2024 Ford Ranger Raptor - Morning Commute in a Rainstorm

Hi everyone welcome back to toofer drives welcome to this torrential downpour where I am sat in the toofers 2024 Ford Ranger Raptor. This morning we are going to M1 Concourse. So Mr Von G Jr here can film a rain drifting video on the track in his ranger Raptor, but first we got to get there. So I figured I would show you all what it’s like to wake up roll out of bed and commute in your Ford. Ranger Raptor we’re going to quick Brave this downport looks like it may be, slowed down a little bit, we’ll walk you around this thing.

I’Ll tell you a little bit about it. Some of you probably already know about this truck because that guy over there actually owns it, but then we will jump on the road, we’ll commute it and I’ll give you my daily driving Impressions and tell you what it’s like to live with this new baby Raptor. So couple of Basics: on this thing, 3 l EcoBoost twin, turbo, V6 405 horsepower 430 lb feet of torque. It has a 10-speed automatic, it’s raptorz, it has locking front and rear differentials. We’Ve got more ground clearance, and this in a lot of ways makes a lot of sense and the reason that the toer bought.

This is because it’s the Raptor in a smaller package, you don’t have to deal with. You know the consequences of having a massive vehicle, but you can still get that Raptor badge, so things make a bit more sense. There’S plenty of room in the back, still for a child’s seat and for adults. It’S got about a 5 1/2 ft bed and the dimensions of this thing make it so you can have a raptor in the real world and I know there will be people in the comments saying. Oh yes, well, I can use my F-150 Raptor on a daily basis.

Yes, I understand that, but the ranger Raptor makes things a little bit simpler and you’re, not really sacrificing a whole lot unless you’re going for the raptor r – and you want to have the V8 motor but uh. This still has an Ecoboost V6. So it isn’t terribly down power from the F-150 before we set off, I’m going to use attempt to use at least this in-house Ford navigation to get ourselves to M1 Concourse Concourse. Usually I just play it easy and use apple carplay. So I figured today we would try out this in-house infotainment.

You got it believe in you, yep obey traffic laws, alert and commands while driving. So it’s raining out to highlighted rout. Thank you so much uh we’re actually going to turn her off. So I can continue to talk. It’S raining out.
We are on a set of K3 allterrain tires, so we’re going to take it easy because the toofer reports to me that these are a little bit sketchy in the rain. We’Ve got a 10-speed automatic and we’re going to leave this thing in four Auto. I thought that would be a good test to kind of see how that behaves in a bit of a slipperier setting overall inside we seem to have some pretty nice materials and we’ll talk a bit more about that once we get going, but let’s go ahead and Hit the road: let’s follow this Civic typ R. Let’S turn on our wipers now I’ve got. To be honest.

I have been a bit of a skeptic lately. As far as some of the new Ford products have gone, I haven’t been a big fan of their 10-speed automatics and a lot of their kind of Drive Line tuning in general. I feel like it’s been a little bit lazy and sloppy, but I’ve spent a bit of time in this Ranger Raptor and things seem to be different. And what I like about this is that this generation of Ranger has already existed in other markets, which means this isn’t something that’s completely new, that they had to just kind of make from the ground up and rush out, which feels like kind of what they’ve done. For some of their other products Ducks, no don’t do that.

So the fact that this truck has already existed and in other markets it feels a little bit different. We’Ve got a unique steering wheel on this. We have some controls. I’Ve never seen. I don’t particularly care for the shifter, because it’s very easy to put it into park when you’re going into reverse first, which I should have showed you back there in the lot.

But this shifter is very just kind of vague in the way that you never really know what gear you’re going into. So that’s something I don’t like about it, but from a living with it perspective, I mean all of the inputs that actually matter your throttle response. Even steering inputs, all of it kind of tied together to make this a very nicely dable package and again the best thing is you don’t feel completely massive? Well, you might, depending on what you’re doing, but the truck does not. We’Ve got a number of different Drive modes here on this truck that you can select o big puddle.

