It's finally time to share our Ranger Raptor drive impressions with you! Paul Maric gets behind the wheel of the 2023 Ford Ranger Raptor during top secret Ford testing in outback Australia!
Ford Ranger V6 v 4cyl drag race: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3moBDTZ2JpQ
Ford Ranger V6 review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_4tX2stfbs
Ford Ranger detailed review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQMswT23uO4
Ford Ranger Raptor AMA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzEVFzxBe1o
More Ford content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/ford
More Ford Ranger content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/ford/ranger
Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Where were we? 1:21
What are we doing? 2:30
Paul's hot lap 5:10
Drive impressions 6:43
Drive modes 8:12
Wrap up 11:32
We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.
Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.
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#ford #ranger #raptor #review
Ford Ranger V6 v 4cyl drag race: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3moBDTZ2JpQ
Ford Ranger V6 review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_4tX2stfbs
Ford Ranger detailed review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQMswT23uO4
Ford Ranger Raptor AMA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzEVFzxBe1o
More Ford content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/ford
More Ford Ranger content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/ford/ranger
Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Where were we? 1:21
What are we doing? 2:30
Paul's hot lap 5:10
Drive impressions 6:43
Drive modes 8:12
Wrap up 11:32
We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.
Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.
Subscribe to Car Expert: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7DvMhvy3H7ntEgn9n3xQcQ?sub_confirmation=1
You'll find us dropping new video content three times a week. If you'd like to ask a question about one of our videos, simply leave us a comment. If you'd like to give us any feedback on our content, feel free to email us, or alternatively, hit us up on social media.
Finally, we want this channel to grow with your support and feedback. If there's anything you don't like or would like to see us change, we'd love to hear from you!
Follow us on social media to see what we're up to and to ask any questions!
CarExpert:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CarExpertAus
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/CarExpertAus
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carexpert.com.au
Paul Maric:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PaulMaric
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/PaulMaric
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/PaulMaric
#ford #ranger #raptor #review
Category
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MotorTranscript
00:00 (laughing)
00:02 Jesus.
00:05 Oh my God, this is ridiculous.
00:09 (laughing)
00:11 Oh man, this is crazy.
00:14 G'day, I'm Paul.
00:16 What an exciting day.
00:18 I can finally talk to you about the Ford Ranger Raptor
00:22 and how it drives instead of continuously telling you
00:25 I can't say anything.
00:26 Now, today's gonna be interesting
00:27 because it's all about a drive I did with Ford,
00:30 a development drive, ages ago now.
00:32 So we've finally been allowed to talk about it,
00:34 show you some of the footage
00:35 and run you through our drive experience
00:37 in pre-production versions of the Ranger Raptor.
00:39 And that's probably important to keep in mind here.
00:41 This is a very early event in very pre-production cars.
00:45 And when we do finally get behind the wheel
00:47 of a proper Ranger Raptor,
00:48 that is when we're gonna have a chance
00:50 to put it through its paces.
00:51 Now, update on my Ranger Raptor as well.
00:53 So it is due to arrive mid to late September.
00:56 There's been shipping delays
00:57 that are affecting a lot of Ranger Raptor customers
01:00 at the moment.
01:00 So I'm in that batch, unfortunately.
01:02 So I'll give you more details on that
01:04 when we do finally have that information.
01:06 Now, if you haven't done so already,
01:07 please make sure you subscribe to our channel
01:09 and press the bell icon,
01:10 especially if you do want more information
01:11 on Ranger, Ranger Raptor and Everest,
01:14 because we're gonna be publishing a whole lot more videos
01:16 in the future on those, but let's get started.
01:19 Now, where were we and what exactly is going on here?
01:24 So we were in a place called
01:26 the Love Day 4x4 Recreational Centre,
01:29 and it is near Renmark in South Australia.
01:32 It's kind of in the middle of nowhere.
01:34 You take a charter plane to get there
01:35 or a long drive from Adelaide if you want.
01:38 And Love Day is especially important for Ford
01:40 because it's where they do a lot of endurance testing
01:43 for Ranger Raptor.
01:44 They've done it here for the new generation,
01:45 but it was also the site where they developed
01:47 the previous generation of Ranger Raptor.
01:49 In addition to Love Day,
01:51 they also use the Alice Springs Buggy Club.
01:54 And that has tracks that vary in size
01:56 between 10 and 40 kilometres long,
01:58 where Ford will drive Ranger Raptor at race pace
02:02 for limit handling testing.
02:03 It is just amazing stuff.
