Our battle takes place in the land before time. The T-Rex vs the Raptor. Before our human feet roamed the earth, the two of the most vicious predators wandered what we call home. Well, history tends to repeat itself. Ford’s latest offering intends to take down a steady giant. The T-Rex has always been an apex predator but if Jurassic Park has taught us anything, it’s the raptors we need to look out for. The Raptor R (or as embossed on the side of the truck, RaptoR) takes the wildly popular Ford F-150 Raptor and makes it a true formidable competitor versus the Ram TRX, a pay-per-view fight even seasoned fighters are drooling at.
After years of cries from the Ford faithful asking for a more powerful engine than the EcoBoost in the Raptor, the lovely folks in Dearborn finally cave. Implanted with the 5.2 L supercharged V8 powerplant taken straight from the Shelby Mustang GT500 the Raptor gets a new variant which is sure to take on the TRX in an all out supertruck duel for years to come. Churning out 700 horsepower paired with 640 lb-ft of torque is no joke coming from a pickup truck and will be sure to blast across the desert with tons of dust clouds behind it. For a small comparison, the regular Raptor has 450 horses and 510 lb-ft of torque from what fans claimed an underpowered 3.5 L EcoBoost V6.
The Raptor R was bred to rally across dirt and dust with all three generations of the Raptor being inspired and built around Baja truck designs. More torque in the low and mid-range take a sharp contrast from the Shelby and instead are optimized for trail blazing and crushing through sand. Helping is the increased airflow from a 66% larger air intake and Raptor R specific filters and oil cooler.
On the Raptor R Ford went to greater lengths to breed the truck for desert environments. The Raptor R nor the Raptor never belonged on a racetrack or a drag-strip. Instead, Ford made sure consumers knew where the Raptor felt home— blowing through the Mojave. A girthier driveshaft, a specific tuned torque converter, and a brand new suspension setup help the Raptor R get a leg up over the ordinary Raptor to trek on desert trails.
The Raptor R’s suspension may take the backseat to its impressive engine but still is a huge focal point of the upgrade to be a true desert devil. The R features an optimized five-link rear suspension, new and improved shocks, as well as extra-long trail arms to better maintain the position of the two axles while strutting on the rocks. The new shocks engineered by FOX implement a type of electronic monitoring ability where the shocks can use suspension height sensors and other telemetry hundreds of times per second in order to better tune the suspension actively. An increased wheel travel distance in the front and rear, 13 and 14.1 inches respectively, allow the R to traverse over bigger and larger rocks, maybe even volcanoes at this rate.
The Raptor R takes looks to a somewhat more intense level over the classic. The biggest changes are the addition of a “power dome” to the hood and its array of Raptor R decals that adorn the body of the truck. Ford says these stickers resemble a crackled desert but hey, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right? At least Ford offers the ability to go for a more subtle look (not sure how you could be subtle with this truck) by deleting the decals as a no-cost option. On the inside, not much has changed. Standard Recaro seats are still what you drop into, plus scattered Alcantara and suede are lined across the dash and seat inlays. Two new paint options make way onto the body of this behemoth— Avalanche and Azure Gray. We prefer the look of the deep Antimatter Blue as it makes the Raptor R stand out and appear like a killer among the barren desert backdrop.
The Raptor R still remains the same in more ways than not. The 10-speed transmission still stands and if its anything like previous Raptors, we’d have to get used to the clunks and jitters. The selection of tires is unchanged as well, which grants the right to spec 37-inch BFGoodrich All-Terrain T/A KO2 on each Raptor. The T/A’s are the largest factory tires available on any production pickup truck today and are the perfect representation of what the Raptor is all about. The R still beholds plenty of useful tech carried over from the plebeian version like 1-pedal driving, Trail Turn Assist, and Ford Trail Control, all features we found very useful and that we’re fond of.
The Raptor R faces up against its biggest and quite frankly, only competitor in the supertruck Cold War. In the arms race of bigger and badder, with the arrival of the Raptor R, both Ford and Ram are stuck in a Jurassic stalemate. The Raptor R starts at $109,145 demanding a hefty premium of $26,600 over the regular Raptor and over $30,000 greater than a Ram TRX. The Raptor R ends up with 2 less horsepower than the TRX with the Ram sitting at 702 with a supercharged 6.2 L V8. The TRX also is a true mammoth that not even all the additions to the Raptor could add up to. The Ram tips the scale at 6,350 lbs… a plumper figure over the lighter 5,950 lb Raptor R.
If the answer to all the world’s problems was to just stick a bigger engine in it, these two trucks have it locked down to a tee. While the rat race for who has the better truck will probably never be settled, we’re looking forward to pitting these two against each other in a prehistoric beatdown when we get access to the Raptor R when it begins production in late 2022.
