Ford Bronco Raptor | Blending Sports Car and Off Roader

The Ford Bronco Raptor. If you want a technical deep dive, this is the video for you because Ford Performance was kind enough to give us real engineering support for this project. But before we head into the shop, let's talk about what makes this impressive from an interior and exterior perspective. When you look at the outside of this thing, if you like Tonka trucks, you like Baja vehicles, you should like this thing. It's enormously wide, it's got big fender flares, On top of that, Ford allows you to customize this thing to your heart's content with all sorts of unique color choices like this eruption green. From an interior perspective, we've covered the Bronco twice, so most of this is a carryover. You can still take the doors off, the roof off, and unlike in the Wrangler, the doors can come with you so you don't have to leave them behind. In fact, if you think about the Wrangler, Ford released the Bronco later, so a lot of the teething pains of a Wrangler were addressed by Ford with this Bronco. So you don't have the compromise in a small footwell, it has less NVH that makes its way into the cabin, and it is slightly quieter, albeit not by much. From a regular Bronco, what the Raptor offers is some unique interior trim pieces like the seats. These seats are an enormous plus over the base Bronco. They are far more comfortable. They are essentially Recaros with a good amount of side bolster support while also being quite comfortable. They are heated, but not cooled. You get a Raptor steering wheel with some aluminum paddles on it. The Raptor drive modes are on the steering wheel as well, and they're pretty easy to use. You get a nice chunky GOAT mode switch in orange, which allows you to change all the various drive modes, but past that, most of this is a direct carryover from the regular Bronco. So with that, let's head into the shop and put this truck up on the lift. Mark, we're underneath the Ford Bronco Raptor, and for once, we've actually had a lot of engineering support from Ford Performance. Sadly, though, my Zoom or Teams meeting did not record accordingly, so we won't be using any of that footage, but he did give me a very thorough walkthrough of this product, which given how complicated it is and what it's trying to accomplish, I deeply appreciate. And it does make a big difference for these kind of videos. So let's talk about the truck first. So this is built on the Bronco platforms, the T6 architecture. It's a truck platform. It's body-on-frame. However, as you are probably hoping for in a off-road Baja-capable rock-crawling vehicle, it's been greatly altered from the base Bronco. They added more bracing through the chassis, so it's about 50% more rigid. The shock towers, both front and rear, have been altered to deal with the increased wheel travel of this vehicle and the increased forces that hits this thing. All engineering is, and we have this conversation all the time with people who design cars, is dealing with what compromises you can accept, right? So in certain places, you're going to have to trade back steering field sportiness for suspension travel or off-road capability, but with more modern technology, at least according to Ford Performance, all the electromechanical systems allow them to broaden that bandwidth so you don't have to make as many compromises. That's funny because I used to work for an engineering company that their motto was no compromises in engineering, and they're bankrupt. The reality is if you're designing a car, any car, a performance application, an economy car, it's about what compromises you can deal with when designing something. And on top of that, you actually have to be able to build this thing. We talked about it in our upcoming C8 Corvette factory video, but these things have to go down an assembly line and get built in large numbers for this company to be profitable. So with this thing, because of how wide it is and how tall it is, they actually had to make engineering changes to the rear suspension to actually get this thing down the line. So there's a different mounting point when this thing's being assembled, and when it comes off the assembly line, they change that mounting point so it gains back its ride height. When it comes to width, this thing's about 10 inches wider than the base Bronco, and that's due to the fact that it has enormous wheels and tires. It's running 37-inch KO2 tires, which are the industry-leading large all-terrain off-road tire. If you've seen our Raptor 37-inch equipped video, the third-gen Raptor, a lot of this from a suspension perspective looks very similar because they're taking lessons they've learned from Gen 2 and Gen 3 Raptor, applied it to this. So the front suspension, while it is not identical, obviously the T6 has different mounting points than the F-150, it's very, very similar. The steering solutions to beefiness