The second-generation Ford Ranger Raptor performance pick-up truck makes a whole spectrum of noises that are variously louder and more interesting than those of its diesel-only predecessor. The warble of its new turbo V6 petrol engine, for example, when channelled through an active exhaust in what would amount to a totally unsilenced running mode if it weren’t for all the mandatory European-market exhaust after-treatment going on, sounds particularly promising.
But the most interesting noise that the Raptor makes is a quiet but perceptible click that comes from its suspension just as its wheels part company with the ground – and just as that split-second of eerie silence known best by rallycross drivers and stuntmen takes over the cabin.
Only a Baja-style, road-legal performance vehicle quite like this one - a modern fast Ford developed not in North America, nor in Europe, but on the dirt and sand of Australia - could ever really need systems specifically intended to cope with the realities and consequences of ‘getting air’. The click in question is produced by special position sensors mounted on the Raptor’s suspension control arms, put there with one purpose: to send a signal to the truck’s central Vehicle Dynamics Controller chassis brain just as its axles hit their 'full-Daisy-Duke-droop' position. Once you know what it means, that click will produce a Pavlovian response in a giddy driver every single time.