I am staring at this truck and it is simultaneously a 1979 Ford with a 2014 Raptor grafted into it, and a 2014 Ford Raptor with a 1979 Ford grafted on top of it.
The news of Ford coming out with a V8 version of the new Raptor had me looking around for sales figures of the V6 versus the V8 generations.
I didn’t find anything exactly (Ford doesn’t break out F-Series sales one bit, though I have reached out for comment) but I did stumble upon this old story from Ford Authority while on my hunt.
From Ford Authority:
[T]his 1979 Ford F-150 is really just a 2014 Ford F-150 Raptor with a classic F-150 body grafted onto it. That means the rolling chassis, drivetrain, interior, and pretty much everything else came from the donor Raptor. But unlike some other similar, Frankenstein-like projects we’ve seen, it’s nearly impossible to tell from the outside.
[…]
To make the old body fit on the new frame, Sweet Brothers had to stretch the cab four inches and cut the firewall and floorplans to modify them. Move to the inside, and you’ll actually think that you’re climbing into a newer F-150, because that’s what this is. Even better, all of the amenities from the modern truck still work, including the heated and cooled leather seats, navigation and satellite radio, and even the unmistakable Ford door chime.
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The inclusion of the Ford keypad is what does it for me:
The suspension is stock but the engine gets a Roush Stage 2 supercharger good for what Sweet Brothers claim is 590 horsepower and 590 pound-feet of torque. Do you need 590 HP in a pickup? No you do not. Do you want it? Almost certainly.
The only question I have comes when I look at the interior. One of the great joys of owning an old-as-shit vehicle is the old interior. The way everything sounds, the way everything feels, the giant thin steering wheel spinning in your hands. This truck loses that and looks like a ’90s cigarette boat.
On the other hand, the interior of an old car is also what keeps it locked away from normal car status. No airbag, a steering column that wants to punch out your solar plexus, and whispy heat and cold that has you in a coat in winter and shorts in the summer, shorts burned onto your legs from sun-baked vinyl seats. That is to say, I can see this thing both ways.
Body-swapping a Raptor is one of those things that just makes sense, and it’s no surprise this is not the first time I’ve seen one. This Bronco sticks out in my memory.
Part of me wonders if there is someone out there, though, who has built a 1979 Ford pickup by grafting Raptor suspension onto it and swapping in a Raptor engine. I wonder what that person thinks of this rig.