Ford Ranger Raptor review: how did I ever manage without it?

Testing the Ford Ranger Raptor — a smaller version of the ridiculous F-150 — was a total revelation.

Ford Ranger Raptor.

The new Land Rover Defender is a bit of a surprise. I imagined it would have steel bumpers and hose-down carpets, and differentials that you lock with levers. I reckoned it would be militaristic and straightforward, like the old Defender. But instead, it seems to be yet another high-riding option for the school-run mum.

I don’t really understand it. Land Rover already makes a vast array of extremely nice four-wheel-drive cars. So why did it make another one, rather than a tool for people who need their car to put in a shift every day? A workhorse.

As I may have mentioned six thousand times already, I’m trying to run a farm at the moment and the fact is that my vet, her boss, my shepherdess, my tractor driver, his brother and the guys mending the water supply all have pick-ups. If I look out of the window and see one bouncing up the drive, I know someone with big wrists and a Viyella shirt is on his way to do a job of work. If I see someone coming up the drive in a Vauxhall, I know it’s someone from the government coming along to stop him. And if I see someone arriving in a Range Rover, I know it’s a school-run mum dropping round for some prosecco.

I have never wanted a pick-up. I’ve always thought they were a bit Richard Hammond – for the sort of Donald Trump enthusiast who flies a Confederate flag above his house, even though he lives in Essex.

But then a car I was due to test was crashed on its way here, so Ford sent round a Ranger Raptor instead. This is not to be confused with the US Ford F-150 Raptor, which is 6m long and 2.1m wide. It’s hilarious, but you couldn’t possibly drive it in Britain. It just wouldn’t fit.

The Ranger is a scaled-down version, especially under the bonnet, where, instead of a gigantic V8 that runs on dead grizzly bears and granite, there’s a 2-litre EcoBlue engine. This did not excite me, and I figured the test drive would be once round the block and that would be it.

However, it had been raining constantly for six weeks and the summer tyres on my old Range Rover were making life in the fields a bit Bambi-ish, so I went out to do some chainsawing in the Ford, which had proper off-road, Canadian-winter-spec tyres. And it immediately got stuck. This was because I wasn’t wearing spectacles, so I hadn’t spotted the knob that engages drive to the front wheels. Switchable four-wheel drive? I haven’t encountered that since the Daihatsu Fourtrak went west. The only blessed relief was that I didn’t have to get out to engage the front hubs.

Getting out of the Raptor is annoying. In order to swing your trousers clear of the muddy step that allows short-arses into the cabin, you need to adopt a body position that causes the horn to sound. This irritates people. And then there’s the rear armrest. If you use it to rest your arm, you’ll lower the window. That is irritating too.

So is the cover that’s fitted over the load bed. I’m pretty tall but the Raptor is so high off the ground I simply couldn’t reach it to pull it shut. This meant I had to climb into the back, and that is manual labour, to which I am allergic.

I vowed, then, after my chainsawing expedition, to put the Ford in the barn and leave it there. But then my girlfriend decided there wasn’t enough grass in the field for her horse. Which meant I had to take it a bale of hay. So out came the Ford again. And then I had to deliver a sheep-handling system to a distant field, and then three of the sheep had to be separated from the main herd – is that the right word? And then I had to create a beetle bank. And I needed the pick-up for every single one of these things.

It’s gone back to Ford now and I’m bereft. I simply do not know how I managed without it. It’s a bit like trying a knife and fork for the first time and then having to go back to chopsticks.

The Raptor is an honest car for people doing an honest day’s work. That said, the Volkswagen Amarok is also worth a look, as is the countryman’s favourite, the Mitsubishi L200. Then you have options from Fiat, Nissan, Mercedes and Isuzu. Not Land Rover, though. It has simply abandoned the market it created, and I think that’s a bit mad.

Ford Ranger Raptor

Engine: 2.0-litre turbo-diesel four-cylinder (157kW/500Nm)

Average fuel: 8.2 litres per 100km

Transmission: 10-speed automatic, all-wheel drive

Price: $75,990

Rating: ★★★