Phạm Trường Hà
Thanks to one determined person, the Ford F-150 Raptor beat the odds and became a reality, and the rest is history.
It’s hard to fathom now, but years ago, the Ford F-150 Raptor wasn’t exactly a sure thing. In fact, roughly two years ago, we learned that Ford was actually working on a third-generation F-150 SVT Lightning in the mid-2000s, at least until SVT chief nameplate engineer Jamal Hameedi – an avid desert racer – began noticing that a lot of F-150 owners were modifying their pickups for off-road use. That spawned the idea of a factory-built, high-performance off-roader we now know as the Ford F-150 Raptor, but that now-legendary model faced its fair share of adversity before reaching the production line, it seems.
Recently, Hameedi – who is now the Director of Special Vehicle Operations at Jaguar Land Rover – appeared on The Smoking Tire podcast, and touched on a number of interesting topics, including the Ford F-150 Raptor that he ultimately pushed to create. Hameedi notes that he was inspired by trophy trucks and pre-runners at the time, which were all over the place with wide fenders, lifted suspensions, and giant tires, which left quite the impression on him and led to that proverbial light bulb moment.
“It was so weird that nobody did that before,” Hameedi noted. “It was very few, I mean really, there were the Z71s and this and that, but no one had really put that together.” Part of that glaring market omission at the time stemmed from a lack of shock and overall suspension technology, however, as it would have been prohibitively expensive to equip a factory-built truck with any sort of high-end components like those back then.
There were plenty of other obstacles standing in the way of the Ford F-150 Raptor – at the time, these off-road racers all lived in Southern California, not to mention the fact that most everyone else at FoMoCo was laser-focused on the third-generation F-150 SVT Lightning, too. However, after sending a host of engineers out to some off-road racing events, they immediately became believers in the project. The “bean counters,” as Hameedi calls them, were less enthusiastic, however, particularly after the recession of 2008-2009 and its tremendous impact on the automotive industry.
As a result, Hameedi admits that “there were a bunch of times the program was actually canceled, but every time it was canceled, we’d redo it a little bit and take away that thing – the reason it was canceled – and come back. And so yea, we just barely got it to production.” Today, it’s hard to believe that the Ford F-150 Raptor faced such adversity, given its tremendous level of success, but back then, things were a lot different, obviously.
As Hameedi points out, even first-generation F-150 SVT Raptors have held their value better than almost any other niche vehicle out there, and it has since spawned an entirely new vehicle segment of sorts. In spite of the many changes it has gone through over the years, the F-150 Raptor continues to gain in popularity (it actually sold more units in the third and fourth model years than the first and second), which is a testament to Hameedi’s vision at the time – not to mention, his determination to make it a reality in the first place.
Hameedi also pointed out that he and his team were surprised to learn that farmers became huge Raptor fans. Why? In rural places with unpaved roads, the Raptor was the first truck that could drive off road at highway speeds while maintaining the comfort of an on road truck. By driving a Raptor, farmers were able to pick up the pace, compared to standard F-150s, and ultimately save time during a long work day.
Photos: Ford
