Back when the 2021 Ford F-150 was still covered in camouflage, a VIN decoder surfaced on the Internet with the 3.5-liter EcoBoost V6 as the only engine option for the Raptor. We still don’t know if the Blue Oval will stick to six cylinders or improve the recipe with hybrid assistance, but as the headline implies, the plot has thickened once again with a V8 engine.
A prototype of the Raptor was spied at the beginning of the year with the unmistakable sound of eight cylinders, leading many to believe that Ford is trying to challenge the Ram TRX with a supercharged engine. The Predator V8, to be more precise, which is currently exclusive to the Shelby GT500.
Pickup Truck + SUV Talk offers an even better sound check of the Raptor in the following video, but it’s hard to tell what engine is hiding under the hood. Idling seems more similar to the Coyote rather than the Predator, and speaking of possibilities, we have to consider a third and final possibility.
Back in September 2020, the Ford Motor Company signed a three-year contract with Unifor that will see a new powerplant coming to the Windsor engine plant in Ontario. Jerry Dias, the president of the trade union, let it slip that a 6.8-liter engine will be produced there. In addition to the F-150, the Canadian business media has also mentioned the all-new Mustang.
We don’t have any official statement from the Ford Motor Company about the 6.8-liter motor, so don’t get your hopes up too high for the time being. Regardless of displacement and the volume of air getting into the combustion chambers, we should all rejoice about a V8 coming back to the Raptor.
As a brief refresher, 2014 is the final model year of the original Raptor with V8 oomph in the guise of the 6.2-liter Boss. When it was new, that engine used to crank out 411 horsepower and 434 pound-feet (588 Nm) of torque.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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