The EV Narrative Continues -- This Week -- The 2024 Ford Ranger Raptor -- July 20, 2024

Locator: 48196EVS.

Link here.

At $59,045, still less expensive than your father's EV.

The choice of what to drive is the most emotional of all major consumer decisions, according to decades of research and the daily evidence of our own eyes.

Consider the 2024 Ford Ranger Raptor ($59,045, as tested), a trail-rated version of the company’s midsize pickup, hitched up on a heavy-duty suspension and 33-inch BFGoodrich knobbies. This thing can scramble over terrain that’s craggier than Kevin Costner’s face.

Under the hood, in place of the standard 2.3-liter turbo-four (270 hp), is a hard-hitting, heavy-drinking twin-turbo V6, wringing 405 hp and 430 lb-ft of torque out of just 3.0 liters of displacement. An automatic two-speed transfer case is entrained with Ford’s 10-speed transmission and auto-locking front and rear differentials. Why you filthy beast.

The star of the build is the suspension: in the front, forged aluminum upper and lower A arms with “Live Valve” shocks by specialty supplier Fox; in the rear, a live rear axle, located with a Watts link worthy of James Herriott’s hay wagon. The rear coil-overs are also looped into the semiactive damping. Naught but the finest uncut fairy dust, brah.

And then this:

After all that, many might expect the Raptor to offer more capacity. Actually, the scenery-eating Raptor posts less towing and payload capacity than the Ranger XLT 2WD, which costs about $22,000 less. 

Say what?

But that's what I'm seeing in Texas. Folks are buying their Raptors to drive around town, all shiny and ... not towing a thing.