(car engine roars)
- Oh, fireborne on the dunes of the Baja 1000.
This F150 charmander,
evolved to an unstoppable off-road Charizard.
When it came to hauling, crawling and all-terrain brawling
this truck is quite the clever girl.
This is our 150th episode of Up to Speed
and what better to celebrate, what better way (mumbles).
This is our 150th episode of Up to Speed
and what better way to celebrate 150,
than with Ford's ultimate dinosaur truck.
This is everything you need to know
to get up to speed on the Ford Raptor.
(lively music)
If you didn't know, I'm a huge bookworm.
I love reading because it makes me smarter
and my lady thinks I'm sexy when I read.
Audible's great when you wanna read,
but you also gotta do other stuff.
I just pop in my little ear buds,
and listen to Michelle Obama's new audio book
or Diddy's new audio book, "Honor Yourself."
I like listening to stuff that pumps me up,
but if those titles are not for you,
there are hundreds of thousands of others to choose from,
but the problem with traditional reading
is you can't do it while you're sleeping.
But now, thanks to Audible Sleep,
I can drift off in a sound bath with Sarah Oster,
or meditate with my boy, Diddy.
Honestly, that sounds very relaxing to me.
So if you'd like to lose yourself in the musings
of wordsmiths like Diddy, head over to audible.com/uptospeed
or text up to speed to 500-500.
That's audible.com/uptospeed
or text up to speed to 500-500,
so they know that we sent you.
Support, the companies that support donut,
so we can keep making all this cool stuff
for you guys, for free.
Everybody loves the Raptor.
I'm talking Ford fan boys, I'm talking truck enthusiasts,
Doom donkeys, Hillside honchos.
Literally everyone, my mom loves this truck.
It is an icon amongst a long line of Ford F-150s,
aka the best selling vehicle
in Le Estados Unidos, since 1977.
Some of you might know
that the Raptor has the roots in Baja 1000,
but did you know that under it's reptilian skin,
it's got some shocking ancestry, That's right.
I'm talking about the Ford SVT.
Geez, watch where you're aiming that thing, Thor.
Chapter one, the great American truck storm.
It all started in 1990,
five years before post Malone was born.
When Chevy came out with the 454 SS.
They built it on the same platform as your grand pappy's
Chevy 1500 except this sleeper will give grand pappy
a freaking heart attack.
The 454 SS came with, you guessed it,
a 454 cubic inch V8, making 380 pound feet
of stump ripping torques and 230 buff horsies.
(car engine roars)
A year later, Chevy bumped up the power baby to 255,
and the torques to 405.
They had freaking Bilstein shocks.
They had a blacked out grill make it look all mean
like Darth Vader in a fancy red bow tie.
Like if Darth Vader was going to a fancy cocktail party,
and honestly guys, this thing is so tight
that it's making me sick
Now you're making me,
You're making me, stop it.
I can not.
The Chevy 454 SS kicked off
the amazing muscle truck trend
and a year later GMC debuted the Syclone with S.
This bad ass sports truck was a low profile,
all wheel-drive Sonoma featuring a 4.3 liter,
turbo-charged V6 making 280 horsepower
with 14 pounds of boost on tap.
Sure, it only had a 500 pound payload
and it couldn't tow like a normal truck.
But who cares about towing when you're beating Ferrari's?
Yes, this truck beat Ferrari's.
Car and Driver race, a GMC Syclone with an S,
against a Ferrari 348 and a Syclone with an S smoked them.
And it quickly became the fastest production truck
in the world.
(car engine roars)
Back at the Ford motor company, they were watching Chevy
and GMC have all this performance fun
and they figured having a halo truck of their own
could only, boost their lineup.
That's spoiler alert, little hint, little foreshadowing.
And that's when Ford picked up the phone they were like,
"SVT?"
"Yeah, it's me poppa Ford.
Look, I think it's time that we Polish up the old oval."
SVT is just like,
"I think I got a couple of ideas, yes."
So in 1992, three years before post Malone was born,
Ford's special vehicle team debuted the first SVT cars
at the Chicago auto show.
People were drooling over the SVT Cobra and Cobra R
both built from the Fox body Mustang,
but the bell of the dang ball was the SVT lightning.
(car engine roars)
Described as a Mustang GT with a cargo bed,
this upgraded F-150 came with a high output,
5.8 liter V8, stomping out 230 horse powers.
It borrowed its cast iron cylinder heads from the GT 40,
had big old squirters, and even dual exhaust.
The SVT Lightning marked Ford's first step
into the high performance truck market.
