2026 Ford Ranger Raptor - POV Quick Drive (Short Off-Road Course)

[00:00] Today we're driving a Ford Ranger Raptor, though, it is not my Ranger Raptor. This is a 2026 Ranger Raptor, 4 or 5 horsepower, 4 or 30 pound feet of torque from a 3-liter twin-turbo EcoBoost V6.

[00:14] We've got a couple new color options for 2026. This is one of them. We'll put all the details and specs in the description, and the other difference I'm noticing here with this 2026 Ranger Raptor is we no longer have any turn signal indicators on

[00:26] the mirrors. Anyway, as you guys probably tell, this thing is filthy. We're going to take it off-road through a short course here at Road America, at the Mama Spring Rally. On top of the side, start it up, get our drive mode set, and head out and have a bit of fun

[00:38] in the mud and the dirt like that. As many of you guys know, I own a 2024 Ford Ranger Raptor, and it's one of the most fun and

[00:50] best vehicles I've ever owned, slash driven, spent a ton of time in it off-road. We will return to off-road mode.

[01:02] We've got our rear differential locked, where in four-wheel drive high, that should be all we need from this today. Driving position, excellent, all right, let's set off.

[01:15] Feel that rear axle skipping there, let's go into our off-road settings, we'll unlock that rear diff just so we can turn a bit easier initially, at least on pavement.

[01:32] Here we've got off-road steering, very cool, on look at this, we've got a new steering wheel button configuration, that's interesting, and they've added a pick up and hang up button

[01:50] on the button pad, they forgot that with the Ranger Raptor, and they've added it here, okay, I wonder if cruise control doesn't automatically enable lane keep assist now, awesome,

[02:04] some nice changes for 2026. All right, let's put another round. Yes sir, blue course I assume. This one is a blue course, so what we're going to do is go into four low for me right now.

[02:17] Four low, okay. Go ahead and turn that dial until we're in off-road mode, there we are, right there, cool, and you are good to go. Great, so cool. So of course, hard left right there, start following the blue aerosol.

[02:30] Cool, thank you. All right, four low, we're going to need to do that, we're going to do that, we're going to do a three point turn here.

[02:51] Just the nature of the beast, we've got great cameras on this truck, and we're just going to throw us in Baja exhaust because why not?

[03:07] Pretty gnarly rocks through here. We might go into normal suspension just to kind of soften some of those impacts. Beautiful, the thing I love about the Ranger Raptor is it is the right size, it's compact,

[03:32] it's easy to fit through tight trails, tree gaps, you have great forward visibility, and

[03:45] it can Baja this thing as the dynamics of a sports car on a dirt road on a fast, dirt path. It can rock crawl reasonably well, it's not, doesn't have the best ground clearance break

[04:02] over wrangle, but with a mild lift and some 34s or 35s, it's about as capable as any mid-sized truck could be, it's got the right hardware.

[04:15] If a piano fell on my 24 Ranger Raptor, I would go out and buy another one immediately.

[04:28] It's nice to see that I've made some subtle updates here, we've got to get a press car in and see if some of those changes are real world here with the cruise control and with

[04:42] the phone hanging up and picking up, I've got to concentrate a little bit more here, we've got a tighter situation with these trees, KO2s are gripping pretty well out here through

[04:58] the slush, through the slush, we're just damning it right, cool, great, great, great, perfect, nice and easy over this rock, perfect, keeping straight, keeping straight, now

[05:24] Just idling through here. Okay, right there.

[05:42] The night is slow. It's slow as the truck will let you go. Cool. Perfect. Here we go. Coming up. The passenger. A little throttle. Perfect. There you go.

[05:54] Right there. You're going to have the same thing on the driver. Just a little throttle to get over that. Nice. Nice and easy. Perfect. Cool. And now driver rear.

[06:06] Nice. Beautiful. Thank you, sir. You're welcome. And we got open depths here, too. So we're not even locked. We got a locking front, locking rear.

[06:18] There's off-road cruise control, which never really use much.

[06:41] steering feels a little bit smoother in this 26, too. Not as much resistance here. This is just such a great truck. Totally biased by saying that, but it really is just another level compared to all the other mid-size options.

[07:11] Oh, there's dirt slinging up there. We'll close that real quick. All right. Bit of an articulation situation. Why not lock that rear diff? It's an electronically locking diff.

[07:23] So it locks up immediately. We'll just idle our way through this. Check articulation. Not a ton of front articulation. Of course, because this is independent front suspension. But that rear watts link axle.

[07:37] Moving around flexing a bit back there. Pretty drama-free. Unlike that rear diff real quick. So we can get some turning radius out of this.

[07:57] Got some mud right here.

[08:11] Howdy. All right. Bit of water. Crossing up here. This is deep, surprisingly deep.

[08:23] Look at that. Follow our bow wave. Front parking sense. It's not available. Probably because they're underwater. And we'll take this right line here, which looks extra challenging through this mud and

[08:39] off-camber corner. We'll stay to the right. Give this guy's toes some space. Cool.

[08:51] There you go. Thank you, sir. There we are. All right. Nice. Wow. And we can turn off our parking sense.

