by Duncan Humm, NZ Farming

It’s usually quite an easy thing to compare different utes against each other.

They all have attributes making you able to justify a buying decision made with the head in a way that will appeal to the Accountant or Bank Manager.

For the most part,  they will be able to do what you need them to do at work, but then with the mod cons or features that suit what you want for your life after work.

The Raptor is the opposite of that.

If you start with almost every conceivable way a Ute could be used for an adventurous lifestyle, then this is built to do anything you ask of it, with seemingly endless amounts of opportunity to customise how the Ute will perform both on and off road.

But then also it still has the ability to be that vehicle anyone can hop in and enjoy without changing a thing, it will do it well.

All the clever and easy to navigate management options would be nothing without a solid hardware foundation that does the hard yards.

Beginning with the engine, a grunty 3 litre V6 Petrol pumping out 292kW (392hp) at 5650rpm and 583Nm of torque at 3500rpm means there’ll never be that feeling like it needs more, especially if the Raptor is in Baja mode where the anti-lag tech will keep the turbos cranking.

The power is delivered to a 10 speed automatic transmission which is calibrated to near perfection with a boost profile for each gear.

Getting that performance to the ground, the Raptor has running gear to match.

Suspension has been redesigned from the previous generation, tough, lightweight aluminium upper and lower control arms, long-travel front and rear suspension and refined Watt’s link equipped coil-spring rear suspension have been designed to deliver more control in any situation.

In the name of research I tried the Raptor out on every type of surface I could. Of note was a wet grass airstrip that even at high speed it felt very stable, predictable and very safe.

When it came time to stop the disc brakes all round, ABS and stability controls do the job really well!

It is good to see an advanced permanent four-wheel drive system with an electronically controlled on-demand two-speed transfer case.

This means the driver has the choice of 2 wheel drive only, automatic all wheel drive if it senses too much wheel slip (4A), full 4x4 high and 4x4 low.

In any range the front and rear diff locks can also be used (for example 2WD with rear diff lock in a paddock is good fun!).

Most of all from a road safety point of view, it’s a weak point with some other brands of ute where you need to manually select 4x4 in anticipation of a loss of traction.

Knowing I’ll be in 4x4 to avoid something going wrong is a feature I’ve had in my own vehicle for a while, and it really makes a difference.

Jumping to some more highlights of the tech side, I was really impressed with the cameras around the Raptor, they really came into their own while I had it.

When off road having the ability to have the cameras on screen is actually a game changer, being able to see all the blind spots in any direction primarily meant I wouldn’t have explaining to do when returning the Ute back to Chris at Gluyas Motor Group!

In town in tight spaces it is very useful to zoom in on a corner of the Ute to make sure nothing was going to get bumped.

I also enjoyed being able to change how the exhaust sounds, four different modes from super quiet to the throaty (off road only) Baja, all from a button on the steering wheel.

One of those things that can change with your mood or the task at hand.

With the Ute tax coming off around the time this goes to print, the pricing will be much more appealing to buyers in this class at $95990 + ORC, and peace of mind with a really good 5 year 150000km warranty.

It has to be said that returning new vehicles I get the opportunity to try out is always quite hard, but dropping this Raptor back has probably been the hardest one to hand over.

I loved it, and even everyone in my household agreed too!

Feel free to get in touch with me if you’d like to know more about anything in more detail.