Back in the early 2000s when I was a wee lad, I was obsessed with the 4x4 Evolution video game series, which I played on our Mac computer. In both games you would purchase, upgrade and race basically every American and Japanese truck and SUV on the market on fictional off-road tracks in all sorts of exotic places. I put truly hundreds of hours into these games, I was even active in the fan forums, where I downloaded user-made cars (both real and fake) and deeply detailed custom tracks and environments. More recent titles like Forza Horizon scratched a similar itch.
Somehow, despite my love for 4x4 Evolution I didn’t become an off-road fanatic in real life. I’ve enjoyed off-roading both on my own time and for work, in all sorts of different vehicles, but nothing has fulfilled my 4x4 Evo fantasies like an afternoon driving the new Ford F-150 Raptor R through Johnson Valley. A host of updates for 2024 make the Raptor R even faster and more capable off-road than before, and it’s fun enough to win over someone like me who would typically not go for a truck like this.
Full disclosure: Ford invited me out to Palm Springs to drive a few models from the 2024 F-150 lineup, including the Tremor and the Raptor R. There was lots of good food for us to eat, including freezers full of ice cream treats, and we were put up in a nice resort hotel.
Not content with the already wild numbers from the Raptor R’s supercharged 5.2-liter V8, Ford has given it a bit of a performance bump for 2024. Total output is now 720 horsepower and 640 pound-feet of torque, an increase of 20 hp over last year’s model, and Ford says it has a wider torque curve. Under the skin the 2024 Raptor R has new dual-valve Fox live shocks in place of the old single-valve ones, which have continuously variable rebound compression and rebound control.
The Raptor R comes standard with huge 37-inch tires on beadlock-capable 17-inch wheels that look awesome, plus a bunch of orange exterior accents, unique graphics, different interior trim pieces, Recaro seats wrapped in leather and Alcantara, a modular front bumper and a bigger hood vent. I’m into the redesigned grille and headlights, and the newly available Shelter Green paint is awesome too.
We start the afternoon by crawling up a steep hill covered in very sharp rocks that would probably be too much for the F-150 Tremor I drove earlier in the day. There’s no getting around how huge the Raptor is; at 86.6 inches wide it’s 6.7 inches wider than a Tremor, and its track is 5.5 inches wider up front and 4.5 inches wider at the rear. The hood is absolutely massive, and it’s hard to know where the corners of the truck are. A 360-degree camera system certainly helps, but the camera quality isn’t great. Despite all of this, rock crawling in the Raptor is a cinch even if you aren’t using the dedicated Rock Crawl drive mode. The immense torque, huge tires and 12 inches of ground clearance make it feel like I can just easily power over any obstacle, and the heavy steering is more precise and confidence-inspiring than the Tremor’s off-road.
In deep sand ruts the Raptor continues to impress. Going fast is effortless, with the suspension keeping the ride level even over big bumps and the steering making small corrections easy. The Recaro seats are super supportive, and I’m never getting tossed around the cabin or punished by the ride. The truck bounds along with gusto, and the feeling of accelerating through a corner or at high levels of suspension compressions is intoxicating. Drift a little too much onto a berm? Just power out. It’s playful without being uncontrollable.
Next we come upon a big sand dune, and our instructor demonstrates a run where we hopefully do three big loops across it, making shapes like a teen star using the glowing Disney Channel wand. This is my first time actually driving on a legit sand dune, and while I thankfully don’t get stuck, I do biff it a bit. Really I just don’t send it hard enough, not having enough momentum or attacking at the right angle to sweep over and around the dune on my attempts. Still, I have a blast, and next time I’ll nail it. Hopefully.
After a bit more speeding around through the desert we reach an open area where Ford’s created a ramp in the sand so we can jump the Raptors. (This was my second first drive event in a row where we got to jump the cars, and now I think it needs to be a requirement for all product launches.) Keeping the Raptor headed in a straight line under acceleration in the deep sand is tough, with the rear end wiggling all over the place, but luckily I’m able to hit the jump at the correct angle and at Ford’s recommended 60 mph, getting some pretty good air and distance before landing. While I’m certainly aware that I’ve hit the ground in such a huge truck, the suspension soaks up much of the landing and it’s much more enjoyable than it is uncomfortable or scary — I’m still glad to be wearing a helmet and HANS device, though.
Following a quick snack break in which I have a divine ice cream sandwich, we jump back on the road to head to a baja course that Ford set up using part of the King of the Hammers route. Fittingly, we twist the drive mode knob into the Baja mode, which changes the powertrain, suspension, steering and exhaust tuning to perfectly suit going as fast as possible off-road. The Baja exhaust mode, which can be toggled separately (along with all those other settings), is illegal for driving on-road, so the Raptor makes you acknowledge that by hitting a confirm button. A Ford spokesperson told me the Baja mode is so loud and aggressive that it doesn’t meet emissions standards, and damn if it doesn’t sound awesome.
The course is a mix of long straightaways, tight corners hairpins and long sweepers; a mix of deep sand ruts and harder washboard gravel with divots and big whoops. Ford’s engineers encourage us to go as fast as we can, and I do just that. On each consecutive lap I go faster down the straight sections, carry more speed into the corners and take more aggressive lines, smiling even harder every time. The Raptor R feels unstoppable.
At the end of the course is a huge dry lake bed on which Ford set up some cones to direct us where to drift, another thing that I think should be a requirement for all press drives. Huge dust devils are whipping around, getting me even more excited to see “Twisters” in a couple months. At first I’m not used to how a truck like the Raptor performs in situations like this — at first it feels like the truck is becoming unstable when I throw it into a turn to try and drift, with the wheels and suspension juddering as the truck goes sideways, but I quickly realize that I need to push it even harder to really nail a smooth slide. Once I become more confident in myself and the truck, getting a drift right is super satisfying. After the drifting corners I stop at a set of cones to do a hard acceleration run, ripping to 75 mph in what feels like no time at all (Car and Driver got a 2023 Raptor R to 60 mph in 3.6 seconds on pavement) before getting hard on the brakes, which are firm and very strong even when stopping on the dirt.
A base 2024 Raptor with the V6 starts at $80,325 including destination, already a hefty sum, but upgrading to the V8 Raptor R will cost you $32,035 on top of that. Equipped with options like a panoramic sunroof the white Raptor R I’m paired with is $113,640, which still isn’t as expensive as it can get. That’s a ton of money for what is “just” an F-150 at the end of the day, but then there’s really no other truck on the market that can do what the Raptor R does, now-deceased Ram TRX aside.
I’ll be honest, the Raptor R is not the truck for me. In any situation I’d much prefer driving something the size of the Ranger Raptor, and really I wouldn’t want a pickup truck at all for the sort of off-roading I want to do. But as a vehicle to hoon around for a day, in what’s essentially the video game sandbox I always played in, the Raptor R really wins me over. Overkill as it is, I totally understand why someone would want to hop in one every day regardless of what sort of driving they have in store for them. The entire afternoon, the only thing holding the Raptor R from going faster and harder is me.
