The 2025 Ford Bronco Raptor – or Braptor, as we took to calling it – is an absurd caricature of an SUV. Everything is exaggerated, everything is over the top, everything is ridiculous, and that’s the point. It looks like a concept vehicle that belongs on the show floor at SEMA, rather than a truck that you can put into your driveway with a factory warranty. It’s beyond wild that this is a showroom stock product.

Braptor says: Look at me

Despite looking absurd and having a slightly insane mission statement, all of this truck’s outrageous appendages are functional. It starts with the 37-inch BFGoodrich K02 tires, which are the largest tires you can buy on a new vehicle. On this tester with the optional Black Appearance Package, they are wrapped around 17-inch beadlock wheels, so you can get away with just about any kind of silliness while trying to crawl over boulders.

Said monster rolling stock necessitates monster fender flares, which makes the Braptor look, well, somewhat monstrous. It’s ten full inches wider than a base Bronco, and is even wider than the last heavy duty F-250 I reviewed, which felt like a bus. It even has mandated wide-boi clearance lights, like you’d find on a bus, except the Braptor looks tougher than any bus. 

Braptor says: Let’s ride

It doesn’t feel like a bus, either. A tad cumbersome at first, maybe, as your mind adjusts to having the corners of your vehicle extend so far beyond the semi-snug and square cabin inherent to the Bronco. But, it’s not unwieldy, and its relatively short wheelbase means it feels quite maneuverable, if it fits in the gap you’re trying to thread it through. Standard surround-view cameras are a necessity to serve as your own spotter for urban or extra-urban affairs, and Ford’s digital rear view mirror camera display not only a no-brainer at $750, but a necessity, as you cannot see a damn thing behind the oversized donut hanging off of the tailgate.

In spite of its savage style, the Braptor’s on-road behaviour is actually almost nice. The long-travel Fox adaptive shock absorbers work in tandem to deftly absorb impacts, either from speed bumps at the mall or being thrown off a cliff; it just sort of floats or everything. It doesn’t lean all that much in corners and does inspire confidence when being hustled, with only a fairly pronounced tendency to dive and squat under acceleration and braking adding to the silly savagery vibe.

Braptor says: Rawr

To that end, the brakes feel a touch overboosted, so you will notice that tendency to dive until you recalibrate yourself, not unlike the rest of the Braptor experience. A twin-turbocharged 3.0-litre V6 (similar to what’s in the Ranger Raptor) creates the scoot and accompanying squat with 418 horsepower and 440 foot-pounds of torque, which is amplified by the 10-speed gearbox’s close ratios and super aggressive 4.7:1 rear axle ratio. It can almost be docile if you select the quietest of its exhaust modes, but that misses the point; normal mode is fairly brawny, and its “for off-road use only” full-throated Baja mode feels just right for this beast.

The mighty exhaust blast is a necessity to drown out the noise from the big 37s pounding the pavement, and the removable roof panels howling on the highway. I’d encourage you to take every opportunity you can to remove the roof panels and get the full Braptor experience, and let the engine and the thumping Bang & Olufsen audio fill in the ambient noise and create a vibe. The Braptor, as you might imagine from a truck named Braptor, doesn’t do quiet well. Lean into it and live loud.

Braptor likes: The colour of money

On that note, the interior is visually loud as well with our tester’s blue leather seats and surprisingly well executed carbon fibre accents – they better be good for the eye-watering sticker $132,310 sticker price of this tester. They’re nice chairs to be sure, but I’d personally skip the blue leather and stick with the standard black vinyl; it’s slightly less ostentatious with all the red accents that come with the Braptor.

Braptor cannot be stopped

Describing what this can do off road could easily warrant a whole long-form story on its own, or could just as easily be reduced down to: yes, it can. Alongside the trick Fox shocks and beefy boots, the Braptor is triple locked, has a disconnecting rear sway bar, has rock sliders and bash plates, insane geometry, excellent lighting, and auxiliary switches for whatever else you feel you need to add. Name it; it’s got it, and it’s about the best you can get. Forget mud and sand, this thing could probably climb a tree with a sufficiently skilled pilot. If you ever see a stranded Braptor, rest assured it is definitely a skill issue – which is unlikely with Ford’s camera and brilliant trail control systems taking most of the skill out of off-roading.

(b)Wrap it up

Personally, I don’t know how much I’d want something like the 2025 Ford Bronco Raptor. You have to fall into a very specific niche that’s willing to pay top dollar for a Ford Bronco that can climb Everest, and ignore the fact that the Ranger Raptor, F-150 Raptor and Raptor R (or Raptorer), and Ram 1500 RHO exist – say nothing of whatever Jeep has going on. I’d be a lot happier with a less-absurd Bronco for a lot less money, as the visually obvious toughness diminishes a lot of the Bronco’s working-class-hero charm in my eyes. But if you want the baddest Bronco, and perhaps more importantly, want everyone to know you have the baddest Bronco, the Braptor is perfect.