Willem van de Putte
Mention Ford Ranger Raptor and South African eyes light up with visions of high speed gravel road driving, cresting dunes and V6 exhaust notes.
It's the only off-the-shelf performance bakkie in the market and people are loving it with just under 2000 units sold last year and they’re being snatched up as consignments reach our shores.
We had the opportunity to reacquaint ourselves with it in the deserts of Dubai as part of a Ford International Markets Group (IMG) and the 15th anniversary of Raptor.
In the global Ford organisation, IMG is responsible for Australia, New Zealand, ASEAN, North Africa, South Africa and Middle East markets.
Compared to its Raptor Bronco and F150 siblings, the Ranger is relatively small but still imposing, especially in the South African context.
With flared wheel arches housing large 285/70 R17 BF Goodrich all-terrain tyres, Ford’s signature C-clamp headlights and impressive grill, it stands out from anything else in the Ranger line-up and indeed any other bakkie.
Eager engine and suspension
Like the rest of the Raptor Range, the Ranger relies on petrol for propulsion and in this case its Ford’s 3.0-litre EcoBoost twin-turbocharged V6 with 292kW and 583Nm mated to the company’s tried-and-tested 10-speed automatic transmission with a permanent 4WD drive system.
It gets three on road settings with Normal, Sport and Slippery while offroad settings include Rock Crawl, Sand, Mud/Ruts and of course the smile-inducing Baja Mode.
Depending on the mode, the graphics and colour scheme of the 12.4-inch digital instrument cluster and 12-inch touchscreen infotainment system changes to match the mode.
Once you switch to off-road modes the screen allows you to toggle between various 4x4 features and switch them on or off like front and rear differential locks, Hill Descent Control and parking sensors.
It also displays crisp graphics for overlay guidelines for the 360-degree camera system, steering angle and pitch and roll angles which are handy over slow technical obstacles and when flying up and over dunes.
Central to the Ranger Raptor, and indeed the complete Raptor range, is its specially designed Fox suspension with live valve dampers.
The 2.5-inch Live Valve Internal Bypass shock absorbers provide position-sensitive damping capability and are filled with Teflon infused oil to reduce friction.
Ford Performance tuned the hardware by using a mixture of computer-aided engineering and real world testing to create a balance between comfort, control, stability and traction.
The organisers of the event had laid out three different tracks to highlight the various strengths of the Raptor range.
Into the desert
For the Ranger Raptor it was a tight desert section that included dunes, long stretches of flat soft sand and gravel roads.
There wasn’t going to be any slow technical rock climbing so the preferred mode was Baja, obviously.
Named after the iconic Baja 1000 offroad race in America, it optimises throttle and steering response and maximises the suspension performance for what Ford says is the most extreme mode for on-the-limit driving.
The last time we did that was at the international launch of the car in the Namibian dunes so you tend to forget how capable it is in the sand.
At 2 460kg the bakkie is not light but yet it’s surprisingly nimble.
Allowing a gap between the lead car and ourselves, provided us with some room to play.
Nothing stupid or irresponsible mind you, but just enough to push hard on the throttle to experience it in its natural surroundings.
Soft sand
The soft sand made for some interesting driving as the front wheels followed the tracks ahead of us. Without much fuss and some hard acceleration (with the accompanying exhaust note), it took care of some very deep and soft sand.
On well-driven desert tracks at high speed you get to appreciate what the engineers have done to combine the suspension, chassis, engine and tyres into a unit that inspires oodles of confidence even when trying our best to be Dakar Rally drifters.
The desert heat had made the sand very soft in patches and at one stage I made a rookie mistake and managed to belly the Ranger up a trackless slow tight curve.
Ordinarily it would require digging, snatch straps and sand tracks but in low range with the rear difflock engaged and a hard reverse it was soon up and over.
It’s only anecdotal, but I know someone that does a lot of work with farmers.
He says that quite a few of them own the Raptor as their daily drives.
Both tar and gravel roads are disintegrating at an alarming rate and when they need to get around the farm, sometimes more than a few 100 kilometres a day, it needs to be done quickly and safely.
And there’s not much to beat the Ford Ranger Raptor in that regard.