Picture this: You just volunteered to be part of your child’s Little League car pool, but you forgot that you live in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. You need a vehicle with the seating capacity of a minivan, but with the unparalleled off-road ability required to drive in and around bomb craters and over the wreckage of other, lesser vehicles. We’ve all been there.
Luckily, Hennessey Performance has a solution. The Texas company responsible for the 1,200 horsepower Venom GT and VR1200 Twin Turbo Coupe has turned the Ford F-150 SVT Raptor into an SUV.
Dubbed the “VelociRaptor,” this monstrosity combines the performance of the Raptor pickup truck with the seating capacity of a sport-utility.
The transformation is accomplished by grafting the rear end of a Ford Excursion onto a stock Raptor, with that SUV’s rear windows, seats, and tailgate replacing the pickup bed.
That gives VelociRaptor drivers the option of a dry cargo bed, or a third row of seats for a total of eight seats for all your cyborg friends.
Base VelociRaptors come equipped with Ford’s 6.2-liter V8, which produces the same 411 hp it does in the stock Raptor, but has to move 600 more pounds. That equates to a 0 to 60 mph time of 7.5 seconds.
Hennessey will also sell a VelociRaptor 600 Supercharged, with the same power upgrades it offers on the stock Raptor. With 600 hp, the Supercharged upgrade lowers the 0 to 60 mph time to 5.9 seconds.
However, while practicality has increased, off-road performance has suffered a bit. While no stock Raptor hardware has been changed, Hennessey isn’t recommending hardcore driving.
“Don’t plan on pre-running Baja or negotiating Rubicon with our SUV – that is not why we built it,” company founder John Hennessey said. But, if you’re looking for the ultimate vehicle to drive from Aspen to Telluride in January, the VelociRaptor SUV would be perfect.” Oh, that is so us!
The idea of a Ford Raptor SUV sounds great at first, but if you’re only looking for a vehicle that can shuttle eight people between Colorado ski resorts, you might be better served by an OEM product like the Mercedes-Benz GL-Class.
In comparison, the VelociRaptor seems like too much of a compromise. It’s combination of F-150 and Excursion styling looks awkward, and without the same off-road capabilities as the stock Raptor, what’s the point?
It’s not exactly cheap, either: the base price is $149,500. Only 30 examples will be built each year.
So unless you have to dodge zombies, there are probably better ways of getting the team to Little League practice.
Has Hennessey gone too far this time? Tell us in the comments.
