Hammer down in the desert with the 2017 Ford F-150 Raptor

[MUSIC] Welcome to the 2017 Ford Raptor. Now the Raptor's been on a bit of a hiatus for the past year, but it is back with a vengeance baby, and we're talking about big numbers all the way around. I got big wheel travel, big shocks, big horsepower, big torque. But there's one thing that's smaller. And that's the engine. The big story on the 2017 Ford Rafter is, it's got a V-6 baby. That's right. Everyone is really upset loss of the V-8 but, here's the thing, if yo wouldn't know that this is a V-6. You wouldn't know that it's not a V8. It's a 3.5 liter and it's an eco boost so it's a turbo. But it's knocking out 450 horsepower and 510 pound feet of torque. And believe me, that is plenty. That is more power than the outgoing model and thanks to the aluminum body it weighs 500 pounds less. You've got a much better power to weight ratio and it really shows. Now all that power is made into a ten speed automatic transmission, yes ten. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten speeds. It's quite a lot. But that really does help this truck to drive really smoothly, you barely even notice when it's shifting. Now, it's also got a couple of different drive modes. We've got a normal mode, which is great for on the pavement, it really keeps the RPMs low, it's kind of like an eco-mode. Ford really boosted up and you could really tell in the throttle pickup, it's much much faster, much more fun to drive. You get a weather mode for maybe some snow and some rain. But the best are all off road, right? I'm in a current rock crawl mode so that's gonna shift the transfer case into four low giving me a crawl ratio of 50 to 1. Now so far right now, this isn't too hard. I'm going pretty slow. But I think soon it's gonna get a lot harder. Now when it comes to high speed, then you're gonna want Baja mode. That's gonna change all of your parameters. Your shift points, your steering, your transmission, your engine reaction, everything is gonna change. And one of the cool things about this transfer case Is you've got four different ways of driving this. Too high, where all the power's just going to the rear wheels. Then four high and four low, like you would expect. But it's also got n all wheel drive function. I mean, four wheel drive is great in the dirt, and great in the snow, but not really so good on the ice, or in the rain. So having an all wheel drive function is really gonna help you drive this truck in all forms of weather. Now when it comes to suspension, well it's bigger than last year's. So awesome, I've got 3 inch Fox internal bypass shocks with 13 inch of the travel in the front and 13.9 inches of travel in the rear. I know it's crazy, that really allows you to just fly over something you can't fly over in a normal pickup truck. I mean, I was able to go 50 miles an hour over a whole set of ruse, I mean, you have to commit, but the trucks can take it. I mean, there really isn't another truck on the market that can do that. You may have noticed that this truck is really big. It's 81 inches wide across the front, and that's so wide that legally you need to have running lights. You get two different configurations. The super cab, which is what we got with the half door in the back, or the full crew cab. But you can only get it in a small box, which is five and a half feet. Right now, our wheel base is about 134 inches. So this truck, not only is it really wide, it's also really long. And that means you're gonna have to make some [UNKNOWN] when you're driving off road, right? That can be able to really take it into any kind of a box canyon. It's gonna be difficult, any kind of sharp turns. And sometimes driving through the dunes, well, you're gonna have to have a lot of great throttle control so you don't [UNKNOWN] yourself up at the top. In addition to the bigger shocks, of course you've got a lot of other offered goodies, right? We got a locking rear differential, skid plates all around, five millimeter aluminum, they're in the front, on the transfer case, on the transmission, and also on the fuel cell. So you're really really set up, you just go out there and bomb it through the desert baby. Now, when it comes to competition, well there isn't really too much. I mean, i suppose you could look at a Toyota Tacoma, but it's really down on the power numbers compared to this. And it just won't bomb through the desert like this one does. Of course, a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon, that's gonna be as capable in this rough stuff, but again, Solid front and rear axle. It just doesn't have that fast, high speed desert capability. Both RAM and Nissan have put out some concepts that could give the Raptor a run for its money but again, they're just concepts. So who knows if they're ever gonna go into production. It's possible, maybe, the new Colorado ZR2 With its multimatic valve suspension. I might be able to do some good desert bombing but I haven't driven it, so it's really tough for me to say. So the thing is, is that the Raptor is really a prerunner just right out of the box. I mean you could take this down to Mexico to the 1000 and pre-run it and then just drive it home. In fact you could even race it. [INAUDIBLE] team raced it this year, they finished in thirty-five hours, and then they drove the thing home to Arizona like it wasn't no thing. And then, two weeks later, went out and won the best in the desert championship. So, this thing is [INAUDIBLE] capable on both off road and on the street. Go get your groceries, go to Home Depot, and look badass while doing it. [SOUND] The 2017 Ford Raptor is available right now! The truck tends to start at about $51,000 but this one here with all the bells and whistles, well that comes in at $69,250 American dollars, and that's before the inevitable dealer markup. Yep, it's the only truck with a Baja mode, so I say yes. [MUSIC]