And if Ford didn't make the Lightning,
we would have never gotten the Raptor.
(upbeat music)
Now, there is going to be an entire episode of Up to Speed,
on the Ford Lightning coming very soon.
So, we're just going to fast forward a little bit,
but before we do that,
make sure that you hit that subscribe button
and the notifications bell
so you don't miss the Lightning episode,
because it's gonna be sick.
Fast forward to the early 2000s.
Ford was getting ready to launch the 11th gen F-150
and with it SVT would develop an all-new Lightning,
which was easier said than done.
I mean the Ford SVT Lightning was at one point
the fastest production truck in the world.
So the pressure was on.
Chapter two, Ford's big problem.
Unveiled at the 2003 Detroit auto show,
this buff looking horse had 22 inch wheels,
a sleek, low roof line and a whole lot of vents.
While everyone on the floor was buzzing with excitement,
behind the scenes, Ford and SVT had a bit of a problem.
The 11th gen F-150 was a big old boy.
The engine, the brakes, the tires,
they were bigger than ever and it didn't make sense
from a performance perspective.
I mean, think about it.
Sports cars are small, for a reason.
There was no way that this new concept would ever perform
like the previous SVT Lightning.
Then chief engineer of SVT, Jamal Hamidi,
had a little light bulb go off.
Instead of trying to shoehorn a sports car into a truck,
why not just amplify the trucks DNA?
And we all know what is in Ford's DNA.
I'm talking about the Baja 1000 baby,
a grueling off-road race that's been going since the 60s.
Everything, from motorcycles to buggies,
the big old boss horse trophy trucks,
try their best just to finish and Ford's been racing it
since the very first year.
Ford motor company and Baja Racing go together
like an episode of Up to Speed and that guy who keeps asking
for an episode of Up to Speed about my debt.
You can't have one without the other.
So with this new direction, SVT was going to ditch
the Lightning's sports car aspirations
and harking back to Ford's rich Off road history.
Little did they know, they were about to create,
the OEM performance Off road truck market.
Chapter three.
A dino in the dunes.
The SEMA convention of 2008
showcased a bunch of very 2008 cars.
The Pontiac Solstice GXP,
a whole bunch of Hummer H3 eights builds
and a smart Bat mobile.
It was a weird time, okay.
That's when I came of age, but just like in 1992,
Ford once again had the belle of the damn ball.
Dubbed the SVT Raptor.
(croaks)
That's how raptors talk.
Their all-new truck was almost eight inches wider
than the stock F150
and came with big-old hot board fender flares.
It was painted a striking molten orange,
like a freaking magma volcano that ate all the dinosaurs.
Ford did away with the classic blue oval
and instead went with the big old F-O-R-D across the grill.
The hood even had vents
that kinda looked like Raptor scales.
Actually, dinosaurs were a lot more similar
to birds than lizards.
A bird, that doesn't sound very scary.
The SVT Raptor came with 35 inch wheels,
which were massive compared to the Lightning's.
It's base engine made 390 ponies,
but the thing about the Raptor
is they liked to hunt in pairs.
That's right, Ford had a second Raptor
and they called it the Raptor R. R for racing.
This mostly stock race version had a modified 6.2 liter V8
tuned to make 500 snarling horse powers.
Not only did Ford debut two Raptors at the 2008 SEMA show,
they also announced that the Raptor R
would be leaving the Vegas stage
to go directly to the Baja 1000.
That is freaking insane.
Yeah, they had won eight out of nine championships
the year before,
and now they were entering a new factory vehicle
in one of the most grueling Off road races ever.
Ford publicly put their reputation on the line,
but their goal wasn't to win another championship.
Their goal was to simply cross the finish line
and show the world that the SVT Raptor
was the ultimate performance truck.
24 hours before the start of the 2008 Baja 1000,
Ford's Raptor team arrived down in Mexico.
They probably visited La Bufadora, Spanish,
for the blow hole, a beautiful natural wonder
outside of Ensenada,
where water is blown hundreds of feet into the air.
After sightseeing,
they decided to give the Raptor R a test run.
The new truck took to the sand like a pro
until the engine died.
- [Man] Guys okay?
- [Male] No. That's right.
24 hours before the big race,
they spent all night wrenching
and before they knew it, the sun was rising.
The team was getting ready to pack up
and Ford's reputation was gonna suffer.
But then.
(car engine roars)
The Raptor R's supercharged 6.2 liter V8 roared to life.
One of the team members touched the truck,
with tears in his eyes and said,
"Life finds a way."
Driver Steve Ola Gaze piloted the Raptor R to a great start.
