If you’re going to be tailgating during a backcountry deep pow snowboard sesh, you want Ken Block’s RaptorTRAX there to provide support. This is the machine you use to drive snowboarders to the top of a mountain that doesn’t have a chairlift. The riders don’t even have to bring their wet snowy selves into the cab, as there are a pair of seats in the bed, and a rack on the sides to strap down your boards. There’s even a hitch-mounted grill so you can cook up some hot dogs on the mountain. Now it’s for sale for a paltry $US195,000.
“We built this truck because I love to snowboard in the backcountry,” explained Block. “There are several ways to do that; helicopter, snowcat, snowmobile. I thought this would be a good way to do it quite quickly, faster than a snowcat, but not as expensive as a heli.”
Ford delivered a then-new Ford Raptor with an integrated cage, then the Hoonigan team built out the widebody kit, skid plates, custom bumpers, auxiliary lighting, and installed the four tracks in place of the truck’s wheels. The factory 6.2-litre V8 was boosted with a healthy Whipple supercharger to make 650 horsepower, just a few shy of the current Raptor R.
The truck was featured in a big snowboarding video on the Monster YouTube channel in 2014, where it got 5.3 million views. Set to a rad needle drop from The Decendents, riders Zak Hale and Ethan Deiss spend a lovely day getting shuttled around Baldface Lodge by Mr. Block and his track’d Raptor. Interestingly, the build breakdown of the truck, also on Monster’s channel, got over 10 million views with no snowboarding action or cool music. The internet is a weird place.
The folks at LBI Limited in Philadelphia, Penn. have been trusted with selling a few of the other members of the Ken Block collection in recent years, including the Hoonitruck, his Fiesta from Gymkhana Three (my favourite of the Gymkhana series), the Fiesta from Gyms six, eight, and Terrakhana, which was also used for his 2013 Global Rallycross efforts, and his self-described dream car, a 1986 Ford RS200. The RaptorTRAX has just hit the market, also through LBI, and the asking price is $US195,000. That’s a whole hell of a lot more than you’d pay for a regular 2014 Ford Raptor (KBB says $US27,800 is a typical price), but this is hardly a regular 2014 Raptor. It’s also almost double what you’d pay for a new Raptor R, but are these custom touches and the Ken Block factor worth an extra 85 grand? That’s for you to decide.
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