02:06 Now, Ford actually brought over a number of global execs
02:08 from Ford in the States to basically validate
02:11 and sign these cars off and approve them for production.
02:15 Keep in mind that Ranger Raptor will be sold
02:17 in hundreds of markets globally, including the States.
02:19 And as part of that benchmarking,
02:21 they actually had an F-150 Raptor there as well.
02:23 And the entire purpose of that was to make sure
02:25 that Ranger Raptor meets the Ford Performance DNA,
02:29 which is what they call it.
02:30 Now, we had a chance to do a number of things here,
02:32 but I'll start off with probably the two most exciting.
02:35 We had the chance to do some back-to-back comparisons
02:37 between the current generation Ranger Raptor
02:39 and the new Ranger Raptor.
02:42 And it actually kind of blew me away
02:43 because we started in the diesel Ranger Raptor.
02:45 And while it sort of lacks that punch
02:48 and it's a little bit sort of slow at times,
02:50 the suspension is very capable, as is the chassis.
02:53 And this terrain that we drove it on was just punishing.
02:56 And if you did too many laps here,
02:58 you would absolutely destroy cars.
03:00 And this is exactly why Ford uses this facility to test.
03:03 Then we moved from previous generation Ranger Raptor
03:06 to the next generation.
03:08 And it genuinely, genuinely blew me away,
03:12 just the way that this accelerates out of corners.
03:15 The ride is, I'm not gonna say it's the same,
03:17 but it is very similar in vain
03:19 to the previous gen Ranger Raptor.
03:20 So it's very smooth, it's very soft,
03:22 and it handles things like bumps, corrugations,
03:26 stony sections of road very nicely.
03:28 But where it really improves is the acceleration.
03:31 When you punch the throttle out of a corner,
03:33 it just pins you back in the seat.
03:35 And on gravel, it's like you're driving on a drag radials
03:40 on a prepped drag race surface.
03:42 It just hooks up so well that you can just have fun with it
03:45 and just stay in the throttle.
03:46 We had the chance to do jumps.
03:48 We hit one jump at 130 Ks an hour,
03:51 set this thing in the air,
03:52 and it landed so smoothly that I thought,
03:55 this thing just cannot be faulted.
03:58 But it then got even crazier.
04:00 So Ford is part of their development process at Love Day
04:03 and the Alice Springs Buggy Club
04:05 does what they call limit handling driving at race pace.
04:07 Now, limit handling is where you are driving the car
04:10 at its absolute limits,
04:11 and they're driving it at race pace
04:13 because what they wanna do is set
04:15 a bunch of conditions here that say,
04:17 if a customer was to do this
04:19 and drive as hard as they possibly can,
04:22 will the car survive this treatment?
04:24 And to put some of these numbers into context,
04:26 the track at Love Day was about seven kilometres long.
04:29 The track at the Alice Springs Buggy Club
04:31 varies between 10 and 40 kilometres long,
04:33 depending on the configuration they run.
04:35 Both of these test cars,
04:36 which basically were stripped out internally,
04:38 had a roll cage added seats and also a race harness.
04:42 They had 16,000 Ks on them.
04:44 So the estimate here is that they've done about 800 laps
04:47 of Love Day and Alice Springs Buggy Club
04:49 at race pace in these two cars.
04:51 Their whole life has all been about just torture.
04:55 And I've gotta say, the experience was something else.
04:57 We got strapped in and went around the track
04:59 with two Ford's development drivers.
05:01 They're called Tier 4 drivers,
05:02 so they're allowed to drive, I guess,
05:05 however the hell they want, basically.
05:07 And it was an absolute experience that blew me away.
05:10 - T4 to command, we're gonna proceed.
05:13 - Good pull? - Yep.
05:14 - Awesome, so we're gonna turn right,
05:15 we're gonna get a series of whoops.
05:17 (laughing)
05:20 - Oh man, this is ridiculous.
05:22 - It's your production car.
05:23 - Yeah! (laughing)
05:25 - Sounds like you're enjoying yourself.
05:27 - Yeah, (beep) I am.
05:28 - Awesome.
05:30 We aim to please.
05:30 (laughing)
05:33 - Oh man, this track is unreal.
05:36 - Pretty cool, isn't it?
05:37 (laughing)
05:39 - Got my board.
05:41 (engine revving)
05:44 (laughing)
05:45 - T4 to T4.
05:46 That was so much fun, thank you for that.
05:50 - As you could tell by my reaction,
05:51 I had an absolutely amazing time.
