The Blacklake XT1 Is the Ford F-150 Raptor Fighter GM Will Never Build

The engineers at Blacklake Research and Development spared nothing to turn the Chevy Silverado 1500 into the beast machine you see in the pictures. If you wonder why the steep price, you might notice the Blacklake truck sports a new carbon-kevlar widebody, adding 8.0 inches of width. This isn’t cheap and comes with a completely new truck bed to match. The XT1 also gets a new front bumper that integrates a Warn winch, while keeping the stock bed-access steps in the rear bumper.

The wider body was needed to accommodate the larger 35-inch BFGoodrich KM3 tires, wrapped around 17-inch beadlock wheels. The chassis also sports a long-travel suspension with billet aluminum control arms and JRI internal-bypass shocks so tall they protrude through the bed.

Such a beefed-up mean machine would not be very useful off-road without a powerful engine under the hood, and Blacklake R&D does not disappoint. The stock 6.2-liter V8 got a Lingenfelter/Magnuson supercharger and a new ECU from HP Tuners that up the power to a more comforting 650 - horsepower.

Blacklake engineers thought the stock 10-speed automatic transmission was more than capable to deal with the increased power, so they kept it. They changed the front and rear gear ratios though to 3.73, adding an electronic locking rear differential for good measure.

The Blacklake XT1 is not the only tuned Silverado available at the moment. We recall that Specialty Vehicle Engineering tuned the Silverado engine to deliver 850-horsepower and made it available in both street and off-road configurations. While they were more powerful than the XT1, the latter might be better suited for those extreme off-road sorties.