2024 Ford Ranger Raptor PVOTY Review: This Isn’t the Raptor We Expected

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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.

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.”