2016 Ford F-150 Raptor - sandstorm on four wheels

One of the most aggressive pick-up trucks ever, the combative Ford F-150 Raptor, teases us again. Welcome to the loud madhouse of robust playing with the toy for the most daring boys. More desert sand can be air lifted only by the sandstorm.

New Ford F-150 Raptor – a painful surgery for better performance

2017 Ford F-150 Raptor engine and transmission

40 hp more than predecessor, all-new 10-speed automatic transmission.

Ford has introduced the renewed Raptor in January this year. Ford engineers have decided to conduct an important and courageous surgery, that is expected to cause the most pain to the V8 enthusiasts. They removed the 6.2-liter eight-cylinder engine with 415 “horses” from this brutal pickup truck, and replaced it with a turbocharged 3.5-liter EcoBoost V6.

The new engine develops 450 “horses”, about 40 more than the V8 predecessor. The engine cooperates with the Ford’s new 10-speed automatic gearbox for the first time.

F-150 Raptor is more powerful, lighter and faster

Due to the implementation of lighter materials (more aluminum), the new Ford F-150 Raptor is more than 225 kilograms lighter than its predecessor. At the same time, its structural design is, due to the use of large quantities of ultra hard steel, stronger and much more torsionally rigid than before.

Six different driving programs are available to Raptor drivers: Normal mode, Street mode (improved position on the road), Weather mode (improved traction in rain, snow or ice), Mud and Sand mode (for driving in mud and sand), Baja mode (for driving at high speed through the desert) and Rock mode (for the most demanding rock crawling over obstacles).

The beast, whose tires spit cubic meters of fine grains of sand into the air in the attractive video above, is equipped with an extremely robust chassis. Its DNA, related to the Baja Racer means that the shock absorbers are the work of the Fox Racing manufacturer. Their vertical travel is around 30 cm on both axles, which makes the Ford F-150 Raptor much easier to deal with persistent sand dunes and large-scale terrain surfaces.

For more than three decades, F-150 is the best-selling vehicle in the US

Ford’s pickup F-150 is the best-selling vehicle in the USA for more than three decades in a row (34 years, to be exact) and is one of the main sales aces of this manufacturer. It is therefore clear that the Ford engineers designed the new generation of its sales jewel extremely carefully. At Ford, they claim that the new F-150 brings about 100 new patents, written on the skin to all who use these kind of vehicles at their work, sport or leisure.

F-150 is the best-selling vehicle in the USA for 34 years in a row.

Bye, steel, hello, aluminum

Lightweight construction or substantial use of aluminum certainly falls among its major innovations. Steel, which has always been considered to be the basic building block of probably the most recognizable American off-road macho, was almost completely replaced with the aluminum in the new Ford F-150.

This pickup in fact contains only three percent of steel. Steel is present only as a building block of the chassis, but even there we find a special, lighter and firmer cast. Aluminium is really not a novelty in the automotive world, but such a concept in a class of full size pickup trucks is definitely a revolution, that has brought impressive weight reduction.

Ford F-150 Raptor release date and price

2017 Raptor will be built in North America, at Dearborn Truck Plant. In the US and Canada, the new Ford F-150 Raptor SuperCab and SuperCrew models will go on sale this fall (2016). We don’t expect that the price of the 2017 model will be much different than it is for the current model, so the base version of F-150 Raptor should cost around 50,000 USD and the better equipped SuperCrew will be around 60,000 USD.