Hammering across the rippled, hard-packed off-road trails of Johnson Valley California, northeast of Big Bear Lake, the 2024 Ford F-150 Raptor R pickup

Ford redesigned the Ranger pickup truck for the 2024 model year, pushing it into its fifth generation. I drove both the XLT and the Raptor, comprising two of the four models of Ranger available now.

The conversion features genuine parts from the current Ranger and an 8-inch lift kit, but unfortunately, it’s still stuck with a measly 80 hp under the hood

Mid-size pickup trucks that come factory-ready to blast across the desert with oversize wheels and tires, skid plates and absorbent suspensions with lots of travel have become all the rage. The 2024 Ford Ranger Raptor is the latest of these to arrive, and it does so as a worthy competitor right out of the box.

In which we're already asking ourselves, does one really need a full-size pickup truck? I n the 1960s and 1970s, the Ford Ranger was a full-size truck. Okay, technically it was a