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Ford Ranger is Done. We Want Mini Raptor.

Friday, December 9th, 2011

 

At the end of December, Ford will stop making the Ranger. It’s been around for decades, and was one of my favorite trucks, regardless of size. It did its job and wasn’t gigantic. And in pre-runner gear…mmmm. But it’s going away, the last one being sold to Orkin. I know, who cares.
But that means there’s an opening, maybe. Ford is already developing the next generation, and whether they call it the F-100 or Ranger, I don’t really care. What I like-sort of-is the next one might have a 1.6-liter turbo-charged engine. That motor is fairly boring, because it makes less than 200HP. But what if…they make a mini Raptor… We’ve been dreaming about this for a while. We want this. Talk about a fucking hooligan. The Raptor is fun, but it weighs 6,200lbs. It’s fun, but it’s big fun. You can’t really flick it around and you have to make sure the road or trail you’re on is wider than your average highway.

 

But imagine a Ranger-sized truck with Raptor shocks, lighter diffs of the same quality and the same awesome interior, chuck the 1.6-liter and put in either the EcoBoost twin-turbo V-6 from the F-150. It makes 365HP and 420 torques! More than enough to make this a fast, nimble and (probably) fairly efficient truck. It’d be awesome! Pre-runner in a can. Offer the 2.0L EcoTec – maybe with more aggressive tuning- for the diet option.. But the true Velociraptor was small-ish, nimble and fast. If you offer a Raptor-like truck that fits in traffic and gets 20+ MPG, and price it belowwww the big Raptor by a big amount, that would be the shit. It would be the super motard of trucks. Stuck in traffic? Cut across that park, or drive on the beach at 100MPH. It’s light. It would leave a mark like a baby deer.*

 

*Your results may vary. TST not responsible for arrests or damage done to baby Raptor by slow-moving children or organic apples thrown by fans of Earth.

 

-Zack

 

09.12.2011 News 11 Comments

What’s Should Hippies Hate More: Raptor vs Fiat 500 vs Leaf Blower

Monday, December 5th, 2011

 

A few weeks ago I was listening to Adam Carolla’s podcast, “The Adam Carolla Show.” Adam was doing his thing, ranting about the world, and today his brain fixated on gasoline leaf blowers. Between the repetitive gay jokes and Mexican racism, I learned parts of California have banned the use of gas-powered leaf blowers. I had no idea. I was born in CA, currently live in LA and I see these things everywhere, never giving them much thought. Every Saturday the gardener busts out one of these noisy, droning machines (“Los gringos are hung-over. I think I’ll spend extra care near the windows.”)  and uses his expertise to move leaves and dust from one corner of the yard to the other and blow things around in the street.

 

Adam talked about the emissions from a gas blower being several times worse than a car. I made a point to look this up when I got home. Then I forgot that task, and probably ate something while watching an episode of Top Gear for the 11th time. Thankfully, Jason Kavanagh of Edmunds’ Inside Line just completed a great article in which he tested a leaf blower to see how bad it really is. To compare, he used the car Al Gore probably prints onto handgun targets: The Ford SVT Raptor. He also threw a Fiat 500 into the mix, to see where a small-displacement car would line up. You can read the whole article here, or make the jump for a more concise version.

 

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05.12.2011 Editorials, Photos 3 Comments

How Matt Almost Won the Ford Octane Academy Invitational, But Didn’t.

Monday, September 26th, 2011

Vaughn Gittin Jr., Tanner Foust, Matt, Ken Block, and Brian Deegan

The Ford marketing department’s pimp game has been especially tight in the last couple of years. And I should know, as I, despite my journalism street cred, have been a part of it more than once. Back at our old show, Garage419, we were offered one of the “Fiesta Movement” cars for 6 months, which we turned down, because we didn’t feel like filming the same car over and over for half a year. Nevertheless, the Fiesta Movement was a huge success, leading to millions of minutes of online video coverage promoting their new small car. A year ago, I took part in the Ford Focus Rally, essentially a version of “The Amazing Race” by the same producers, except instead of public transportation we drove 7,000 miles in Ford Focus Titanium’s. (For the record, yes I got paid to participate, which is why I will not review the new Focus). It was a reality show on the surface, but more likely a not-so-subtle month-long commercial for the Focus, as many of the car’s features were integrated into challenges. This brings us to Ford’s newest plan: The Octane Academy. It’s a chance for young, aspiring action sports athletes to compete against each other, on television, while under the patient guidance of four of today’s hottest motorsports stars.

