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Expanding upon the success of the Raptor brand makes perfect sense for Ford, and the Australian market is in the box seat for future developments.
Ford is working on expanding its Raptor stable, and could bring a standalone Raptor-branded ‘supercar’ to the market in coming years.
This was initially tabled publicly by Jim Farley – global CEO of Ford – who told Top Gear that Ford is “in the middle of creating something” and posed this question: “Should Ford make an off-road supercar? Not a version of a car, a standalone supercar.”
Ford currently offers the popular Ranger Raptor in Australia, along with the F-150 and Bronco Raptors for some left-hand-drive markets.
A standalone Ford Raptor model, instead of a performance variant of an existing vehicle, would be a step-change for Ford’s off-road performance brand.
The F-150, Bronco and Ranger Raptors are all powered by twin-turbocharged petrol V6 engines, and have large race-bred Fox dampers with internal bypassing, Live Valve technology and larger all-terrain tyres. All three models are aimed at off-road performance.
Ford also has the F-150 Raptor R, which uses a 5.2-litre supercharged V8 that makes 522kW and 868Nm.
Speaking to Australian media at a recent media event, regional boss Kay Hart said there is lots of potential for a Raptor expansion.
“Raptor is such a strong brand and I think it embodies everything that we are looking at from a performance standpoint, from a durability standpoint, from a ''Built Ford Tough' standpoint and from an off-road standpoint," Hart said.
"And I think our ability to expand how we look at Raptor, across Raptor or Ford Performance, there is big scope.
“It’s got such a great following, such great passion, we want to see where we can obviously take it”.
If an off-road Raptor supercar happened, could such a thing come to Australia? Hart said it would be a good fit.
“There is clearly a strong performance and a strong off-roading market segment, customer dynamics in Australia. And so clearly, yes. I think its the right fit. Be it performance on-road, or performance off-road,” Hart said.
According to Farly, Ford’s recent success at Dakar is fuelling this development of a possible supercar, where strong results included a stage win and a podium finish.
“Yes, the Raptor T1+ at Dakar represents the ultimate Raptor in many ways, and we’re learning a lot from that both in terms of the competition but also in terms of feedback from customers, so all I can say is stay tuned,” Farley told Top Gear.
Sam Purcell has been writing about cars, four-wheel driving and camping since 2013, and obsessed with anything that goes brum-brum longer than he can remember. Sam joined the team at CarAdvice/Drive as the off-road Editor in 2018, after cutting his teeth at Unsealed 4X4 and Pat Callinan’s 4X4 Adventures. Off-road writer of the Year, Winner - Sam Purcell