They drove it aggressively for hours on end
without any issues through steep rough terrain
and flew 100 miles per hour over a dry Lake bed
in the middle of the night.
(car engine roars)
- [Man] 99, 100.
- The other classy trucks were chopping
like wimpy little puny flies,
and after 25 hours, 28 minutes and 10 seconds,
the Raptor team crossed the finish line.
They came in third place out of nine teams
and when you consider out of those nine teams,
only four made it to the finish line,
I think you can say, mission freaking accomplished guys.
Ford had proved,
that their SVT Raptor could drive you to work on weekdays
and tear the freak out of the dunes on weekends,
but in the end would people even care?
Chapter four, a Jurassic truck.
Two years after their Baja finish,
the Ford SVT Raptor was released to the public
and in just 12 months.
That's a year for all my math boys.
Nothing gets past you guys, you're smart,
Raptor sales topped 10,000 trucks.
That's nearly as much as the first gen Lightning did
in its entire production run.
Safe to say people freaking love dinosaur trucks.
Based on the 12th gen F-150,
you could get it as a two-door Supercab
or a four-door SuperCrew.
It came in tuxedo black, Oxford white, blue flame
and who could forget that iconic molten orange.
Lava is the second coolest thing in nature.
First year options featured a 6.2 liter Triton V8
making 411 prehistoric ponies and a smaller 5.4 liter V8,
but that option went extinct by the next year
because let's be honest, you guys,
you don't get a high performance vehicle
to get the small engine option.
The tippity top-tier Raptor sold for 41 grand
which was about 50 K in 2020 money
and honestly that's a pretty fair price
for an SVT-developed Baja proven four wheel drive,
street legal performance truck.
Don't get me wrong, 50 K, that's a lot of money.
That's a lot of money,
but most top-tier luxury trucks today
they get up into like six figures.
When you think about it like that,
the Raptor really is a great value
(car engine roars)
(crowd cheers)
Just to let you know how bad ass this truck is,
the SVT Raptor is electronically limited
to a 100 miles per hour when Off-roading.
100 miles per hour off-road.
That means that it can go over a 100 miles Off-road,
if they didn't limit it.
That sounds really fun and really, really scary.
(car engine roars)
With the launch of the 13th gen F-150,
we also got the second gen Raptor,
this time dropping the SVT name entirely.
It was badged simply as the Ford Raptor.
It looked more futuristic than ever with cool headlights
and an even more pronounced grill.
The updated dino featured a 10 speed auto,
an upgraded all-wheel drive system,
long travel, Fox shocks, and a roaring,
twin turbo-charged 3.5 liter,
24 valve high output EcoBoost V6,
easily one of the best production engines
in recent history.
I freaking love these things.
I want to put one in a Mustang.
The Raptors new lightweight aluminum body
was 500 pounds lighter than the first gen
and when paired with the EcoBoost 450 horse powers
and massive 510 pound feet of torques,
this truck friggin reaps.
(car engine roars)
If you make $ 1 million per episode, like me
and you want superficial upgrades,
Roush performance is outfitting,
select Raptor's with some added perks.
For $17,000 they'll put on red wheels,
decals and embroidered leather seats.
Or you can take that $ 17,000
and buy a second truck.
Like any of the trucks from this episode of the D-list.
I'm going to put the link in the description below.
Check it out after this video.
And if you don't have that kind of Rousher Raptor money,
Ford's got your freaking back.
They're offering a smaller truck
with performance similar to the full size Raptor
and it's called the Ranger Raptor.
That's right, the original Ford ranger is coming back, baby.
I love this truck with an all new Raptor package.
Ford, I know you're watching, cause you guys,
watch all this stuff.
Please, let me have one, for a year.
I'll return it, just a little scuffed up.
Ford absolutely knocked it out of the Jurassic freaking park
with the Raptor and proved that come hell or high dune,
they're gonna make a sick, affordable performance truck.
It's amazing that trucks like this still exist
because sadly, too many cool things die out
before people appreciate them.
(upbeat music)
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Guys, this is the 150th episode of Up to Speed.
When we started doing this, what, three years ago now,
I had no idea,
that we'd still be making this fun show every week
and I got to say it's my favorite thing to do
and I'm so grateful that you guys watch it.
We're doing it, we're still here
and I'm just so proud of the people I've met
doing Donut Media and what Donut media has become
and it is entirely for you guys.
And because of you guys, this community is awesome.
I love seeing our Reddit.
I love all the memes that you guys make.
This really is bigger and better and cooler
than anything I could have imagined.
And, I just wanna thank you guys so, so, so much.
I love you.