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Ford built the Bronco Raptor to take over as the undisputed king of off-roading.
The 2022 Ford Bronco Raptor is here. Or, more specifically, press loaners of the Bronco Raptor are here, since customers who put down pre-orders may still need to wait a long time to get their trucks. Ford built the so-called "Braptor" to take Jeep's Wrangler down a peg and reign as the undisputed king of hardcore factory off-roaders—but when the Blue Oval might be able to actually build enough Raptors to meet demand remains a serious question.
Essentially doubling down on everything that made the F-150 Raptor so popular, the new top Bronco trim borrows a ton of F-150 parts to beef up its suspension and drivetrain in a smaller package ready for every off-roading environment. From a simple appearance perspective, the Braptor sure looks the part, so as soon as my press loan arrived I took this beast straight out for some hardcore off-roading at Rowher Flats in Southern California.
My memories of the original Bronco Raptor press trip for the official launch months ago never faded. I remember high-speed jumping, the gnarliest rock-crawling I've ever seen, and excellent on-road driving dynamics. But all on my own at Rowher Flats, where steep and rutted hillclimbs pair with wide open fire roads, I needed to reacquaint myself with the truck in its native habitat.
Using the Bronco Raptor's electronically controlled GOAT modes, which stands for "Goes Over Any type of Terrain," usually brings up a warning on the gauge cluster reading "4x4 shift in progress." In and of itself, the Bronco Raptor also represents the recent, major shift in the four-wheeling industry towards ever more hardcore trucks and SUVS, as Ram built the TRX to conquer the F-150 Raptor, Ford built the Bronco to unseat the Wrangler, and Jeep responded with the Gladiator and the Wrangler Rubicon 392.
The Bronco Raptor's performance targets legit Ultra4 racecars with all the upgrades possible, running the gamut from electronically controlled Fox LiveValve 3.1-inch shocks, chassis and roof reinforcements, and a ton of parts cribbed from the F-150 including wheel carriers, brakes, and beefier axles to control all the extra power. And the power is definitely required, because Ford Performance decided to install a massive set of 37-inch BFGoodrich K02 All-Terrain tires, the largest ever fitted to an SUV from the factory.
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Spinning those tires, a smaller 3.0-liter version of the F-150's twin-turbocharged EcoBoost V6 pumps out 418 horsepower and 440 lb-ft of torque. The same 10-speed automatic transmission with crucial paddles shifters on the steering wheel routes that grunt to the rear or all four wheels in high and low-range four-wheel drive. On the pavement, the 10-speed that Ford and GM developed together shifts smoothly and tries valiantly to help the Raptor achieve middling fuel economy (a fool's errand, as I averaged about 11 MPGs total during the course of a week). But off-road, and especially in low range, the transmission tends to shift too often—which makes the paddle shifters so important to help prevent wheel slip and weighty lurching.
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The paddle shifters help to tame that 10-speed along with the standard gear selector lever and Ford's GOAT mode dial. Piano-style buttons top the dash controlling more off-roading features like the disconnecting front sway bar, front and rear lockers, traction control, and differential-based trail turn assist, while buttons on the steering wheel allowed me to play with the exhaust note, steering weight, suspension damping, and "Raptor" mode. Altogether, the electronics largely do their job but flipping through each setting can sometimes feel too computerized, as warning lights and display pages pop up then disappear, only to set off dinging moments later.
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If I kept the Bronco Raptor longer, I'd probably make the effort to set up my own customizable modes. But in my short time with the SUV, I mostly used the GOAT dial while off-roading. Upon arriving at Rowher Flats, a little playground of rocks quickly reacquainted me with all the capabilities I might have forgotten—I climbed straight over the obstacles easily but probably didn't even need four-low or the lockers, in reality.
I chose to air down the 37-inch tires to around 22 PSI with my Coyote Enterprises tire deflators, which make the job easy and quick on a hot day in the desert. Then I headed straight up the hardest route I knew at Rowher, often choosing the hardest line on the hardest route in quintessential YouTuber fashion. And the Bronco Raptor just gobbled up anything I threw at it, without missing a beat once.
