Shelby American's version of the Ford F-150 Raptor boasts 575 horsepower.
There are just some jobs for which 411 horsepower isn’t enough, it seems.
These days, something in the 400 horsepower range seems positively pedestrian, not much more than you might need for a minivan or econocar. Even some hybrids deliver more power – as long as they’re badged Ferrari or McLaren, anyway. So what’s a self-respecting full-size truck buyer supposed to do? Not a problem.
A year after the death of its legendary founder Carroll Shelby, his Las Vegas-based tuner firm Shelby American lives on and has brought an assortment of new high-performance products out for the 2013 New York Auto Show – including a special version of the Ford F-150 Raptor.
“As a native Texan, Carroll Shelby loved powerful trucks,” said John Luft, president of Shelby American, said in a statement. “Carroll connected his love for trucks with his passion for performance on several projects, with the first one over 30 years ago.”
The Shelby Raptor starts out with the base truck but, first and foremost, it gets a major update under the hood, starting with the addition of a massive, 2.9-liter supercharger bolted onto the stock 6.2-liter V-8. At the back end, there’s a Shelby Borla exhaust. The Shelby Raptor gets a six-speed automatic, but it can be shifted into manual mode to give the driver more control over the power going to all four wheels.
Oh, and as for that power, the Shelby-ized Raptor takes Ford’s stock model, already its biggest, baddest F-150, and pumps the pony count up to 575, which moves it a bit more into true performance territory – about 125 hp more than what the all-new Chevrolet Corvette will be making though, of course, the Raptor does have a bit more mass to move around.
Shelby claims it also updated both the cooling and handling systems, and shod the truck with new 35-inch Goodrich All-Terrain rubber. A new Off-Road mode is intended to calibrate engine, traction and stability control systems when you leave the pavement.
The updated Shelby touch will add $17,995 to the price of a new Ford Raptor, which itself starts at $43,630.
And for those who don’t think 575-hp is enough? That’s where Shelby’s second new entry at the New York Auto Show comes in. It’s done an even more extensive remake of the classic Ford Mustang – updating last year’s already ferocious Shelby Mustang 1000, boosting power from 975 to 1,200. More than enough to get even the worst procrastinator to work on-time, though Shelby expects to see a lot of those Mustang 1000s working hard on track days.
(For more on the Shelby Mustang 1000, Click Here.)