[09:08] There we go. All right. Blue course. Coming in. Put it on our turn signal. This is new.

[09:21] More articulation. Should we lock our rear diff? Let's do it. All right. Perfectly set in here. Keeping it on our spotter. You can see what we can't.

[09:33] He's got a great beard. We'll all stand in there doing it. Look at that. Ange this way, keeping it straight, keeping it slow over these rocks. And again, in for low, we are just idling through.

[09:47] A little bit of left foot break to keep us from going too fast. Wonderful. All right.

[10:03] Just on my way to Starbucks. Bit of mud. We'll leave the diff unlocked through this so we can turn.

[10:16] There we go. Crab walker away up here. Get her done.

[10:28] Get her done. And I bring my brother, Earl, too. It can sound like you're going fast in for low.

[10:41] We're only going 18. All right. We're going to put our dampers in off-road mode. See how that changes things up. We're going to stay left here to the blue course. And we've got some more articulation.

[10:54] Look at that. This truck in stock form is just amazing.

[11:06] A little bit stiffer today than I'm used to off-roading, just because we are at placard pressures. Yeah, 38.39.

[11:19] Let's get our off-road page here. Oh, yeah, this is nice and deep on the left. Ranger Raptor don't care.

[11:34] KL3s even do OK in the mud.

[11:46] All right. Turning radius. I think we can make it. I think we can do it. We're good in the back. We're good in the front. We're clear. Look at that, beautiful.

[12:07] All right. Another spotter here. Mud is about over. I'm going to lock through your diff for this, just so we don't have any slippage.

[12:21] Cool. Great. A little bit more. Now it's about that. Got it. All right.

[12:33] Nice. Cool. Thank you, sir. Got a 360 camera down here too, which we will employ. It's nice to have that.

[12:45] Looks like there's a bit of mud slung up on our mirror there. Long lock that diff. Yes, all this stuff is in the screen, but it's easily accessible,

[12:58] and it seems to respond pretty fast. When I first got the Ranger Raptor, my biggest concern was everything in the screen. And after living with it all this time, it's no longer really a concern of mine.

[13:11] It's just, I've gotten used to it. I've lived with it. All the climate controls are physical, which I appreciate. And everything else you can customize to your AR modes. You can quickly change drive modes. You're steering, suspension, exhaust.

[13:23] It's all right here on the steering wheel. They added the phone buttons, which is great. It's the one thing they forgot about in 2024 when they made the Raptor. I've had a couple random glitches with my Ranger Raptor,

[13:48] where sometimes your my mode manual will go back. Instead of starting up to your my mode menu, it'll default to starting up to trip 1 or trip 2.

[14:00] You just have to go back to your my mode. Occasionally, the R button will stop working, but you just disconnect the battery, reconnect it. After I installed my auto-stop-start eliminator down there,

[14:12] I stopped using my R mode with every startup cycle. And that R mode button failure stopped happening, which is good. Just a fantastic truck.

[14:24] Super fun out here today. Glad to be able to share this off-road course with you guys. I think that's going to be a video. Thank you so much for watching. We'll see you on the next one. We'll be off-roading my Ranger Raptor here at some point soon.

[14:36] I just put a set of the Yokohama Geolander G003 tires on mine. And so a 34. So those are 285-75R17s.

[14:48] These are 285-70R17s. So still skinny, but taller side walls. And the 34s just fit great, really, really nice tires. More of a hardcore heavy-duty mud terrain tire.

[15:02] But yeah, the K03s do everything really well. They're actually really good in the snow. Once you break them in, once you drive them about two or three thousand miles, they do okay in the wet. But mostly just impressed with their snow performance.

[15:16] Let's take our nose out here. Ranger Raptor handled all that like a champ. There's some tight sections, and it was no worse for wear squeezing through.

[15:37] We will park this, and I think that'll be a wrap.

[15:57] Yeah, some of this looks the same. Some of it looks a little different.

[16:10] Interesting. Yeah, I got a lot of these changes with that software update. Is there anything else they've changed up in here?

[16:24] Got all your ox switches, your garage control. No, I think it's just this, this, this button, they added these buttons.

[16:36] And maybe the cruise control is the same. Maybe I just haven't driven my Ranger Raptor in a while.

[16:48] Great truck. You know what, we'll clean off that camera lens for the next person.

[17:01] There it is.

[17:13] Factory bed liner. Oh, they did, I think, get rid of one of the outlets over there. The rest of this looks pretty similar. Cool. I have a 24, they added a phone pick up and hang up on the steering wheel.

[17:30] And they took away the turn signal lights on the mirrors, otherwise it's the same. But I'm like, they forgot to add the phone buttons on the steering wheel when they came out. And they did it, they figured it out. Oh, I just heard your raven, did you find the exhaust?

[17:43] Oh yeah, yeah, put it in a box. Go for it, all yours, have fun. It fits great down those trails. Yeah, it does. I haven't spent much time in the mud on the KO3s, so it's good to see how they perform.

[17:57] Yeah. Those are great. They do okay, yeah.