Ford Ranger Raptor pulls bigger gap on fastest Hilux and Amarok

We did some performance testing on the mental Ford Ranger Raptor a few weeks ago. And the numbers put this double cab bakkie far ahead of anything Toyota with their GR-Sport (GR-S) Hilux, or VW with their V6 Amarok could offer.

Who would have thought? It turns out a 0 to 100 km/h time of 6.90 seconds for a full house double cab running on chunky all terrain tyres and being capable of towing 3.5-tons up the side of a mountain with ease would not be good enough to satisfy all the armchair critics out there.

The Citizen Motoring was the first in the country to do official high-performance testing on the new Ford Ranger Raptor. And it was no ordinary day at the office.

Ford brought two identical Ranger Raptors to Gerotek and had a posse of clever people overseeing what I was up to. The pressure was on to get it right. Having done this job for over 20 years and using the best Racelogic VBOX equipment in the world, I knew that I had got it right.

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Fastest bakkie in Mzansi

For the record, the two Ford Ranger Raptor models ran times that differed by only one hundredth of a second. And we made sure that we tried every drive mode on offer. From Normal, to Sport, to Baja.

We used 4×4 automatic, 4×4 high and 4×2 high. Traction on, traction off and even tried manually shifting the beast. The most consistent, and quickest method turned out to be Baja mode and just hoof the accelerator. It resulted in a best sprint time of 6.90 seconds.

The closest any other double bakkie had come was an 8.14-second run from VW’s previous generation 3.0-litre V6 turbodiesel. The best time the Toyota Hilux GR-s achieved was 10.34 seconds.

But still there was some grumbling going on behind the scenes as the numbers we got. It didn’t quite match the claims made by Ford. Nor did they correlate with the numbers achieved by overseas testers in Australia and the US.

Sub-6 times elsewhere

These guys were claiming unheard of 0 to 100 km/h times for a double cab bakkie that saw the Ford Ranger Raptor dip well into the 5-second bracket.

I gave up trying to explain that we test up at 1 500 m above sea level. The air is thin up here. It is dry and does not carry a lot of power releasing oxygen.

They test at sea level where the air carries more volume and moisture, as well as more oxygen. It therefore allows an engine to perform better.

We also use 95 octane fuel, where they have access to 98 and 102 octane fuel in some cases. This too helps with the combustion process while allowing the computers and sensors that control all things related to boost and timing to give the Ford Ranger Raptor the most aggressive setup it can.

Does this make a real difference? There was only one way of finding out. Armed with another Ford Ranger Ranger, last week we set sail for KwaZulu-Natal to test it as sea level.

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Ford Raptor Raptor shines at sea level

I must admit I was a bit nervous that this exercise might prove not to be the success we were hoping for. But this fear was comprehensively dismissed when the very first run off the bat, using the already tried and tested Baja mode, I saw a 5.87 flash up on my VBOX.

I ran it again and this time 5.86 flashed up. And the third run saw a 5.84 being recorded.

This was no fluke, our South African Ford Ranger Raptor was now on equal terms with any overseas numbers out there. And we had proven that this double cab has moved the bakkie performance benchmark far ahead. So far that I don’t think anybody is going to have an answer to it for years to come. See what we mean by that on the chart below.

But don’t go away. We have a follow up instalment of our Ford Ranger Raptor sea level road trip.

I decided to test what would happen if we added some high-octane fuel in the mix. And stomp on the brake pedal to build some boost before launching this bakkie. The results turned out to be equally interesting…