates.
The package looks good on paper at first blush (and simply looks good when you lay your eyes on it), but the Ranger Raptor put the PVOTY judging crew in a lukewarm mood. Of the three trucks taking part, some thought it was the most carlike on pavement—and performed better on the hard stuff than it did off-road. That’s good for daily running in the urban landscape but not enough of what we’re looking for in something carrying the Raptor name.
On the pavement plus side, it feels more like a pseudo-sporty car than the other trucks, with a blatty exhaust note underscoring its benign handling when driven in a hooligan manner. Sliding the Ranger around in 2WD-High with Baja mode selected, on pavement and dirt, was a cinch and rather amusing.
Is it a true Raptor, though? It doesn’t carry as much body armor as its Bronco and F-150 brethren, and its breakover angle doesn’t rival theirs, either. More than that, judges were unimpressed by the way it handled the washboard section of our off-road layout, where the chassis felt notably upset by the bumps.
“The only way you can make it fun off-road is to shift manually,” features editor Scott Evans said, due to the gearbox always wanting to, maddeningly, select too high a gear. “And you must completely turn off the traction and stability control. Otherwise, the computer’s just constantly fighting you and doing things you don’t want. Either way, it wasn’t any more fun than the other trucks. I’m sure it would be faster in an off-road race as it hooks up better, but I’m not getting any more enjoyment out of it, and I thought I would absolutely love it the same way I love the other Raptors.”
Then there’s the “idiotic gear-selector lever,” as senior features editor Kristen Lee described it. Indeed, most judges were cussing the automatic’s shifter almost immediately after encountering its clunky, counterintuitive operation. It may be a minor point, but it’s also an interface you must use every time you drive this Ranger, so struggling with it repeatedly to choose the gear you want—finding reverse is particularly irksome—becomes old quickly.
Ultimately and more importantly, the Ford Ranger Raptor simply doesn’t deliver enough of what we’ve come to expect from the name. “It’s comfortable, with that classic wallowy, pillowy ride Raptors are known for—and that’s maybe the only Raptor-ish quality about this truck,” deputy editor Alexander Stoklosa said. “It otherwise feels like a midlevel off-road package, not the trophy-truck-for-the-street the Bronco and F-150 Raptors are.”
Features editor Christian Seabaugh expanded on those thoughts. “It doesn’t feel similar at all to how the F-150 or Bronco Raptors are set up or perform in desert environments,” he said. “Both the Tacoma TRD Pro and Canyon/Colorado ZR2s it competes against in the market are better. I wonder if there’s something to the theory that there was little cross-pollination between the U.S.-born F-150 and Bronco Raptors and the Australian-engineered Ranger Raptor. Regardless, there certainly seem to be different philosophies at play between the three Ford off-roaders.”
I’m not sure if this is bizarre, amusing, interesting, or none of those, but I remember picking up the inaugural issue of Automobile from the magazine rack at a Meijer grocery store in metro Detroit. At 9 years old in 1986, I was already a devoted consumer of car magazines, and this new one with the funky font on the cover caught my eye immediately. Longtime Automobile editor and present-day contributor Michael Jordan despises this story, but I once used his original review of Ferrari’s F40 as source material for a fifth-grade research project. I still have the handwritten report on a shelf at home. Sometimes I text MJ pictures of it — just to brighten his day. I’ve always been a car fan, but I never had any grand dreams, schemes, or plans of making it onto this publication’s masthead. I did earn a journalism degree from Michigan State University but at the time never planned to use it for its intended purpose. Law school made more sense to me for some reason. And then, thankfully, it didn’t. I blame two dates for this: May 1 and May 29, 1994. The former was the day Formula 1 star Ayrton Senna died. As a kid, I’d seen him race years earlier on the streets of Detroit, and though I didn’t follow F1 especially closely, the news of his demise shocked me. It’s the only story I remember following in the ensuing weeks, which just happened to lead right into the latter date. By pure chance, I had earlier accepted a friend’s invitation to accompany him and his father to the Indy 500. You’ve probably heard people say nothing prepares you for the sight of Indianapolis Motor Speedway, especially in real life on race day, with more than 250,000 spectators on the ground. It sounds like clichéd hyperbole, but it’s true. And along with my renewed interest in F1 in the wake of Senna’s death, that first encounter with Indy ignited a passion for motorsports I never expected to find. Without charting the entire course here, the upshot is that it led me to a brief stint working at a racing school, and then to Autoweek, where I worked as a full-time staffer for 13 years, the majority of them as motorsports editor. I was also a tester and reviewer of road cars, a fleet manager, and just about everything in between that is commonplace at automotive enthusiast outlets. Eventually, my work there led me to Automobile in early 2015 — almost 29 years to the day that I first picked up that funky new car mag as my mom checked-off her grocery list. What else do you probably not want to know? I — along with three other people, I’m told frequently — am an avid NBA fan, evidenced by a disturbingly large number of Nikes taking up almost all of my closet space. I enjoy racing/driving video games and simulators, though for me they’ll never replace the real thing. Road cars are cool, race cars are better. I’ve seen the original “Point Break” at least 147 times start to finish. I’ve seen “Top Gun” even more. The millennials on our staff think my favorite decade is the ’80s. They’re wrong. It’s the ’90s. I always have too many books to read and no time to do so. Despite the present histrionics, I do not believe fully autonomous cars will dominate our roads any time soon, probably not for decades. I used to think anyone who didn’t drive a manual transmission wasn’t a real driver, but I was wrong. I wish I could disinvent social media, or at least somehow ensure it is used only for good. And I appreciate being part of Automobile’s proud history, enjoying the ride alongside all of you.
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