Ford‘s new F-150 Raptor was previously unveiled in Detroit and has been rumored to be in its testing phase at the moment. The testing is said to be a 66-mile trail near Southern United States which is said to replicate the similar conditions like that of Mexico’s Baja race course. The conditions described on the race course were “fast sandy washes, deep-rutted silt beds, steep climbs in deep sand, and slow meticulous crawls through tight trenches.” Despite these challenging conditions, Ford claimes that the 2017 F-150 Raptor completed the course 25 percent faster than its predecessor. The second-generation Raptor benefits from improvements such as being lighter by 500 pounds than its predecessor and has the same weight-saving features of the basic F-150.
The new F-150 Raptor consists of a 3.5-liter EcoBoost V6 engine which brings a significant improvement in the power-to-weight ratio. It will be connected to a ten-speed automatic transmission and an all-new four-wheel-drive system with a torque-on-demand transfer case that manages power distribution between the front and rear wheels.The F-150 Raptor will feature a rugged front bumper, ventilated side skirts and 17-inch alloy wheels with BFGoodrich All-Terrain KO2 tires. “At the end of each lap, the new Raptor completed a tabletop jump consisting of a steep ramp up to a two-foot plateau, then a step-off back to level ground,” Ford said in a statement. “The vehicles tested were early build prototypes made from a mix of 2015 F-150 Raptor and 2017 F-150 Raptor components.” The company claimes that it will continue testing the new Ford F-150 throughout this year, the next and will be in showrooms by the fall of 2016.
