In 2006, top executives at Ford Motor Co. stared down a pivotal decision: Either continue offering the SVT F-150 Lightning pickup — which at that time was an on-road gasoline performance street truck — or do something totally different and build a high-performance off-road truck for consumers. "There was a debate at the highest levels of: ‘Should we stay on-road performance or do an off-road performance vehicle?' " Mark Schirmer, of Cox Automotive and who worked in Ford's product communications at the time, said, remembering vividly. The "Special Vehicles Team had never done an off-road performance vehicle," he said. "It was a big decision. They made the decision then that, 'We are going to go off-road.' " It changed everything for Ford. The automaker launched its first off-road performance vehicle in 2010: the F-150 Raptor pickup. Off-road performance vehicles have grown from fewer than 7% of Ford’s sales in 2017 to over 20% today, driven by Bronco, Raptor vehicles, Tremor and FX4 packages. It's lucrative business. The off-road market is booming, valued at $11 billion in 2024 and projected to nearly double by 2033, Ford said. And, the off-road vehicles Ford sells are especially profitable because they are packages put on trucks, which are already profitable vehicles, Schirmer said. "(The F-150 Raptor) was way more successful than the performance on-road Lightning had been. It was surprisingly successful to a lot of people," Schirmer said. "They’ve been playing that card ever since, successfully. It was a great call. They struck gold." For that reason, Ford is now expanding its off-road packages to offer a more affordable model that will bring in new customers to off-roading. On Jan. 13, at the Detroit Auto Show, Ford revealed the Bronco RTR. It is a nod to a partnership with RTR Vehicles, a company known for its Ready To Rock off-road performance packages. It was founded by Vaughn Gittin Jr., a multi-Formula Drift champion and off-road racing icon. What to expect in a Ready to Rock vehicle The Bronco RTR will be capable of high-speed desert thrills and have a bold design, said Hendrik Spaepen, Ford’s general manager for Ford Blue portfolio. Ford Blue is Ford's gasoline and hybrid vehicles division. Spaepen told the Detroit Free Press the Bronco RTR will attract a younger generation of buyers because of its affordability. Also, up until now, buyers could only get the RTR package put on their cars at a dealership. The new Bronco RTR will come directly from the factory, similar to when Ford launched the Mustang RTR a year ago, which is made in Ford's Flat Rock Assembly plant. "The Bronco Raptor is our apex. So if you have your Bronco lineup with Raptor at the top, think of (RTR) as a mid-tier value with performance elements," Spaepen said. "It’s a great value for customers, but from a pricing standpoint it will not be above Raptor and it’s not intended to be higher performance than Raptor.” The 2027 Ford Bronco RTR is seen Monday, Jan. 12, 2026, in Dearborn, Michigan. Ford is not releasing the pricing of the RTR yet. According to Ford’s website, the 2026 Bronco Raptor starts at $79,995. Ford will opens the order banks for the Bronco RTR in fall 2026. It officially goes on sale at dealerships early next year. Spaepen said some added features the RTR will offer over the Raptor include standard high-clearance wide-track suspension, tougher steering rack, and an upgraded cooling fan from that which is on the Bronco Raptor. Fox shocks will be available, 35-inch tires, antilag turbo technology and "Hyper Lime" accents. The 2027 Ford Bronco RTR is seen Monday, Jan. 12, 2026, in Dearborn, Michigan. Ford will build the Bronco RTR at Michigan Assembly in Wayne, where it also builds the Bronco, Ford spokesman Mike Levine said. The new 'halo' product Ford has big ambitions when it comes to the off-road performance vehicle market, Spaepen said. For one thing, Ford has become America’s No. 1 off-road four-wheel-drive vehicle brand based on registrations, with Bronco closing in on Jeep Wrangler for total sales. Jeep Wrangler still outsells Bronco on total sales, which includes commercial and fleet, but Bronco outsells the Wrangler on retail sales. What distinguishes Ford in the marketplace is its status as an early mover in the modern off-road segment. That gives Ford "street cred," said Ivan Drury, director of Insights at Edmunds. And, Ford's strategy, which involves offering both dedicated models — the Bronco and F-150 Raptor — as well as specialized trims like Tremor and FX4, all of which offer more than just aesthetic