WATCH: With great power comes great responsibility – Ford driver training

When the all new Ford Ranger Raptor hit our shores earlier this year, and we saw that infamous clip of a car salesman rolling a client’s brand new Raptor after having one too many drinks.

This happened after pressure from the owner himself, who was in the passenger seat, and was calling for the driver to put his foot flat.

This joyride ended in tears when the Ranger Raptor rolled and it left viewers asking as to how the bakkie rolled.

My first impression was that body roll had been culprit because off-road vehicles are known to roll at high speeds, and I spoke about how badly these vehicles did with the Moose test.

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Another question I posed was whether Ford offered any performance driver training to educate their customers about how to drive these fast bakkies.

The Ford team saw the article and reached out to us so that we could visit the Ford training centre at Zwartkops raceway in Pretoria to experience the performance, safety and driving ability of the new Raptor.

That’s what their e-mail said, but when I got into the bakkie with Gideo Basson, the Ford off-road driving guru, I felt like the directive from the Ford team was to scare the crap out of me because Basson drove that thing so hard and fast that the G-force threw me all over the place.

During this demonstration, Basson took me down to the 4×4 track at Zwartkops which has some moderately challenging obstacles as well as a section of road and grass to test the capabilities on different surfaces.

One thing I learnt, while Basson floored the Raptor on the grass, is that he has a heart of steel and he trusts that bakkie with his life. When I thought we would stop in time on the grass, the specially developed all terrain tyres bite into the grass and the vehicle gains traction again.

He knew this course like the back of his hand and took me on the ride of my life, sometimes going sideways as the Raptor drifted on the grass and gravel.

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During this thrilling experience I got to feel just how well that suspension held up to all the twists and turns, and what surprised me the most was how little body roll there was as normal bakkies would be swaying left and right like a ship but this particular one took it like a performance car.

This left me with one question though: how the heck did that salesman manage to roll this bakkie with such amazing agility even at high speed?

When I posed this question to Basson, he explained that even if a car has the best handling and it hits a ridge, rock or even a pavement while going sideways that the force from hitting that object would aid in making the vehicle roll and that is what he suspects happened.

Basson is part of the Ford Adventure Club that trains Ford drivers how to use their vehicles off-road. This is a complementary service that Ford offers to everyone who purchases any new bakkie from the manufacturer.

I wasn’t only impressed by Basson’s driving ability and the Raptors handling but I was also taken aback by the features that this bakkie has.

All I can say is watch out Land Rover. Ford has a new kid on the block and the technology onboard is next generation.

One of my fa the tablet display which is paired with the 360 cameras.One could honestly navigate a 4×4 course by just looking at the live camera feed on the screen.

Other noticeable features that also stood out were the switches on the hoodlining that Ford put there for off-road enthusiasts who might want to add some accessories that require power.

The nice thing is that Ford has left space for these accessories to be wired into the standard harness to power your light bar, for instance.

Ford has definitely developed a winning formula here and other bakkie manufacturers are going to have to step up their game if they want to compete with the new Ford Ranger Raptor.

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