2022 Ford Bronco Raptor First Test: Absolutely Awesome!

2022 Ford Bronco Raptor First Test: Absolutely Awesome!

2022 Ford Bronco Raptor First Test: Absolutely Awesome!
ford bronco Full Overview

Pros

  • Dune-bashing, mud-splashing, rock-crawling fun
  • Shockingly good road manners
  • Unfazed by potholes and frost heaves

 Cons

  • Half-ton weight gain
  • Could have had a V-8
  • Slow steering makes for busy hands

From the driver's seat of the 2022 Ford Bronco Raptor, a pond looks like a puddle, a boulder field looks like a gravel road, and a Mitsubishi Mirage looks like a speed bump. This $70,095 off-road colossus—it's 85.7 inches wide and has 37-inch-tall tires—bounds across the gnarliest terrain and towers over traffic with an air of invincibility that shrinks everything in its path. Objects in the windshield are larger than they appear when you're riding this high, literally and metaphorically.

It doesn't take long for this Raptor's immense capability to go to your head. In the same way that the best Porsches make drivers into heroes, the Bronco Raptor turns the person behind the wheel into a villain—reckless, all powerful, above the law. Driving a Bronco Raptor means fighting an incessant urge to straight-line every roundabout. You'll fantasize about blasting by gridlock traffic on the shoulder and turning every open space you pass into an off-road park.

Roads? Where We're Going, We Don't Need Roads

To keep those anti-social and imprisonable impulses at bay, it's important to regularly exercise the baddest Bronco in its natural habitat, which happens to be wherever civilization isn't. Ford has built the Raptor brand around high-speed desert-running antics, and the Bronco abides with big-barrel Fox Racing dampers calming the suspension as it strokes through up to 13 inches of travel in the front and 14 in the rear. Electronically adjustable valving adapts to whatever happens to be pummeling the suspension at any given moment, while internal bypasses cushion the biggest hits.

Translation: The harder and faster you drive, the less the Bronco Raptor is fazed by the terrain. In its signature Baja mode, this SUV combines sports-car reflexes with the compliance of a bounce house. The 10-speed automatic cracks off up- and downshifts with perfect timing and the BF Goodrich All-Terrain T/A KO2 tires find traction where there is none, all while bombing over terrain that would fold a Honda in half.

This Bronco isn't a one-trick pony, though. It will just as eagerly and expertly pick its way through a boulder-strewn ravine with the 360-degree camera system putting your spotter out of a job. It can wade into a waist-deep swamp and negotiate a mud-slicked trail (as long as those washtub fenders fit between the trees). There's a dizzying amount of adjustability in the Raptor's four exhaust modes, three steering settings, four damper calibrations, locking front and rear differentials, front anti-roll-bar disconnect, and the transfer case that offers rear-wheel drive, high-range four-wheel drive, or low-range four-wheel drive. Trying to tune all that via buttons on the steering wheel, atop the dash, and on the center console proves tedious, but Ford has smartly included shortcuts to several useful combinations via the preset GOAT modes (Normal, Off-Road, Rock Crawl, Baja, Sport, Tow/Haul, Slippery) and a customizable MyMode.

Those Road Manners Aren't Shabby, Either

The Bronco Raptor's 0.67 g of lateral grip and 160-foot 60-mph stopping distance are atrocious by any objective measure of on-road performance, but those numbers bury the subjective excellence of how this truck steers, handles, and rides when it returns to the civilized, asphalt world. Thanks to the impossibly wide stance, the body doesn't roll in corners so much as it squats over the outside wheels, creating a surprising sense of stability.

The heavy hiking boots pound the pavement and send tremors into the body at city speeds, but just as it does off road, the Raptor becomes supple—even graceful—the faster you go. On the highway, it floats over expansion joints and potholes, making it the perfect vehicle for traversing our pre-apocalyptic infrastructure in comfort and without fear of damaging a tire.

At 3.2 turns lock-to-lock, the steering feels slow when you're sliding the Raptor sideways on dirt or hustling down a tight two-lane. Nevertheless, the steering wheel would be at home in a Mazda Miata, both for the way its sculpted rim fits your hands and its exacting precision.

How Quick Is the Ford Bronco Raptor?

If there's a weak spot in the Raptor's game, it's the engine. The twin-turbo 3.0-liter V-6 raises output by 103 horsepower and 30 lb-ft of torque compared to the 2.7-liter unit available on lesser Broncos. Yet you wouldn't guess it's packing 418 horsepower from the driver's seat or looking at the numbers. That's because this leviathan weighs 5,778 pounds, or nearly 1,000 more than the V-6-powered Bronco Outer Banks we tested last year. The Raptor hides that weight well in cornering, but it's palpable under acceleration.

The Raptor covered 0-60 mph in 6.3 seconds and cleared the quarter mile in 14.9 seconds in MotorTrend testing, both just 0.3 second quicker than the Outer Banks model. That's significantly slower than we originally predicted and worse than what the Raptor's weight-to-power ratio suggests it should be capable of. That also places it two whole seconds behind its chief rival, the 470-hp Jeep Wrangler Rubicon 392. Yet no matter what we tried at the track, the Raptor returned consistently sluggish runs.

The engine also fails to deliver on this truck's nickname, "Braptor." It never so much as blips, blats, rips, snorts, burbles, chortles, barks, or braps. The adjustable exhaust is performative theater, merely amplifying the engine's thrum at part-throttle and low rpm. At full throttle in any mode, the V-6 sounds too flat, too muffled, and too high-pitched for a truck this rowdy.

The SUV That Conquers All

In a motoring world overrun with Wranglers and 4Runners, the Bronco Raptor still stands out as one of a kind. With its appetite for high-speed hooning, its composure on paved roads, and its ability to tackle any type of terrain, it's as close as you'll come to finding a truck that will drive anywhere and over anything. Try to resist the urge.

Looks good! More details?2022 Ford Bronco Raptor Specifications BASE PRICE $70,095 PRICE AS TESTED $78,750 VEHICLE LAYOUT Front-engine, 4WD, 5-pass, 4-door SUV ENGINE 3.0L Twin-turbo direct-injected DOHC 24-valve 60-degree V-6 POWER (SAE NET) 418 hp @ 5,750 rpm TORQUE (SAE NET) 440 lb-ft @ 2,750 rpm TRANSMISSION 10-speed automatic CURB WEIGHT (F/R DIST) 5,778 lb (55/45%) WHEELBASE 116.5 in LENGTH x WIDTH x HEIGHT 191.0 x 85.7 x 77.8 in 0-60 MPH 6.3 sec QUARTER MILE 14.9 sec @ 91.0 mph BRAKING, 60-0 MPH 160 ft LATERAL ACCELERATION 0.67 g (avg) EPA CITY/HWY/COMB FUEL ECON 15/16/15 mpg EPA RANGE, COMB 318 miles ON SALE Now Show All

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