Photographs by Pablo Chaterji and Madan Menon
In my time as an automotive hack, I’ve driven everything from Lamborghinis to lawnmowers (both are great fun), but in the grand scheme of things (which is to say the tiny corner of the galaxy where humans insist on driving around in metal boxes) I’ve never encountered a Ford F-150 Raptor. I’ve always wanted to, though; there’s something so ‘Yee-ha!’ about it that it perfectly encapsulates everything that I think American cars are — big, brash and unnecessarily powerful (much like America itself, you could say).
My university buddy Madan Menon is a former Chennai resident who traded in India’s gridlock for California’s big skies several years ago; he turned out to be the architect of change in this regard. I’d gotten in touch with him because I was heading to California, and among the first things he said was ‘Dude, you have to drive my truck.’ Since said truck was a 2017 Ford F-150 Raptor, I agreed almost before he completed his sentence; a rendezvous point at a suburban strip mall was agreed upon, and I showed up there wondering what to expect (from the truck, not him — he’s just the same).
The Raptor, as it turned out, was not so much a vehicle as a medium-sized planetoid, at least to someone unused to seeing its kind on a daily basis; it was 20 feet long, wider than my ex-wife’s excuse list and considerably taller than me, at 6.5 feet in height. Painted in a shade called Lead Foot Grey, which sounded like a lead-based cocktail, it really was all kinds of gigantic; damn thing looked like it bench-pressed Fortuners for fun. It also looked like it could enter the Baja 1000 straight off a dealership floor; I’m sure that’s actually been done at some point, by some loon with a cast iron butt.
Some measure of eff-you aesthetics were evident in it, in the way that an apartment building is aesthetic, and its grille had FORD emblazoned on it in a font so large it was probably noticed by Sunita Williams. It sat on shiny alloys wrapped in knobby, 315-section 17-inch BF Goodrich AT tyres that snarled ‘I dare you’, a challenge that I accepted by opening the driver’s door. This turned out not to be the power move that I had envisioned, because my India-driving muscle memory caused me to open the passenger door instead; we will speak of this no further. What we will speak of is that I loved the Raptor on sight, mainly because it looked like something that needed a muzzle put on before being allowed in public.
Getting into the Raptor would be a gymnastic manoeuvre without the tailgate step that Menon’s truck is equipped with. Once inside, I was greeted by a fascinating mix of rich leather and hard plastic, a sea of black accentuated with bits of silver. Other than a small-ish touchscreen, the cabin was thankfully analogue, with a profusion of buttons, dials and switches, just the way a car should be. There was plenty of room, unsurprisingly, and enough mod-cons to keep everyone happy, including heated seats and a Sony audio system (and cupholders; Americans love themselves some cupholders). I have to say I was pretty impressed with the cabin; it wasn’t the Ritz, but it looked like it would take a very long time to fall apart.
Enough with that stuff, though; I was there to check out the truck’s business end, which housed Ford’s 3.5-litre, twin-turbo V6 EcoBoost engine, a contraption generating 450 bhp and 70.5 kgm of torque; I lamented the absence of a full-fat V8, but those figures were nothing to be sneezed at either. I thumbed the starter button, and the F-150 made a noise not unlike a small thunderstorm clearing its throat. At over 2.5 tonnes, it was less a truck and more a mobile argument for repealing the laws of physics, but I nevertheless guided it out of the mall’s parking lot, a move that felt like I was shepherding a moon through a suburban asteroid field. The steering was thankfully light, my vantage point sky-high (I was half-tempted to wave regally at the peasants below) and the local inhabitants — mostly Prius drivers — scattered quickly as soon as they spotted the truck.
On the road leading to Calero County Park, I dabbed at the accelerator, and the turbos responded with an impolite ‘whoosh’, followed by an equally rude shove. Ford claimed the Raptor could reach 0-100 kph in 5.1 seconds, a figure I had no reason to doubt, given that my internal organs briefly moved in unison toward the rear seat. The experience was surreal‑ the truck surged forward like a freight train, without a doubt, yet in the cabin I somehow felt like time had simultaneously slowed down a bit. Also, Americans clearly treat gearboxes like they do their restaurant portions, because the Raptor had no fewer than 10 gears in its auto ‘box’, clicking through with relaxed precision. With the sheer grunt on offer, overtaking became an exercise in inevitability — and much grinning. Indeed, one could say the Raptor is in a permanent state of overtake, given that it’s twice as long as most other cars. All of this firepower came at a price, naturally — with a combined fuel efficiency figure of around 7 kpl, the Raptor was a proper slurp-and-burp machine, going roughly 950 km on its 136-litre fuel tank. I’d probably care if I was buying, but I’m not, so…
There were a number of twists and turns on the road to the park, and I was fully expecting the Raptor to handle like a bar of soap around them. It surprised me, though — the front and the rear didn’t feel disconnected, and the Fox suspension played a large part in this, lending the behemoth a turn-in ability that was more entertaining than it had any right to be; its ride quality on smooth tarmac was great, too, with obstacles literally being crushed underfoot, their plaintive cries occasionally drifting into the cabin. The steering wheel felt properly hefty in my hands, although it also displayed a tendency towards laziness; still, you can hardly expect the steering feel of a 911 GT3 in this thing.
We got to the park and pulled up in its parking lot, next to a stunning reservoir. Proper off-roading wasn’t going to be possible here, but I spotted a large tract of unpaved land nearby and Menon said ‘Let’s hit it’, with the air of someone who regularly hits unpaved land with his truck. This was what the Raptor had been built for, and even though the section wasn’t a Baja stage, I could instantly feel it transform into a dirt-and-dust meister. I didn’t even need to switch into any of its myriad off-road modes to clock that it would have eaten a proper off-road section for a light breakfast. Speaking of breakfast, judging by the way the nature of the suspension changed in the dirt, you should eat light — or not at all — if you’re in the rear seat during serious off-roading, especially at speed, because five gets you ten that a fair amount of bouncing, shaking and rolling will be involved.
Back on tarmac, I experimented with the paddle shifters, since they were there‑ they worked all right, but seemed out of place. Far better to let the automatic take control, especially while cruising, since it had me in 7th at around 40 kph, with the V6 whirring away at around 1000 rpm. The gearbox lets you fully enjoy the weird luxury of this monster; it’s quiet, cushy, and rides very well, which feels… wrong for something this tough. Parking it, back at the mall, was a task — a runway would have been more appropriate than a spot — but driving it? The kind of pure, dumb joy that I hadn’t experienced in a while.