Here we go that you can select down here with this drive mode dial or you can individually select different aspects of your drive mode on the steering wheel, similar to the F-150 Raptor. So I can set a specific steering feel suspension. I can pick how loud I want my exhaust to be all from the ease of the right button panel on the steering wheel, so that is nice as well. I always like a little bit more personalization. This is just going to be misery.
Commute simulation at this point uh, the Topher has disappeared into the abyss, so we are on our own here man. What a way to test nvh the 10-speed Auto in this does search for Gears pretty often, but at the end of the day, it’s a 10p speeed. It has a lot of choices, a lot of Gears to choose from, and what I like about the 10speed tuning on this Ranger raptor is that it isn’t clunky. Yes, it’s searching for Gears, there’s a lot going on, but it kind of does it in the background and the only indication you get of it doing things. Is that exhaust note, which means, if you toggle your exhaust into quiet mode, which I’ve just done?

You don’t really hear anything all right best thing about this Ranger Raptor on the highway is the heft to this steering. You can really get yourself in a position here to kind of just rest, one hand on the steering wheel and small movements are not sending this truck flying. So this is something that you can pretty confidently stick on the highway and just go in a straight line. Get yourself in a nice comfortable driving position. You are all set to go these k3s, while I haven’t really pushed them yet and getting a little bit of under steer there at 40 m hour.

So I don’t think these are a tire that you’re going to want to push it with. You know: don’t push it to the limit on these in the rain. I don’t think that would be a very smart move, but you’re able to kind of, I think, go in a straight line with these with no real problem, all right. The rain’s calming down just a bit we’re not going to try and race the reliable carrier truck scooch in behind him. I do actually like this new infotainment in here quite a bit better than the old SN systems that they had in these Fords I mean well.

I guess as late as like last year or the year before, I mean they were terrible in the way that you would touch something on the screen and then legitimately 5 seconds later or something would happen. This is not the best infotainment in the entire world, not even close, but it does react in a way that does seem like it’s appropriate to be in a car of this decade. So that’s a big improvement from what we had from Ford vehicles in years past. So what about the ride? Well, this is at the end of the day, a body onframe vehicle, which means it is in general, a little bit bouncy, but the actual damping itself is soft, soft and going down the highway with all of these kind of imperfections.

With this thick sidewall with these adjustable dampers and everything set to their softest settings, it soaks things up nicely and it feels pretty settled and it doesn’t feel like terrifyingly bouncy. So that’s nice as well I’ll, never forget the time we took the ram TRX to the sand dunes and that was before I was filming anything for my personal channel. That would have been an epic video, but we commuted it or Road tripped it rather like 5 hours home, and I drove the entire way and that thing just bounced and bounced and bounced and bounced the entire way home. And I was so nauseous by the end of that and so turned off to these off-road sort of trucks. But this does it right.

This kind of strikes a nice balance here, see what we got for passing power. Ooh, okay little sketchy there, but what I like is that this 10p speed can kick down. It can skip gears and give you that torque that you need to make a pass, obviously you’re not making a pass in 10th gear revved at 1700 RPM. But it can kick down pretty fast. Let’S show you the difference between our exhausts.

Here’S normal here is Sport, and here is Baja off-road use only. I think this thing sounds proper. Obviously, it’s a V6. So, at the end of the day, in some situations it does sound like a VQ like a 350 EAS, but in other situations you get some of that rasp and that Unapologetic kind of raptness. So I do like that.

Braking feels good nice feel through that brake pedal. It’S a bit wooden, it’s a bit stiff driving position is great. I’Ve got the seat set in the lowest possible setting, and I can see over the hood. I can confidently see out of the sides these door panels are at a good height to where you can kind of drive this like an old school Lexus GX, which I do appreciate. Navigation displays on the cluster as well.

We don’t have a head-up display on this Ranger Raptor. We also don’t have a moon roof, but we have a bunch of auxiliary switches. So, if you’re sitting in traffic, that gives you a little bit of a fidget if you need to be occupied or if you want to put light bars, you know lights and things on this. It could be used for that as well. I, like the overall design language of this interior.