For some reason, (I’m guessing it’s because I had to drive 7,000 miles with the cruise control set to 60 on the Focus Rally) Ford decided I should be included in their Media Invitational, and even be allowed to drive fast on their test track while competing against 19 other journalists for the Octane Academy Invitational Gold Medal (no shit, they had medals.) And I almost won, but, as usual, screwed myself. It’s a long story, but don’t worry, I made it extra awesome for you. Hit the jump to read on.

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26.09.2011 Editorials, News 6 Comments

The Raptor Diaries: Matt’s Raptor Turns 1 Today

Thursday, June 2nd, 2011

Freshly detailed for its birthday after a very dirty trip to El Mirage

June 2, 2010 was an awesome day. Less than three weeks after ordering my 2010 Raptor 6.2 from Galpin Auto Sports, I got the call. The truck would be ready for pickup in 2 hours, so bring my checkbook. I was surprised, since everyone told me that the waiting list was months long at that point, but I guess I’m cool enough to skip the line. Sweet. I had requested to take delivery of my truck in Galpin’s car vault, since I thought it would make a cool video. It did.

Now here we are, 1 year to the day and 14,805 miles later, and it’s time to celebrate the most important piece of equipment in the history of The Smoking Tire, save for Tom’s first Panasonic HVX200 camera that we used for 4 years.

14,805 miles may not sound like much for a full year of road-tripping and filming with the truck, but consider this: when we’re testing a car, we have it for a week at a time. And when we have those cars, the Raptor sits. So that’s 14,000 miles in only about 4/12 months of daily use. I’d say I’ve driven closer to 65,000 or 70,000 miles in the year since I took the Raptor home.

However, when we film, no matter where it is, the Raptor comes with us. It’s our rolling crane, our crew transporter, and our gear hauler. It gets dirty, it gets climbed in and out of constantly, and it gets used. Hell, why buy a $50,000 truck with a 100,000 mile warranty if you’re not going to use the thing. It’s been off-roading, wading through water, and on thousand-mile highway road trips. And it’s as rock solid after a year of abuse as it was the day I took it home.

Has the Raptor been reliable? Absolutely. The only two problems I’ve had were minor, a sticky rear door handle and a drivers seat that became a little loose, and both were fixed under warranty at 12,000 miles. The overall average fuel economy, having never been reset since new, is currently at 11.7 mpg. Terrible, yes, but considering the utility, tax write-off status of fuel, and ability to run either 87 or 91 octane, it’s fine.

The Raptor has been an invaluable piece of equipment for The Smoking Tire for the past year, and we truly don’t know what we would do without it. Think of how much we’ve been able to improve our production quality in the last year, think of how good some of those shots are, and a great portion of that is because of the versatility of the Ford Raptor and what we’ve been able to do with it.

So, happy birthday, Raptor, and we look forward to many more years of your service.

02.06.2011 News 8 Comments

The Raptor Diaries: Matt’s Raptor Meets the 2011 Raptor SuperCrew

Saturday, April 23rd, 2011

“It’s about time a journalist finally put their money where their mouth is.”

