Video: 2024 Ford Ranger Raptor Review: Big Sends, Small Truck

(car engine roaring) (uptempo electronic music) (logo clacking) So we have the F-150 Raptor and Raptor R, we have the Bronco Raptor, and now there's the Ranger Raptor, and we're here at the Raptor Assault School in Utah to see if it's really as fun as it looks. Spoiler alert, yes. (car engine roaring) So it's got a three liter Turbo V6 with anti-lag like the Ford GT, or a rally car of course, (upbeat music) and makes 405 horsepower, 430 pounds feet of torque. It's more than enough to have plenty of fun. So where the Ranger Raptor really shines is high speed hooning. It's so good at taking jumps that it's almost anticlimactic. So they have these position sensing dampers in the shocks that they've installed on this car that since when they're unloaded and actually prepare for impact, it was so good at taking the landing when I sent it that I was like, "That's it, that's all? I could have sent it harder." You can of course disable Traction Control completely if you trust yourself a little bit more. Ford didn't trust us that much (laughs), and advised us to keep it on, but both Off-road mode and then Baja mode, which let it get super loose, it took a lot of hooning around to get it to kick in and it was just kind of minimally invasive when it did. It's a very tail happy truck. Obviously there's no weight in the bed, and there's a lot of power getting sent to the rear wheels if you're goofing around, but it can also crawl around. We did a lot of, you know, more traditional kind of off-road crawling, and where it really, really shine, compared to say the F-150 Raptor is it's got a much smaller footprint that's gonna be great when you drive it in town and that's great when you're trying not to leave as many scrapes down the side. It makes it very easy to position your wheels exactly where you want it, because you've got this narrower track, and it's just much easier to control and live with. (transition whooshing) (car engine roaring) So another thing that I appreciate that they did on the Ranger Raptor, they have this dual exhaust system that is tucked up into the bumper, and when we were crawling around, and going off road, and kind of departing bigger obstacles, we didn't have this like low hanging fruit down here, like on the standard Ranger where the exhaust is kind of below the bumper. I just thought this was really clever packaging and something I appreciated. Something else I love that Ford did with the Ranger Raptor is all of the controls for things like drive modes where you go into Baja or Off-road mode, the kind of specially calibrated things for different styles of driving and types of terrain. That's all right here. You can select four high, four low, two-wheel drive right here. Easy to use dial, it's the same one you use for the trailer backup system, that makes it really, really easy to kind of guide a trailer backwards. We had a demo of that in our regular Ranger review, but there's also this cool kind of Desert Outline button, which brings up this great view, which gives you guidelines for where your wheels are traveling. Awesome for navigating terrain. Access to your diff controls for front and rear locking diffs, and the kind of trail control thing, which basically it's cruise control for off-road. You set it to one, two, three miles per hour. It's all controlled with this little dial on the wheel. So the other thing I love about the Ranger Raptor is it's just a bit nicer all over than even the top trims of the regular Ranger. This panel is a bit smoother. This has this nice stitch detailing. Instead of just being more hard plastic, it still looks very easy to clean if you go play in the dirt like you should. It's even got a place for your phone that doesn't jostle out when you go off road. So between all of the upgrades from the trick shocks that encourage you to send it harder, to the nicer materials inside, this really is the best of the Rangers that are new for 2024. It's a party on four wheels and it made me giggle. (Stef giggles) Oh, wonderful. You can read all of my thoughts on the new Ranger Raptor at cars.com. (upbeat music)