I love the Code Orange here on the vents on the seats on the steering wheel. The stitching is orange, the 12:00 is orange cool little touches and the carbonized gray on the outside makes for a nice overall kind of cohesive spec on this thing, driving position. Okay, this is probably the softest vehicle I’ve sat in in a while – and this is very typical for Ford and typical for American vehicles in general. The seat very squishy and I’d be curious to see how this would hold up on a bit of a longer trip, because squishy seats aren’t always great cuz they’re, not always supportive, but for the time being, anyways this seat does feel really nice, but the best part Are these elbow spots, the center console the door panel where you rest your elbows? These are the softest bits I felt in so long.
So, as you guys know, I do really like that quite a bit. I am cozy in this on my morning, commute and not being angry about being uncomfortable, so that is a plus for the ranger Raptor. Let’S run for a second with the exhaust and Baja mode. Just so you guys can get a sense for what this thing sounds. Like we’re still in for auto, but let’s switch us into a different drive mode, Let’s Go sport, sport mode and we’ve got this little M on the side of the shifter can press that that will lock me into manual mode and I can take control with my Large steering wheel mounted paddle shifters.

This will give you blips, as we lose traction there in fourth gear. With these k3s the shifts are not Snappy. They kind of slur pretty typical for this Ford 10 speed. It does make a cool noise. I’Ll admit, you can engage with this truck a bit row your own Gears, but I don’t know generally when I drive this thing, I leave it in automatic and kind of just let it do its own thing.

Once you get above eight gear, I it’s just you’re. Shifting too much so it’s just kind of best to let the vehicle do it itself. The only exception to that rule is the Lexus lc500. Also. I thought he took the running boards off of this and now that I think about it, were they on in our walk around.

Did I step on a running board to get up into this? He sent me a picture last week of the running boards off because he is the biggest Enthusiast of ground clearance in the entire enre world. I’M honestly pretty content in this thing, just chilling in the Slowpoke lane, not passing anybody relaxing with my exhaust in quiet mode yeah. This is cozy. This does the job.

This does the commute with Grace. Let’S see if we can find our way through the screen here to take a look at what our fuel economy is. There we go 14.5. Okay, so that’s one factor is it’s certainly not the most efficient thing in the world I’ll display the EPA rated fuel economy.

Here on the screen, since I just got into this this morning – don’t know it off the top of my head. My apologies overall nbh seems to be pretty nice. I mean the most noise you get from this thing. Well, the rain today. Obviously, but these tires I mean any altering tire is going to have a little bit of whne a little bit of howl 10th gear 65 mil hour 1,00 RPM see what we’re at 70 mph 10th gear.

Sorry, that’s. Ninth gear 70, mph 10th gear about 1950 RPM. I would make an educated guess there and say that I do a bit feel like I’m tiptoeing in some sections with these tires, which I don’t like I’m a bit. Clenched though visibility is good mirrors very large, can see out of those nicely. We’Ve got some driver Aids on this Ranger.

We have a lane, keep assist and we have adaptive cruise, neither of which have really seemed appropriate to try out today, but we’ll turn on the lane keeping system and see what that does for us. As far as I know, this is kind of just like a boomerang it’ll kind of just bounce you back and forth. If you start to go out of a lane or not actually yeah it just yells at you and vibrates the steering wheel, we don’t have the full steering, assist or blue Cruise or anything on this Ranger Raptor. In some of these more calmed down settings. This 10 speed is Shifting itself before 2,000 RPM puddles puddles, and it’s overall, a very conservative tune on this, and everything I said earlier is still consistent around town you’re, not getting any jumpy throttle response, you’re not getting harsh shifts from this 10speed everything works as intended.

They’Ve finally kind of gotten this formula right here with this Ranger Raptor – and I am proud of Ford for finally dialing this formula in ooh, really good lumbar adjustment on this driver’s seat and it comes out quick. Oh, that is a aggressive lumbar. It doesn’t go up or down only goes in or out, but still gives you some good support from a seat that you otherwise kind of sink into, like a 1970s couch welcome everyone to Woodward Avenue. I went the wrong way and if you scrub back to the beginning of the video you’ll, see that the nav said Birmingham Michigan, that is not the city that M1 Concourse is in. So I overlooked that and now we are 15 minutes behind the Topher.

