Hennessey VelociRaptor

Ford's Raptor pickups are already monsters; Hennessey adds even more power and torque

- by RICHARD MEADEN

THE FIRST TIME YOU SEE A HENNESSEY VelociRaptoR 1000, you laugh out loud. To British eyes it's an absurd machine. At more than 20ft long and standing as tall as Tyson Fury (that's 6ft 9in in case you're wondering) it makes a Defender Octa look like a Suzuki Jimny. With 1043bhp it has hypercar power, yet it performs as well on rugged off-road trails as it does on the road.

Trucks are big business for Hennessey. When we first visited the Texan tuner’s HQ, back in early 2013, the workshops still featured lots of muscle cars. Now trucks and SUVs account for the lion's share of its output. Of those the Raptor (now in its third generation) has been the runaway success, with 3500 built in the last 15 years.

This year Hennessey expects to build more than 200 of its most powerful model - the epic VeliciRaptoR 1000 - plus at least 350 of its less extreme (but still wild) Raptor-based offerings, such as the R’s Godzuki-like sibling, the VelociRaptor 600. In the interests of vital consumer journalism, we've driven both.

To appreciate the performance upgrades, first you need to know Hennessey’s starting point. For the VelociRaptor 600 the base truck is Ford's stock F-150 Raptor powered by the 3.5-litre twin-turbocharged EcoBoost V6 (a version of which powered the Ford GT supercar). The VelociRaptoR 1000 begins life as the Raptor R, which runs a supercharged 5.2-litre V8 also found in the nose of the Shelby GT500 Mustang.

Straight from the factory they have 450bhp/510lb ft and 720bhp/640lb ft respectively. In the US there's a 40 per cent price difference between the regular Raptor ($81,000) and Raptor R ($112,725), but as you get 60 per cent more power, Man Maths® and the all-important Bang:Buck ratio decree it’s the R that represents better value.