Ford F-150 Raptor R
Wind-buffeted and rocking slightly on its long-travel suspension, the Raptor R traveled to the Owl’s Head Transportation Museum in the teeth of Storm #2 for the Mid Maine Sports Car Club’s holiday luncheon and annual general meeting. Piece of cake! 
Although no Raptor is difficult to spot, particularly in fog-cutting orange, Ford has been decidedly low-key with the top-dog R model. Visual cues, such as this one on the hood’s heavy-duty heat extractor, are relatively scarce. 
A true Baja racer probably has a hydraulic driver’s seat, for shock absorption, but these deep-dish semi-buckets are comfortable, supportive and widely adjustable. Comfort, safety and convenience features are in line with what we expect on a vehicle with a six-figure price tag—and then there’s all the off-road equipment.
The tachometer reads in thousands of RPM to one decimal place. I set the driver’s screen to show me anything but fuel efficiency, which hovers between 10 to 13 MPG. It isn’t the cost of gas that should scare us, it’s the CO2 output.
Wind-buffeted and rocking slightly on its long-travel suspension, the Raptor R traveled to the Owl’s Head Transportation Museum in the teeth of Storm #2 for the Mid Maine Sports Car Club’s holiday luncheon and annual general meeting. Piece of cake!
Although no Raptor is difficult to spot, particularly in fog-cutting orange, Ford has been decidedly low-key with the top-dog R model. Visual cues, such as this one on the hood’s heavy-duty heat extractor, are relatively scarce.
A true Baja racer probably has a hydraulic driver’s seat, for shock absorption, but these deep-dish semi-buckets are comfortable, supportive and widely adjustable. Comfort, safety and convenience features are in line with what we expect on a vehicle with a six-figure price tag—and then there’s all the off-road equipment.
The tachometer reads in thousands of RPM to one decimal place. I set the driver’s screen to show me anything but fuel efficiency, which hovers between 10 to 13 MPG. It isn’t the cost of gas that should scare us, it’s the CO2 output. If you think the Ford Motor Company’s only sports car is the Mustang, think again—and meet the Raptor R. Yes, it’s a sports truck, a full-size-and-then-some F-150, but one armed with a Mustang engine, the supercharged 700-horsepower V-8 from the 2022 Shelby GT500, here tuned for extra torque. No, the Raptor R won’t match the Mustang GT’s lap times around Laguna Seca or the Nürburgring, but then the Mustang won’t come close to keeping up with this thundering beast in the Baja 1000. Maybe even in coastal Maine’s howling back-to-back January storms.
Aggressive 37-inch bead-lock tires, 6,267 pounds of displacement (with me aboard), 13 inches of ground clearance and 14 inches of shock absorption, not to mention 640 torques to go with all the horses, render the Raptor R supremely capable of crushing snowdrifts, wading through record high tides and facing down shrieking wind gusts. Had it been asked to, the Raptor R also could have towed an 8,700-pound boat (or dock or bait shack) to safety. All this while the automatic climate control and the heated seat and steering wheel kept me toasty, and MPBN’s weather alerts came through magnificently on the concert-hall stereo.
Like the 450-horsepower “basic” F-150 Raptor, The R-model mega-veloci-Raptor turns out to be unexpectedly useful and comfortable, even well outside the desert environment it was designed to conquer. The long-travel suspension smooths out potholes and cracked pavement while the responsive off-road tuning keeps side-to-side head-tossing to a minimum. This is the most comfortable truck I’ve experienced, on par with a Mercedes-Benz G-wagen. With 700 horses underfoot, the upper third of throttle tip-in is nicely calibrated for gentle driving, too.
The same goes for the 10-speed automatic transmission, which adapts to the driver’s mood. Normal mode is automatic all-wheel drive; a transfer case enables rear-drive only or locks in high- or low-range four-wheel drive. The rear diff can also be locked manually. Under violent acceleration, the rear end digs in, the nose lifts and hunts briefly back and forth as though deciding which side of the road to throw itself off, and I’m grateful for the AWD that straightens things out. Oh, and the blown V-8 flat-out bellows.
That is, if you want it to; the exhaust sound is adjustable. So is the steering effort and the suspension damping. With all this variability, and all these buttons in the steering wheel, I like the button marked “R,” which gathers up all my favorite pre-selected modes in one place.
Amazingly, the Raptor R is even quicker to 60 MPH (reportedly 3.6 seconds vs. 3.9) than Ford’s electric F-150. That’s the Lightning; this one sounds like thunder. To some people, that’s a huge plus; to others, it may feel like yesterday’s technology going out with a defiant roar, a dinosaur stamping its feet in the face of the comet. But this dinosaur is an apex species, perhaps as far evolved as can be, and priced accordingly: An ordinary F-150 Raptor starts at $77,980; the letter R—and all that comes with it—commands another $31,575, for an MSRP of $111,550 (including the destination charge). BTW, a similarly powerful F-150 Lightning now starts at $69,995; and back in 2022, the Shelby GT500 Mustang had a price tag of $80,795 and could climb almost to $130K.
Thank you for reading. Opinionated at any speed will return in late March.