So bit of an adventure this morning, and even in the worst of scenarios, with going the wrong way, adding an extra 20 minutes on and just kind of being frustrated. In that sense, the actual truck the ranger Raptor, apart from its navigation being a bit confused, hasn’t made me angry and I think that’s the most important part of a commuter vehicle is that it should be easy on the mind and the body of course, but this Truck has performed in all of the ways that I hoped it would so as we in a way Cruise Woodward here. Why don’t I wrap up my thoughts here on the towers, Ranger Raptor? Well, I think I’ve essentially said everything I’ve wanted to say throughout the video, but I really want to validate that. This makes sense in this sort of setting.
If you want one vehicle to do it all, and you still want a raptor, but you don’t want to make some of the sacrifices you have to make to drive a massive F-150 Raptor every day. Then this I could see this genuinely really working out for you. This still does have the Raptor characteristics in the way that it drives. It still has a twin turbocharged V6. It still has the 10-speed automatic.

It still looks the part it’s lifted on big allterrain tires and you can get an obnoxious, Raptor Graphics Pack on this. If that’s your thing, so it does all the Raptor stuff. It’S got the cool steering wheel, all the cool bits on the interior, but it does it in a bit more of a utilitarian way. You can fit this up some smaller Trails, if you’re into off-roading, you can fit this in smaller parking spots. You can do more things while being less stressed about having just a totally massive vehicle.

So that’s what I like about this. It behaves nicely. It’S comfortable. The throttle tuning everything is nice, the seat is, for the most part comfortable, it’s wearing on me a little bit, but the elbows are comfy. Driving position is really nice.

It’S got plenty of torque. I think they’ve made a good product here. Don’T rely on the navigation, but 90 % of this is pretty dang good. I also don’t like the shifter, but apart from those couple of things, one of the best Ford products, I’ve driven in a really long time, test out this turning Circle over the tracks. What railroad tracks we made it to M1 Concourse?

Let’S pull in here! I don’t know why there’s a Kia Eevee 9, but there’s the Civic, typ R, there’s the Topher, I’m only 18 minutes later than I was supposed to be, and the ranger Raptor has gotten me here with Grace with comfort and with minimal road noise. That last part wasn’t wasn’t true, but anyways. Here we go one last turning Circle test. Let’S pull up behind the Civic typ bar, we’ll give you one last look at this Ranger Raptor, and that will be it for today.

If you guys want to learn more about this thing from someone who isn’t a ranger, Raptor noob, that hasn’t spent a ton of time in this head over to the Topher Channel, he owns this thing. He’S got a ton of videos on it, and uh you’ll get a better idea of what it’s like to actually own one of these trucks, but let’s shut it off and that’s it yeah. The side steps are on still: oh okay. They must have been reattached all right, guys, well, that’ll wrap it up for us today. Thank you.

You guys all so much for watching and we will see you in the next one hey great for the commute. Don’T you know very cozy super cozy super comtable yeah. Very good, it’s a raptor for for people that don’t want to be in their own way all the time. That’S right! Yes, so you actually fit in on the road you fit on the road you fit in parking spots.

You fit in garages and it still does all the Raptor stuff, so it just it just makes sense. Let’S go do some more R, all right sounds good and if you’ve stayed this long in the video you get, the treat of watching me follow Mr Von gon toofer as he drifts his pickup truck on a racetrack, I’m going to follow him in the Civic, typ R, so here we go look at that thing. Any of you ever wondered what it’s like to work with the toofer here you go. This is about as accurately as I can portray it to you. The thing is: he’s not going to get bored we’re going to be out here all day until the truck either explodes or advanced track.

It breaks. Oh now, he’s in four-wheel drive or something – oh, my God he’s in drifting in four-wheel drive. Now. Oh, my gosh, some of those shots are going to be amazing, yeah super so excited. Can we watch them as soon as we get back?

Yeah