-Jamal Hameedi, SVT Chief Design Engineer, when I told him I bought a Raptor

I purchased my 2010 Ford SVT Raptor 6.2 on June 2nd, 2010. I even took delivery of it in a gigantic vault, which is damn cool. Now it’s been 10 months and 13,000 mostly trouble-free miles, and I still love my truck. I say “mostly” trouble free because I did have two small issues: some play in the driver’s seat, and a sticking rear door handle, both of which were repaired under warranty at 12,000 miles. Needless to say, but said anyway, there is not another journalist on the planet that has more miles behind the wheel of a Raptor than I do. For my purposes, (daily driver, comfy road-tripper, shit-hauler, TST camera vehicle, and fun off-roader), there is simply no better truck than my 2010 Raptor. That’s what I thought until last week, when Ford dropped off a 2011 Raptor SuperCrew in my driveway for a review.

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23.04.2011 News, Reviews 15 Comments

Matt and the SVT Raptor Appear on Adam Carolla’s Car Cast!

Saturday, January 15th, 2011

All throughout the last few years of making The Smoking Tire and Garage419, I’ve wanted to do Adam Carolla’s Car Cast. Well now, thanks to doing my job properly on the SPEED pilot and just straight up asking to do it, my first (hopefully of many) appearance on the Car Cast. Adam, the Professor Sandy Ganz, and I spent an hour in the studio talking about how I became such a car geek, go karting, good advice for cell phones, vintage racing, and fat guys in little cars. And of course, we drop a few nuggets about the SPEED pilot we’re working on together. You gotta stay on your toes in studio with these guys, because my new nickname for Adam is going to be “Tangent.”

We then stepped outside the Gulf-liveried studio so I could show Adam and Sandy the most useful vehicle on earth, my SVT Raptor. Unsurprisingly, I get both Adam and the Professor’s seal of approval, and I teach them about proper Valentine One usage in the process. I also forget what style of engine the 6.2 is, but it’s a single overhead cam.

Video and in-studio audio after the jump.

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15.01.2011 News, Photos, Video 10 Comments

The Raptor Diaries – Part 2: Raptor as a Grip Truck

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

I’ve heard that some Raptor owners don’t actually use their trucks as trucks; that they just drive them as cars, and then use them for off-road shenanigans. Now, I completely understand that, since, from the factory, the Raptor has a body-color painted bed and they don’t want to scratch up the paint. Fortunately, I went for the dealer-installed Linex bedliner ($400), since I plan on actually using this thing as a truck to haul my crap around in, not just a camera car or off-road toy.

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17.08.2010 News, Photos 7 Comments

The Raptor Diaries: Part 1

Wednesday, August 11th, 2010

On June 5th, 2010, I bought a 2010 Ford SVT Raptor 6.2L from Galpin Auto Sports. This wasn’t just on a whim, as I had been lusting after this truck since we borrowed one from Ford to drive on the 2009 Bullrun Rally. On that trip, we learned that, not only does the Raptor have more off-road capability than nearly every other car currently in production, but also it makes a fantastic daily driver, with levels of comfort, storage space, technology, and luxury that are on par with some of today’s best luxury cars. When we decided we needed a daily driver and camera vehicle for The Smoking Tire, the Raptor seemed like the only logical decision. Of course, I waited for the 6.2L engine to arrive, since you can’t make that extra 100hp in the aftermarket for less money than the $3,000 upgrade from Ford. 9 weeks and 3,500 miles later, here’s what we’ve learned about the best sport truck money can buy.

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11.08.2010 News, Reviews 34 Comments

Matt’s New Ford SVT Raptor 6.2!

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010

Every show needs a camera car, right? Well here it is, Matt’s new Ford SVT Raptor 6.2L. Back on the old show, Matt said that his next car purchase would be a Ford SVT Raptor. True to his word, the new 6.2L beast is now at its permanent home here at The Smoking Tire HQ. Expect the truck to appear on video soon…. Initial impressions and photo gallery after the jump.

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03.06.2010 Uncategorized 25 Comments

Matt Goes Legit, Appears on Fox News

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

Clearly I wore the right shirt for the occasion. On The Fox News Car Report, we discuss the new Lexus LF-A, and of course, my personal area of expertise, the Ford F-150 Raptor

23.10.2009 News, Uncategorized, Video No Comments

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