“Guys, try and keep it under 70 miles per hour,” the Ford Performance engineer’s earnest voice crackled over the radios. Pretty sage advice, given the road into the famed Johnson Valley OHV Area has a speed limit of 65 mph. True, a five-strong group of us were all behind the wheels of the, and the Baja behemoth’s 5.2-liter supercharged V-8 had been given a boost from 700 to 720 horsepower.
What’s new under the aluminum skin is of much more importance when we’re talking Raptors. As mentioned, the 3.5-liter engine remains the same, while the blown 5.2-liter gains 20 horsepower via improved air intake and retuned software. The R’s 640 lb-ft of torque is unchanged, but the torque curve is wider. But power or lack thereof was never a third-generation Raptor problem; suspension was. Specifically, the long-travel electronically controlled Live Valve Fox dampers simply weren’t.
After a tiny bit of rock crawling , the Ford Performance team turned us loose on some sand dunes. Hurray times two! Even with all that heft , never for a moment did the truck feel like it struggled. The Raptor R had no trouble whatsoever blasting up hundreds of feet of dunes, turning, and then jamming down to the bottom. Off-Road mode automatically locks the rear differential , which meant big, stupid rooster tails were a done deal.
“Guys, try and keep it under 70 miles per hour.” That totally ignored warning bears repeating here. Consider just for a moment how crazy it is that a multibillion-dollar multinational corporation is not only building machines capable of running that fast on dirt but that it also holds a press junket to show off such shenanigans. Will wonders never cease? The Ford Performance team set up a course for us that used a section of actual racetrack, as well.