I drove a $63,000 Ford Raptor pickup truck for a week to see if it lived up to the hype — here's the verdict (F)

Ford Raptor

We tested the Ford Raptor, a pickup truck that goes to 11 and then some.
While I didn't bust through the wilderness with this high-performance offroader, I did take it on a couple of long drives.
The Raptor truly is something special. But it's not for everybody, especially if you don't like to buy gas.

Besides teaming up with Domino's to deliver pizza by driverless cars, Ford has a Performance division that does exactly what you'd expect from a performance decision: create go-fast vehicles, ranging from the Fiesta ST at about $21,000 to the ultra-exclusive $400,000-plus GT supercar.

In the mix, remarkably, is a pickup truck: the Raptor.

Makes sense. Ford Performance also sells stonkingly outfitted Mustangs, so why take a pass on kitting out what is the company's bestselling vehicle, the F-150 pickup? There are customers who want a truck that can go fast.

The Raptor is anything but an F-150 with a few exotics bells and whistles. It's an F-150 that goes to 11 and then goes some more. It's a pickup for adrenaline junkies, and I've always been curious about it, so when Ford said I could borrow a $62,500 test vehicle, I said, "Heck yeah!"

Mind you, I wasn't going to be tackling sand dunes or rock-strewn trails with this loaner Raptor. So I had to devise different criteria. I already knew the Raptor could handle the worst. But how would it do in the suburbs?