of this come from the Raptor. In fact, the Raptor's brakes are on this, so they're larger than what you get from the standard Bronco. In the rear, it's a live rear axle. However, again, they took the lessons of the 5-link in the new Raptor, the third-gen, how it has better suspension travel, and more importantly, more traction, and applied it to this. So when it comes to ride height increase, you get 13 inches in the front, 14 in the rear, which is a 40 and 60 percent increase respectively. It has an electronic locking rear differential, and it has a two-speed transfer case in the middle of this vehicle. The big way they can get this thing to drive properly on the street, deal with the large impacts of rock crawling and high-speed off-roading, is the 3.1 Y-valve Fox shocks. So based upon drive mode, what the wheel height sensors are doing, and what the chassis box is telling the vehicle, it changes the suspension settings accordingly, so it can either go soft for the street or firm up so it doesn't bottom out the suspension. What about Haas? Well, Haas is their marketing term, or the Haas 4.0 is their marketing term for their Fox live valve shocks, and that's... What about the GOATs? The GOAT modes? So you control what the shocks are doing with their GOAT modes, which is a marketing term for their drive modes. So you can go sport, you can go Baja mode, or as you call it, Baja mode. Yeah, Baja. You can go rock crawling, and that's what's controlling these dampers and the four-wheel drive system. You can turn everything off, however, in Ford Performance fashion, just like in the Raptor R and the regular Raptor, everything off doesn't actually mean everything off because they want you not to roll this thing over. The drivetrain as well is probably one of the biggest advancements from my perspective from a Ford Performance vehicle. This uses their 10-speed automatic, which is sort of ubiquitous in the 10-speed lineup that Ford uses in like the Explorer, the regular Raptor, the Mustang, but they are learning from their growing pains from prior generation versions of the 10-speed. So this uses their latest software algorithm, and I assume modules as well, so the actual downshifts and upshifts are much faster. It better be, I can't wait to drive it. Well, I gotta talk about the three-liter more. No, I'm just saying it better be because this, you know, for going to this next level of performance, you can't just have them all feel the same, so it'll be interesting to see. Yeah, and the last thing is the three-liter. So this may sound like it's the same three-liter out of the Ford Explorer ST. It is not. It uses larger turbos. It has their anti-lag setup. Obviously, all the accessories like the intake, dramatically different, has to deal with far more dust. There's different calibration, so torque comes in earlier, and it makes 418 horsepower and 444 foot-pounds of torque, and obviously, it has a different exhaust. When it goes full open, it's Baja mode? Yes, Baja mode is the loudest exhaust mode for this vehicle. Okay, everything has been reinforced and beefed up. Axles, the drive shafts, the transfer case, the skid plates. Basically, we could just cut this whole thing down to say they've beefed up every single component to make sure that they can use 37-inch off-road tires. So you can beat the absolute ---- out of this. Yeah, last question. Did the Broncos start with the Ford performance engineers working on it, or did the Broncos start with a different team, and then they came up? It's just like Mustang. So the Ford performance engineers, while they work closely with the base program engineers, they are, I hate to say saddled with, but they deal with a platform that already exists somewhat like the GT car team. They take a 911, they turn into a GT3. So these guys took a Bronco and turned into a Bronco Raptor. What about the Bronco Sport? All right, let's take us for a drive. Bronco Raptor, Mark, on our favorite back road. Let's see. Whoa, you got a CVT in here? Is that an Amazon truck? You gonna give him a special delivery? A 5,700 pounds SUV? This thing is zesty. Yeah, I had low expectations for this, to be entirely honest. I know it's a Ford performance product, but when we spoke to the engineers, I guess you're gonna handle like a sports car. It's gonna be fun on the back road. When you actually drive this thing. Where's the ---- handle? I got to hold up here. The gearing in this is hilarious. They're really, really tightly stacked. This is the best programming of the 410 speed by far. When I first drove it, I'm like, it's all reminds me of a CVT with fake shifts because the gear is so tight. And look, it almost genuinely handles like a car. The front end works, the steering is direct, somewhat direct. You have feedback to the wheel. If you lift up mid corner, it rotates, it'll oversteer. It is really surprising how good this thing is. And I think, you know, it's