MR. BIG

In an electrified world, driving a Ford F-150 Raptor is a guilty pleasure — with the emphasis squarely on pleasure

- By Pablo Chaterji

In my time as an automotive hack, I've driven everything from Lamborghinis to lawnmowers (both are great fun), but in the grand scheme of things (which is to say the tiny corner of the galaxy where humans insist on driving around in metal boxes) I've never encountered a Ford F-150 Raptor. I've always wanted to, though; there’s something so ‘Yee-ha!’ about it that it perfectly encapsulates everything that I think American cars are — big, brash and unnecessarily powerful (much like America itself, you could say).

My university buddy Madan Menon is a former Chennai resident who traded in India’s gridlock for California’s big skies several years ago; he turned out to be the architect of change in this regard. I'd gotten in touch with him because I was heading to California, and among the first things he said was ‘Dude, you have to drive my truck.’ Since said truck was a 2017 Ford F-150 Raptor, I agreed almost before he completed his sentence; a rendezvous point at a suburban strip mall was agreed upon, and I showed up there wondering what to expect (from the truck, not him — he’s just the same).

The Raptor, as it turned out, was not so much a vehicle as a medium-sized planetoid, at least to someone unused to seeing its kind on a daily basis; it was 20 feet long, wider than my ex-wife’s excuse list and considerably taller than me, at 6.5 feet in height. Painted in a shade called Lead Foot Grey, which sounded like a lead-based cocktail, it really was all kinds of gigantic; damn thing looked like it bench-pressed Fortuners for fun. It also looked like it could enter the Baja 1000 straight off a dealership floor; I’m sure that’s actually been done at some point, by some loon with a cast iron butt.