Ford has remained mostly tight-lipped about possible plans to ship the Ranger Raptor over to the North American market. Rumors on the matter ranged from ones certainly stating it was coming, then came another one that it actually wasn’t coming, now it looks like we’re back to a more optimistic outlook.
Driving the Ford Ranger Raptor in Austrailia
Ford does sell the locally-manufactured Ranger (assembled at the Dearborn, Michigan plant) in North America, but the hot Raptor (made in South Africa) isn’t imported from that far away. Company officials have neither confirmed nor denied a U.S.-bound Ranger Raptor, but maybe it’s too early for them to make the announcement and since manufacturers really like building hype, this could just be Ford deliberately putting off confirming the Raptor simply to get people talking about it. Remember, Stateside deliveries of the Ford F-150 Raptor start next year, so there’s still time for an announcement.
And, Ford has a bigger (and far better sounding) 3.2-liter, five-cylinder diesel that is actually offered for the Ranger on markets outside the U.S. If the manufacturer wanted to keep it diesel for the U.S. too, maybe it could cram in the larger engine and tune it to get more oomph out of it. Although realistically, if such a model is sold in the U.S., it will probably be locally manufactured and feature a higher performance variant of the 2.3-liter EcoBoost turbo, the only engine choice for North American Ranger buyers.
Autoblog sent one of its guys over to Australia to try out the Ranger Raptor, and he seems to be completely won over by it.
Further Reading
Read our speculative review on the 2019 Ford Ranger.
Read our full review on the 2019 Ford Ranger Raptor.