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We climbed up the ridge so easily that maybe I began to get a little overconfident. Headed back down on higher-speed fire roads, I selected Baja Mode on the GOAT dial and began doing a bit of drifting around corners just for fun. As I discussed Ford's wisdom in offering all-terrain tires instead of mud-terrains for the camera, a strange noise began to catch my attention from the rear. At first, I figured the removable hardtop had probably come a little loose with all the jostling but eventually, looked down at the Bronco Raptor's extensive off-roading gauges and saw that the right rear tire had gone down to 2 PSI. Not great!
Luckily, Ford ships the new top-spec Bronco with a full-sized matching spare on the rear swingout door, rather than a touring tire mounted underneath the trunk like the Toyota 4Runner TRD Pro I drove a couple of months prior. Using the factory-supplied tools, I swapped on the spare in about half an hour—which gave me time to nurse my bruised ego and begin wondering why I had gotten my first-ever flat off-roading.
I reached the conclusion that I can't plame the BFGoodrich tires, which seem excellent for all-terrains. But the Bronco Raptor's incredible chassis tuning and power simply put a ton of strain on that rubber. After all, the ride feels so smooth that I found myself grinning and ripping down the hill in classic Polaris RZR fashion—but at 5,733pounds, the Bronco Raptor weighs only nine pounds less than an F-150 Raptor or almost three times as much as a RZR! So the tires definitely need to absorb a ton of punishment during any off-roading adventures (and maybe journalists who drove this previously did some damage earlier, too, or so I told myself).
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Changing flats is definitely part of the off-roading experience and Ford's tools do a great job, including an extra spacer to help the small scissor jack cope with the Bronco Raptor's additional ride height. Meanwhile, popping off the wheel gave me an excellent chance to take a closer look at the bigger brakes, serious shocks, and the wheel studs that help to make this SUV the most aggressive ever. But I specifically asked Ford's engineers why they installed all-terrains during the drive event back at Johnson Valley and they admitted the decision catered to the many buyers who will probably never take their Bronco Raptor off-roading.
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And those engineers sound right to me, simply because insane dealer markups of $50,000 easy over the Bronco Raptor's MSRP will prevent most people from wanting to risk damage while four-wheeling. In West LA, the grumbling exhaust, massive fender flares, and enormous tires truly attracted more attention than any car I've ever driven, suggesting that the market for this eye-catching mall-crawler remains strong nonetheless.
But when I got home from Rowher Flats (after taking it easy for the rest of the trail since I no longer had a working spare to count on), by a complete stroke of luck, I ended up parked next to a two-door Bronco with the Sasquatch package. I'd previously driven a four-door Big Bend but this one really got me thinking that for the money, the two-door with Sasquatch and 35-inch tires probably does the trick—just a shame the V6 can't come with a manual.
Given all the money in the world, I might consider the Bronco Raptor. But if I planned to get any gnarlier than the Whole Foods parking lot, mud-terrains (probably 40s) would definitely enter the picture. Then again, with 40s, there's a good chance I wouldn't even know where to find an actual challenge for Ford's undisputed king of off-roading. In the meantime, stay tuned for my next video here on HotCars, where I test the Bronco Raptor's stellar on-road driving dynamics for all the potential buyers who want to know what real life in a Bronco Raptor looks like.
Sources: ford.com, youtube.com, fs.usda.gov, coyoteents.com, cjponyparts.com, and bfgoodrichtires.com.
Michael Van Runkle grew up surrounded by Los Angeles car culture, going to small enthusiast meets and enormous industry shows. He learned to drive stick shift in a 1948 Chevy pickup with no first gear and currently dailies his 1998 Mitsubishi Montero while daydreaming about one day finishing up that Porsche 914 project. He's written in various media since graduating from UC Berkeley in 2010 and started at HotCars in February 2018.