Fifteen years ago, when Ford rolled out the very first F-150 Raptor concept at the 2008 SEMA show, the suits inside the company figured they might sell 3,000 of them – total. That was it. A niche toy for desert runners with deep pockets. Fast-forward to today and the third-generation Raptor is a global phenomenon, joined by a Ranger Raptor for guys who don’t need quite so much truck, and even a fire-breathing Bronco Raptor for those who want their off-road fix in SUV form.
The man at the very top, CEO Jim Farley – a guy who has raced everything from vintage Formula Fords to modern GT cars – isn’t content to just sell a bunch of tall trucks. He’s issued a challenge from the corner office: Ford is going to become “the Porsche of off-road racing.”
That’s a big statement. Porsche spent decades turning customer 911s into Le Mans winners, Dakar, and rally monsters, then feeding everything they learned on Sunday straight back into the cars regular folks buy on Monday. Farley wants the same loop for Blue Oval off-road machines, and the proof keeps showing up in the harshest proving ground on earth: Baja.
Image credit: Ford
The just-finished 58th running of the BFGoodrich SCORE Baja 1000 was basically Ford throwing down the gauntlet. They brought four factory-supported trucks – the biggest official Ford effort since the Rough Riders program back in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Twelve engineers flew down, backed by 68 crew members, drivers, co-drivers, and chase teams. Twenty-eight Ford vehicles in total rolled south of the border, everything from race trucks to prerunners straight out of the Arizona proving grounds.
“Baja is Raptor. This is our proving ground,” said Brian Novak, Ford Racing Off-Road Motorsports Supervisor. “That’s how we learned to set up our proving ground on those initial trucks before launching the 2010 production units. This is where we learn. Baja is part of Raptor’s DNA.”
The roots actually go deeper than most people realize. Back when Jamal Hameedi was wrapping up the 2005 Ford GT program, he started hanging around the guys at Wide Open Baja – the outfit famous for million-dollar tourist buggies and, more importantly, building insane prerunner Fords. One of those trucks, a red I-beam monster, starred alongside Mario Andretti in the movie Dust to Glory. That connection planted the seed that eventually became the production Raptor.
Image credit: Ford
These days the factory engineers still spend nights in the dirt, chasing trucks through the desert so they understand exactly what breaks and why. “One of our key goals here is that tech transfer in learning,” Novak said. “We bring other engineers down that may not be part of the motorsports program so that when they go back and work on Raptors at home, they’ve seen the hardcore terrain – and what it takes to get the job done after going all night.”
The four-truck attack at this year’s Baja 1000 looked like a who’s-who of American off-road talent. Brad Lovell – already in the Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame – shared the Stock Full F-150 Raptor with King of the Hammers champ Jason Scherer and young gun Austin Robinson. Another F-150, this one the supercharged Raptor R, carried John Williams, Jason Hutter, and Boyd Jaynes. Drifter-turned-desert ace Vaughn Gittin Jr. teamed with Loren Healy and Bailey Campbell in a Bronco Raptor running the Stock Mid-Size class. And going wheel-to-wheel against them for bragging rights was Porsche legend Romain Dumas in the Ranger Raptor.
Of the 168 teams that left the line in Ensenada, only 92 made it to La Paz within the 36-hour cutoff. Baja gonna Baja. Torrential rain turned sections into swamps, rocks ate tires, and ruts swallowed whole suspensions. The Ranger Raptor tore a front corner off at mile 19. The Raptor R fought hard but ran out of time. Yet Lovell, Scherer, and Robinson brought their truck home with a Stock Full class win and 60th overall. Gittin, Healy, and Campbell did the same in the Bronco Raptor, handing Ford two hard-earned trophies from the toughest off-road race on the planet.
It’s the kind of result that would have seemed impossible fifteen years ago when those executives were hoping for 3,000 sales.
The bigger dream, the one Farley keeps talking about, is overall wins – not just class victories against other near-stock trucks, but beating the 1,100-horsepower, all-wheel-drive Trophy Trucks that currently rule the desert. Ford isn’t there yet, but the pieces are moving. Red Bull-backed Raptor T1+ prototypes are already built for the ultimate test: the Dakar Rally. Nani Roma, Carlos Sainz Sr., Mitch Guthrie, and Mattias Ekström will wheel those trucks in January, with Romain Dumas running a privateer entry as well.
Closer to home, January 15, 2026, brings another milestone. Ford is throwing open the doors at the newly restored Michigan Central Station in Detroit for the annual Ford Racing Season Launch. The same stage that will showcase the return to Formula 1 with Red Bull will also spotlight the off-road program – NASCAR, IMSA, and desert trucks all sharing the spotlight under the reborn Ford Racing banner.
Polaris and Ford are the only two manufacturers right now going all-in with factory race trucks. Honda, Chevrolet, and Can-Am help their racers, and word is Toyota and Ram are sniffing around the idea of jumping in too. After decades of privateers carrying the torch, the factories are finally coming back to desert racing in a serious way.
Whether Ford can truly earn the “Porsche of off-road” crown is still an open question. Porsche took fifty years to build that reputation, one overall win at a time. But with Farley steering the ship, real race trucks wearing Ford badges on five continents, and engineers who still lose sleep in Baja so the next Raptor you buy is tougher than the last one, the Blue Oval is writing the early chapters of what could become a legendary story.
The desert will decide the rest.
