My Favorite cars #8 : 2011 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor. A #blogpost by Sir GT-R

Introduction

The F-150 SVT Raptor (or Raptor, much easier) was introduced by Ford (Wow, really? Thought it was Renault for a second) to american dealerships in late stages of 2009, with the sole objective of being a pure off-roader, to Ford’s surprise, sales went much better than expected (insert everything went better than expected meme here). But, continuing with the sales topic, Ford was able to sell 1,186 Raptors, outselling Honda’s Ridgeline, who would’ve thought a performance F-150 could outsell a standard Honda?

Engine and Drivetrain

The 09’ Raptor was powered with a 5.4l (330 CID) V8 motor, although you could choose from a 6.2l V8 too. The “base” model with the 5.4l V8 produces 310hp and 385lb-ft of torque, while if you chose the 6.2l V8, you were getting 411hp and 434lb-ft of torque to play with, both options with a 6 speed automatic ‘box as standard, sending power to all 4 wheels with an open diff up front and a LSD in the back. For later models, the front diff was swapped for a Torsen LSD. Suspension and wheels were pretty big too, with 35” BFGoodrich all-terrain (Shall I keep on with the obviousness?) boots. Springs and dampers were Fox Racing Shox with 11 and 12 inches of suspension travel in front and back, respectively. Later model Raptors ditched the 5.4l V8, leaving the 6.4l one as your only choice.

The Interior

Let’s clear some things out of the way, this is a pickup that’s been based on a Baja 1000 truck, so do not expect ubiquitous amounts of leather, as you would find in the other F-150 Platinum. The interior is not reduced to the bare minimum, but it also isn’t a lifted bentley, you get a small (given the size of the truck) 4.2 inch screen for infotainment purposes, like maps and… you know how this goes really, you won’t find yourself playing Doom on your cars’ screen, (Or will you?). Still, jokes aside, you get a leather wrapped steering wheel (“Wait a second, hadn’t you said that there weren’t any excessive amounts of leather?” Shh, no one knows) with a red stripe down the center of the wheel, because racecar bro. You also get electronic seats and, to our dissapointment, an automatic ‘box, but when you have a 411hp pickup truck that can go almost everywhere at highway speeds (!), do you really care? I wouldn’t mind.

The Body

This, as you may know already is not your typical F-150, the truck’s has been lengthened by… nothing, but what has increased in size, though, are the overall width and height. The Raptor is 7 inches wider and 2 inches taller than your standard F-150. Given the size increase, the 5.5ft bed is unique to the Raptor. This model is available in only 4 colors, Tuxedo Black (Fancy), Oxford White (Fancier), Blue Flame (Cool) and Molten Orange (How do you melt a color?), all of these were available with a ‘Digital Mud’ decal. If you wanted to buy your Raptor orange, you’d have to pay an extra 495 U$D. Oh, and the rear view camera? You can’t buy it alone, if you want it, you have to pay 595 U$D for the ‘Raptor Plus Package’, said package includes a rear view camera and a trailer brake controller. This behemoth moves around on huge 35’’ boots (Rim size is actually 17’’) and 315mm wide BF-Goodrich all-terrain tires.

Aftermarket

The Raptor above pictures isn’t your standard raptor, but instead is the VelociRaptor 600 tuned by american tuning company Hennesey (makers of the Venom GT, if you still didn’t know ), this one got a supercharger strapped to it, now bumping the power up to 600 bhp, apart from the obvious exterior modifications. If this doesn’t appeal to you, you can opt for Roush’s version. If neither of these are for you, you can try this.

Conclusion

All in all, this is a city/trail spec baja truck, a thing that is cool in whichever way you look at it (Both physically and practicality, well, the last one not so much). For ‘just’ 45,290 (U$D, Base model, price from May 2011) you get an off-road ready truck with more power than you’ll ever need for it, cool looks, comfort and many “Wow”s from pedestrians (You can also expect a “What a knob, he pollutes” from your typical enviromental conscious neighbour).

Well, after 6 months of writing and fun, the “My favorite cars” series has come to an end. Just wanted to say thank you to, first of all, CTzen GTA Motorsport for letting me use his idea, and to you guys for the support and feedback given during the series. We’ve covered from JDM, to Swede monsters to road-illegal Enzos and rounded it up with my all-time favorite pick-up truck. If you’d like to read my first (ever) blogpost of this series, you can find it down here

After everything being said, time to end this post, and to start writing the next one.
Until then, Sir GT-R, out.