Ford Raptor Episode - Grand Tour

Jeremy, sweating, had the Raptor’s passenger-side tires on the sheer rock wall and the driver’s-side mirrors scraping the abyss. “It fits perfectly,” he grunted, as a loud CRACK signaled the death of a mirror housing. “That was a… a warning branch.”

Water exploded over the hood. The engine note changed from a roar to a gurgle. For a horrible moment, nothing. Then, with a deep, mechanical cough , the big V6 cleared its throat and powered on. The Raptor clawed its way up the opposite bank, mud and water streaming from its wheel arches, looking like a prehistoric beast emerging from a tar pit. grand tour ford raptor episode

As Hammond and May towed him out with a rope made of vines and spite, Jeremy sat on the tailgate, defeated but proud. “It’s not a car,” he sighed, looking at the Raptor. “It’s a magnificent, ridiculous, too-fat, amphibious monster. And I loved every second.” Jeremy, sweating, had the Raptor’s passenger-side tires on

The trouble began five minutes into the first jungle trail. The Raptor, you see, is six inches wider than the Silverado and four inches wider than the Jeep. On a normal road, that’s “presence.” On a Colombian mountain pass carved by donkeys, where the road was a single muddy groove between a rock face and a 2,000-foot drop, it was a problem . The engine note changed from a roar to a gurgle

He never did get his coffee. But the Raptor got its legend.

But physics, and The Grand Tour , always have the last laugh. The Raptor’s sheer size, which was its superpower on the open desert, became its kryptonite on the final “bridge”—two rotten logs laid over a swamp. The Jeep danced across. The Chevy tip-toed. The Raptor’s front tires went on the logs, and the back tires… went on either side. The result was a 6,000-pound pickup performing an unplanned, slow-motion split, its belly resting on the mud while its wheels spun helplessly.