Ford F-150 Raptor Gains Crew Cab for 2010

Ford's F-150 SVT Raptor is a remarkably specialized vehicle. Let's face it; the market for a pickup truck designed to careen off sand dunes at 90 miles an hour is pretty limited.  The most off-roading most people do with their trucks is hopping a concrete parking divider at the mall.  Case in point: when's the last time you saw a dirty Range Rover or Mercedes G500?

So, a bit more mainstream appeal couldn't really hurt Ford's mountain-leaping monster truck.  And for 2011, the Raptor lineup is being updated to make a little more sense with the introduction of a SuperCrew variant.  Sporting four full-sized doors, the SuperCrew Raptor rides on a 12"(!) longer wheelbase than the normal cab-and-a-half model, meaning you can actually bring your friends with you while you jump sand dunes at 90 miles an hour.

The longer "family Raptor" weighs in at 194lbs heavier than the normal Raptor, which is a pretty minimal weight gain considering how much longer it is.  It has Ford's short-box 5.5' bed for hauling around whatever it is people carry with these toy trucks, making it more about passengers and less about cargo.  It also gets a gargantuan 36-gallon(!!) fuel tank, presumably so you can do more dune-jumping and goat scaring between painfully expensive fill-ups.

And you'll be filling it up a lot, because for 2011 the original 5.4L 3v V8 is finally hitting the trash can, with this year's optional new 6.2L V8 becoming standard on both sizes of Raptor.  Considering how heavy this truck is (and how those giant off-road tires jack up the effective final drive ratio to airplane territory), this V8's 411 horsepower and 434 lb-ft of torque should help a lot.

In SuperCrew form, the Raptor actually makes some sense as a work truck - it's got an 8,000lb towing capacity, and increased payload as well.

Meanwhile, all the important stuff -like the trick Fox Racing triple-bypass shocks, fancy aluminum control arms, massive track width, and more suspension travel than an overfunded congressional junket, remain.  It's the same crazy Raptor as before, only now you can take along more friends!  What's not to love?

Other changes include new color options (like the Silver of the press truck in the photos, which I'm pretty fond of) as well as a revised instrument panel that includes the 4.2" "Productivity Screen" that debuted on last year's F-series Super Duty trucks.  Now, if Ford would just get around to sticking their new PowerStroke V8 turbodiesel in there - the one with 400 horsepower and 800 lb-ft of torque - we'd really be in business.  I suppose I can keep dreaming.