Photo: Ford
Ford's F-150 Raptor is not your average track racer, and that's pretty much obvious. The pickup truck is, however, good at other things but when it comes to testing, Ford's engineers have no mercy for the model.
What Ford calls their "toughest, smartest, most capable off-road truck ever" has to live up to its name before reaching clients. So, reliability is the key here, as the truck just finished more than 1,000 miles (1610 km) of testing in the southwestern United States.
By southwestern, we mean the desert, where the pickup's abilities were put to the test using more challenges than you'd expect. Ford's engineers set up a testing environemnt that mirrors the famous Baja race course in Mexico and trucks covered the 66-mile (106 km) trail and fought fast sandy washes, deep-rutted silt beds, steep climbs in deep sand, and slow, meticulous crawls through tight trenches.
During test sessions, the F-150 Raptors reached speeds of 100 mph (160 km/h) in some areas, slowing to 10 mph (16 km/h) in others, for an average speed of around 50 mph (80 km/h). As it turned out, the 2017 Raptor is 25 percent faster than the current truck based on lap times.
But there's a cherry sitting on top of the cake and a final challenged for the trucks. At the end of each lap, the new Raptor completed a tabletop jump consisting of a steep ramp up to a two-foot plateau, then a step-off back to level ground.
As a final note, the prototypes tested were not production-ready models, as they used a mix of 2015 F-150 Raptor and 2017 F-150 Raptor components.
By southwestern, we mean the desert, where the pickup's abilities were put to the test using more challenges than you'd expect. Ford's engineers set up a testing environemnt that mirrors the famous Baja race course in Mexico and trucks covered the 66-mile (106 km) trail and fought fast sandy washes, deep-rutted silt beds, steep climbs in deep sand, and slow, meticulous crawls through tight trenches.
During test sessions, the F-150 Raptors reached speeds of 100 mph (160 km/h) in some areas, slowing to 10 mph (16 km/h) in others, for an average speed of around 50 mph (80 km/h). As it turned out, the 2017 Raptor is 25 percent faster than the current truck based on lap times.
But there's a cherry sitting on top of the cake and a final challenged for the trucks. At the end of each lap, the new Raptor completed a tabletop jump consisting of a steep ramp up to a two-foot plateau, then a step-off back to level ground.
As a final note, the prototypes tested were not production-ready models, as they used a mix of 2015 F-150 Raptor and 2017 F-150 Raptor components.
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