05:54 And you can't see, 'cause they didn't set up a GoPro
05:56 out the front window for some reason,
05:57 but you can see with the pace that we were travelling at
06:01 that these cars are absolutely copping a hammering,
06:04 and this is what they're engineered and designed to do.
06:07 So I think that will give you a point of reference
06:09 when you are driving a Ranger Raptor.
06:11 If you are driving in and around the city,
06:13 it is literally 1/1000th of what this is actually capable of.
06:17 So I am very excited to get my car
06:19 and probably not drive like these guys were,
06:22 but know that it is capable of doing
06:24 an endurance bush race,
06:26 should I feel the need to actually do that.
06:28 Now, what about more sedate driving?
06:30 Well, this is where we had the chance
06:31 to get behind the wheel,
06:32 do a bit more off-road driving, slower driving,
06:34 and tested some of the four-wheel drive systems.
06:37 And I also had the chance to test anti-lag
06:39 and give you a bit of an explainer of how that works.
06:41 So let's have a look at that.
06:42 Yeah, if you haven't driven a Raptor before,
06:45 one of the things you can kind of do
06:47 is just like send it most of the time.
06:50 And you notice that in and around the city,
06:51 like speed humps just don't exist.
06:53 And out here where you've got a lot of these ruts
06:56 and just continuous undulations,
06:59 it really just rides over them beautifully.
07:00 And that is all due to that suspension, right?
07:03 And the damping work that the guys have done here
07:05 means that you don't really need to be as ginger
07:08 as you would in just a standard dual cab.
07:11 When you're working with things like leaf springs
07:13 and just a standard damper setup,
07:15 it really is built more for payload.
07:16 And that is why you'll find with this,
07:18 it has a reduced payload,
07:19 but the whole concept is that you're able to drive
07:22 faster off-road knowing that you're not gonna
07:24 damage anything.
07:26 And yes, it does come at the cost of payload,
07:28 but it means that you are comfortable
07:29 when you're attacking this sort of stuff.
07:31 I did notice as well, compared to the older Ranger,
07:33 steering feels a lot quicker and it just feels,
07:36 I don't know, it feels bigger from behind the wheel here,
07:39 even though dimensionally it isn't that much bigger
07:41 than the old car, but it does feel confidence inspiring
07:44 when you are just driving through this type of terrain
07:47 where you would probably be thrown around a whole lot more
07:49 in just a standard dual cab view.
07:51 So this out of the box is just a whole lot more capable
07:55 before you even do any modifications to it.
07:58 Now it's worth pointing out as well
07:59 with the stability control,
08:00 you've got three separate modes there
08:02 that you can run through where it will go all the way
08:05 from slightly off to completely off.
08:07 And then when it is completely off,
08:09 you can basically do whatever you wanna do.
08:12 Right, so we've just been through the sand.
08:15 That was so much fun.
08:16 So sand mode is basically holding the gears for longer.
08:19 I felt that the throttle was sharper as well.
08:21 And then with stability control switched off,
08:23 it's actually a stack of fun.
08:24 You can throw it around a bit and it is so responsive.
08:27 The engine doesn't feel very laggy at all.
08:30 What you find with things like the V6 diesel
08:32 and the Amarok, it can feel a little laggy
08:35 when you jump onto it, it's sort of waiting, waiting,
08:37 and then it gives you everything.
08:38 This feels a whole lot more progressive
08:39 and certainly for sand driving,
08:41 it just feels more confidence inspiring
08:42 knowing that you can attack the throttle
08:44 and it's gonna do everything you want it to do.
08:46 Now, what does it sound like?
08:47 So we'll give it a little stab
08:48 just while we're driving here on the gravel.
08:50 That's awesome.
08:54 So as I'm accelerating there,
08:56 I can see the rev gauge flashing
08:58 as we get closer to the end of that rev band as well.
09:01 So we'll switch it over to Baja mode now.
09:04 Give it one more stab, here we are.
09:06 So this opens up the exhaust.
09:07 Now when I go for it again.
09:09 That's sick, that just sounds a whole lot louder as well.
09:14 Sounds awesome on the outside too.
09:16 So they have really nailed the brief there
09:18 in terms of, I guess, upsetting your neighbours
09:21 in terms of how this sounds.
09:22 And I think that this is going to sound
09:24 and feel a whole lot more different
09:25 than the two litre diesel that you currently find
09:28 in the Ranger Raptor.
09:30 (engine revving)
09:32 Now, one of the other cool features here is anti-lag.
09:37 So you're going to nail the throttle,
09:38 come out of the throttle
09:41 and then get straight back onto it.
