Ford Reveals its Desert-Prepped F-150 Raptor

The upcoming F-150 Raptor has pickup fans everywhere in a frenzy. Not only is this one badass-looking truck, but its tweaked-out 3.5-liter EcoBoost V-6 has everyone intrigued. Ford has remained mum on official specs, but the automaker did hint at its boosted V-6 producing a whopping 450 ponies. Today, the blue oval dropped another bombshell on us by revealing the desert-race-prepped Raptor.

The race-ready rig is clearly pretty heavily based upon the production Raptor, according to the images and info that Ford released. In case you’ve been buried under a rock pile for the last year, the new Raptor gains the aforementioned 3.5-liter EcoBoost V-6 with 450 raging horses, a new 10-speed auto transmission, a fully-boxed frame with additional high-strength steel, a six-inch lift relative to the base F-150, a Torsen front diff, dual exhaust, 17-inch beadlock-capable rollers, and BF Goodrich All-Terrain KO2 tires.

Making the road-prepped Raptor ready to tackle the grueling task of off-road racing, Ford Performance had to do a lot less work than one may expect. The new bits on this race-ready rig include 3-inch-diameter external-bypass front and rear Fox Racing Shox, race-prepped front and rear springs to increase ride height even further, a custom roll cage, MasterCraft seats with five-point harnesses, window nets, LED light bars, a racing fuel cell, a Lowrance GPS, a RacePak digital dash, and a data logger.

The new F-150 Raptor race truck officially hits the soil on February 4th through 7th at the Parker 425 in Parker, AZ. Following that run, it heads to the Mint 400, the Laughlin Desert Classic, the Vegas to Reno, the Bluewater Challenge, then ends its racing season at the Pahrump Nugget 250.