interesting. The mentality of it, because you're working with a shorter wheelbase truck, you know, we get in the Raptor and the TRX and you kind of expect those things to be lively and they're just not because they're so long. This shrinks that down. So you do get more of like the fun car dynamic part, like you said, on the street that you don't get with all those other trucks. Now, let's be fair to it. These tires are enormous. You know, it's got this really bobbly, sloppy, slow. And they have no grip. Right. They don't have any of the grip, but you still get a lot of the fun. And for me, the biggest crossover here that converted me to this is this is the first implementation of the EcoBoost and their 10 speed automatic that I'm like, OK, I'm actually wowed by it. The trans tuning is just as good as you could possibly get it with the gearing being short. It's fun to operate. It's super responsive and the engine sounds and feels good. Yeah. Let me demonstrate to the viewers. I'll go back into first gear and it does a good rev match downshift for the most part. And let's go through the gears. They're really tightly stacked. They're so tightly stacked. But to me, if you have a performance application and you have 10 gears to work with, you don't need 10 gears, period. But when you stack them like this and you have an automatic, it gives you that sense of like you're doing something and it gives that sense of fun, even though it's pointless. No, there's a good sense of humor about this thing. What you want in a kind of road or a truck, when you drive this thing like a normal person, you put it back into regular drive mode, you take it out of man. Well, it's fairly comfortable. It does ride very, very well. There's a good like it's amazing the bandwidth of these dampers, right? It can be comfortable, isolating to good daily. And then you can go rock crawling with you drive it like an asshole in the street. You can drive this on Baja scenario and will absorb the bumps very, very well. It doesn't have the trade offs of something like the three ninety two Wrangler. Yeah. So let's talk about that. Just all you have to do is spend five minutes back to back with both of these. And this is like 100 percent better. I mean, at least I'm talking about chassis dynamics, driving dynamics, all that. You still have the ---- box like, you know, bread box fan on wheels. Effect of this from being just a rolling roadblock for the wind. It's a noisy, not horribly noisy, but it's what you expect from that. It's not ultra fine, but from a driving perspective, steering, braking, cornering, all of that. This is a way better driving car, like just so much better than the Wrangler. Yeah. It may potentially give up something when you're rock crawling, but high speed off road, on road, on a back road. Yeah, this is a much more enjoyable vehicle. You still have the compromises of a Bronco. It's noisy in here. Yeah. It gets blown around by the wind. It's not a quiet space and it's kind of drafty. But if you want an off road truck that you're going to spend most of your time with on road and you can be a dick in it, you can drive it like you want to drive. It doesn't feel like a huge compromise going places. This is pretty bad. No, it is bad. It's probably one of the best things like this I've ever been in as a street car that serves the purpose of a street car and gives you a little bit of fun on road. Yes, clearly on road is a huge advantage to this. All right, Jack, let's get to the final thoughts. Thank you, sir. Final thoughts on the Ford Bronco Raptor. I want to say huge thanks to the Ford performance engineers who spent so much time with us first. Without their help, there's no way I could have thought about the truck. Well, in short, to be entirely honest, this is probably my favorite off road truck Jeep thing currently sold. I vastly prefer it to the Wrangler 392, even the TRX and the Raptors with their V8s and the Raptor 37 inch EcoBoost version as well. It's because I think this drivetrain has a ton of character. This is the best implementation of the EcoBoost I've used and the best 10 speed automatic programming I felt in a Ford performance vehicle outside of maybe a Mustang. It actually downshifts when you tell it to. The gears are nicely spaced and it's fun to wind this thing out dynamically. It handles like a big car, which for a truck is very, very impressive. The trail brakes, it rotates under throttle easily. You can get this thing to steer properly. It communicates to you in a way that few trucks do. And it's fun because the limits are so low. These giant 37 inch tires on the street that you can feel rotation at lower speeds. I'm sure off road this is deeply capable, but we did not drive it there. And you can probably make the argument for solid rear axles in the front if you're rock crawling. But again, I'm not going to touch that. So with that, thanks for watching and hope to see you soon.