09:43 Now anti-lag is a system that,
09:45 I guess was developed in rallying.
09:46 And what it does is it keeps the turbocharger spooled
09:49 when you let out of the throttle.
09:50 Typically with a car, when you do let out of the throttle
09:53 and you're not feeding the turbocharger
09:54 with those exhaust gases to keep it spinning,
09:57 it will then have a moment of lag
09:58 when you go back onto it.
10:00 Whereas right now, when you're on the throttle,
10:02 it's spooled up, you come off the throttle
10:04 and back onto it again.
10:06 There is no lag there.
10:07 It doesn't have to pick up and start spooling again.
10:09 So really cool setup and something that you would
10:12 absolutely not expect to find in a dual cab ute.
10:15 So we are in rock crawl mode now.
10:17 We've switched to low range and you do that
10:19 just by flicking up to neutral.
10:20 It then takes care of the rest of it.
10:23 It's locked the rear diff for us.
10:24 And then in low range, it's obviously much slower
10:27 in terms of the way that it's moving,
10:28 especially with a 10 speed auto.
10:29 So you will flick through a few gears as you get through it.
10:32 And I love the camera here.
10:33 So I can't see anything over the front of the car,
10:36 but with the camera, I'm able to see when we crest
10:39 and then exactly what it's like on the way down as well.
10:42 So, and the thing is with the camera,
10:44 it's really good quality too.
10:45 The worst thing is when they fit 360 cameras to these things
10:48 and they're effectively useless in terms of
10:51 what you can actually see out of it.
10:53 And we're about to go through some offset moguls here.
10:57 So some of the off-roading that we do at Werribee
10:59 with the offset moguls is pretty basic.
11:01 This is quite extreme in terms of the suspension
11:05 articulation that we're getting,
11:06 and we're hitting the under tray as we get through
11:10 some of these breakovers as well.
11:12 So this is where a rear diff lock comes in handy.
11:14 This also has the front diff lock too.
11:16 So if you are doing more of this aggressive stuff,
11:18 you're gonna wanna have both of those activated
11:21 and ready to go so you can move through.
11:24 There is like no fuss at all here
11:26 from the traction control either.
11:27 It's just hooking up and moving nicely.
11:29 So, bloody awesome.
11:31 - So there you go.
11:34 I hope you enjoyed that.
11:35 I just wanna give you a bit of background here.
11:36 When we do filming at these events,
11:38 it's actually really hard to capture the same content
11:41 that we would typically get at, you know,
11:44 a video that we do at our proving ground
11:46 that our guys will shoot,
11:48 simply because the shooters that Ford has employed
11:50 have to get content that suits
11:52 every single person that's there.
11:53 And typically what will happen is
11:55 there'll be five or six journalists
11:56 that all have to do video content.
11:58 We all end up with the same content.
11:59 So you'll probably see lots of these videos
12:01 on the internet that look fairly similar,
12:03 which is why it looks the way that it does.
12:05 When we do finally get our hands on a Ford Ranger Raptor
12:08 and have a chance to properly review it,
12:10 I will go into a bit more detail about how everything works.
12:12 On this day, I was literally learning everything
12:15 as it happens.
12:16 So now I know a whole lot more
12:17 and we'll be able to give you a bit more depth
12:19 when we do finally get behind the wheel.
12:21 I am just blown away with how this car performs.
12:24 It's a vehicle that really covers a lot of ground.
12:26 So you can use it for payload, not a great deal,
12:29 but you can still use it for that.
12:30 You can use it for some towing.
12:32 You can use it to drive like a maniac on an off-road course.
12:35 It's fast in a straight line.
12:37 The engine sounds awesome.
12:38 It is really just a complete package here,
12:41 which is why I'm so excited to finally get my car
12:44 and take it for a bit of a drive.
12:46 Now let me know in the comment section below,
12:47 have you bought a Ranger Raptor?
12:49 What color did you go for?
12:50 Are you considering buying a Ranger Raptor?
12:52 Has this video made you tip over the edge
12:55 and go and actually place an order?
12:56 I'm keen for your feedback down there.
12:58 And if there's anything in particular you want us to do
13:00 when we do finally get a chance to drive one properly
13:03 as a production car,
13:04 let me know in the comment section as well.
13:06 Now, if you did enjoy this video,
13:07 please make sure you like it
13:08 and you share it with your mates.
13:09 Don't forget to subscribe as well,
13:11 'cause we will be doing more of this type of stuff.
13:13 But until next time, take it easy.