Car review: the Ford Ranger Raptor, an unlikely predator

According to my Collins English Dictionary, “raptor” is “another name for bird of prey”, or (informal), a carnivorous bipedal dinosaur of the late Cretaceous period. That would be the likes of the velociraptors, those ravenous, vicious, crafty little carnivores that got their big break on Jurassic Park. All those years ago eh? (The movie release, I mean, though the late Cretaceous period was also quite a while back.)

So, not defined as a Ford pickup, but then again car makers have often given their products unlikely (not to say unconsciously satirical) name-plates that, fairly or not, invited sneering or ridicule, such as Mazda Bongo, Hyundai Grandeur or Skoda Superb.

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Ford doesn’t care anyway. It’s taken the standard Ranger pickup and created this “performance” version of it, and made sure the world knows it is quite different to the standard, fairly humdrum Ranger. There is still the option of two-wheel drive, for normal road use, and all-wheel drive in high and low ratios for off-roading, but on-tarmac progress is brisker in the Raptor than it is in the lesser Ford Rangers.

The designers have plastered “Raptor” in a big Metallica-style typeface all over its flanks, and on the tailgate, on the key ring and anywhere else they can think of. Pickup trucks, we are being invited to believe, are tough, macho, fighting machines, the kind of vehicles that will survive an interplanetary conflict, and indeed fight one for you, like a Transformer. Herbivorous Nissan Micras, plodding Peugeots and wimpy Vauxhall Vivas are mere prey for the likes of the mighty Ford Ranger Raptor, to be crushed contemptuously beneath its mighty wheels as the struggle for mastery takes place outside the builders merchants, or in the garden centre car park on the school run. I find the vibe a bit too aggressive, not to say daft, for my taste.

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In reality, the Raptor is a gentle sort of giant. At around 2.5 tonnes, it’s more of a brontosaurus than a T-Rex – we’re talking slightly grumpy low-revving diesel here. Over in the States, the spiritual home of the Raptor, it’s a version of Ford’s ubiquitous F150 pickup, which is even bigger and fatter than this Europeanised Ranger Raptor. In the US you can soon specify your Ford Raptor (called a F150 Raptor there) with proper rumbly V8 power, perhaps lifted out of the GT or the supercharged 5.2-litre V8 from the Mustang Shelby GT500 – with about 700 horsepower available to you. Jurassic Park! as Alan Partridge might say.

Anyway, the V8 F150 Raptor is terrible for the planet, even if glamorous for its drivers, equally terrible for Ford’s emissions performance (and thus eligibile to be fined under EU rules), and would prove quite an expensive piece of kit for anyone who might dream of running something quite so unusual. The Euro-Raptor (which sounds like something out of Nigel Farage’s nightmares) instead gets a two-litre diesel, albeit with a twin turbo on it. The Ranger Raptor thus offers its drivers and their families full five-seater off-road capability, those hunky looks – but, sadly, not the usual tax advantages available on such vehicles.

The less powerful Ford Ranger pickups are able to exploit substantial tax advantages on purchase (VAT-free for the business buyer) and in running costs (annual tax liabilities). However, the Ranger Raptor has been built with some especially sophisticated suspension, and the weight and bulk of it not only mean an unfeasibly high ride height, but bring the towing capacity and payload right down. In HMRC terms, the Ford Ranger is a commercial vehicle, and qualifies for those tax concessions, because it is capable of carrying a ton of gear. The Raptor can only lift about 620kg, so no tax breaks. That makes the roughly £50,000 price tag attached to the Ranger Raptor an even tougher financial hurdle.

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As far as it matters, the Ford is a perfectly acceptable product, but pitched right at the top end of the burgeoning market for these odd vehicles. I can’t say I think it is worth it. You do have to work the diesel very hard to get the best out of it, and the lofty centre of gravity doesn’t inspire much confidence in its handling abilities. The Raptor, kitted up, is a more pleasant environment than, say the (far cheaper) SsangYong Musso, but not as technically accomplished an off-roader as the Mitsubishi L200; nor, one suspects, will it prove as reliable and bulletproof in service as the Toyota HiLux. If you are a badge snob there is a tweaked version of the Nissan Navara with a Mercedes-Benz badge on the grille, and there is also a fairly pointless version of the Mitsubishi sold as a Fiat. No doubt they will all follow Ford into the “high performance” pickup sub-niche in due course.

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The PR event I attended to promote the Raptor featured renowned chef Neil Rankin, who delivered us a special and very tasty meal based on foraged ingredients from Cornwall – sea beans, sea Aster, bell heather, Rock samphire and alexander seed. These were then burnt (deliberately) and used as a seasoning for some superb steak. The point here being that only with a rorty-torty, go-anywhere, all-wheel drive Ford Raptor could such adventurous ingredient sourcing take place on tricky-to-reach patches of the Lizard Peninsular, and I could quite believe it. As it happens, of course, most of the foraging the Raptor will be doing in real life will take place at Jewsons and Travis Perkins, but the point was well taken. It is quite an able car, the Raptor, but its name doesn’t really do justice to its cuddly, softly sprung, comfortable and laidback character.

By the way, if you’d like to get a taste of the Raptor you can either go to your Ford dealer, who will be delighted to greet you, or try the special Raptor-inspired menu at Rankin’s dead trendy Temper Soho restaurant, where it’s available until 2 January 2020. You’ll get charged VAT on that as well.