upgrades, Drury said. The off-road specific trims genuinely enhance capability with enough visual cues to differentiate them from their pavement-focused counterparts. In fact, Drury said, "the Raptor, acting as a halo product, initiated a significant industry-wide trend, leading nearly every automaker to increase their emphasis with off-road models and trim levels." A halo product is usually a line's sports car. It is the vehicle that stands out in design and performance to shine a light on the rest of the brand, drawing in new customers who aspire to own that vehicle one day. Drury said off-road vehicles and trims have become the new brand halos because they are more versatile than sports cars, but also aspirational. "By shifting the halo to the SUV body style, consumers are more willing to invest in these higher trims because the vehicles remain usable for daily driving," Drury said. Ford recognizes the increasing appeal of SUVs with off-road capabilities, helping it stand out from the crowd, said Karl Brauer, executive analyst with iSeeCars.com. "These packages draw in both true off-road enthusiasts and consumers who want to look the part. It’s really no different than the role SUVs have played for decades — giving drivers the look of being adventurous, even if they rarely leave the pavement," Brauer said. "The difference today is that it takes a more pronounced level of off-road accoutrements to stand out from the hundreds of SUVs parked in showrooms across the U.S." The beginning of Ford leaving the pavement Back to Ford's off-road odyssey beginning in 2006. Derrick Kuzak, who led Ford product development at that time, pushed to make a truck that would be similar to a Baja or trophy truck, which is an off-road high-performance pickup that can navigate through the desert, said Ford spokesman Said Deep. At that time, the internal code name for such a product was dubbed P415 SVT Raptor, Deep said. The 2001 Ford SVT F-150 Lightning pickup (seen here) was a street performance pickup that Ford replaced in 2010 with the first F-150 Raptor off-road performance pickup. In the early days, as the Raptor was being imagined in the design studio, Kuzak would regularly come down after hours to the studio to discuss the vehicle and see the progress the team was making, Deep said. "Once the design team painted this property orange and put graphics on, it was then the Raptor really started to gain momentum inside of Ford," Deep recalled. "The design team wanted to be certain we had this performance off-road truck or “pre-runner” right. So they brought in Robby Gordon, the famous off-road race driver. He came to the studio at various points in 2007. Robby gave the vehicle the thumbs up. It was every bit of what an off-road performance truck should be." But the Great Recession started in 2007 so Ford hit pause on any production plans for the P415 SVT Raptor program. Despite the recession, Kuzak and Elena Ford, who was head of North America product planning and strategy at the time, kept advocating for the P415 SVT Raptor, Deep said. "It was a white space vehicle," Deep said. "No one out there had anything like this. There was this belief that it was where the market could go. This was the vehicle to go for." The secret is 'spilled' Levine, who was a journalist at the time, remembers finding out about the code-named project from sources. "When the secret got spilled it was like there became such a grassroots interest in what was being described, because nothing like that existed in trucks," Levine said. "It was all street trucks at that point." The pause button came off in 2008, Deep said, and the company decided to go forward with the P415 SVT Raptor. The first Ford F-150 Raptor being tested off-road in Las Vegas in 2008, two years before it would launch. "It was a crucial decision of if you go left or go right," Deep said. "It was a pivotal moment that changed the direction of off-roading today." Levine said when the off-road community heard about this Raptor, "it sparked such excitement that Ford was like, ‘We should just name the product the F-150 Raptor.’ So the code name became the actual Raptor we have today and spawned the whole family." The Raptor graphic for the badge has a rugged claw, Deep said, influenced by the movie "Jurassic Park" and the raptor in that movie. The 2008 Raptor badge with claws in it, a nod to the movie Jurassic Park and the Raptor in it. "The design team wanted the Raptor badge to look lethal," Deep said. "So you will notice it has claws in it." Ford debuted the Ford Raptor pickup in 2010, which today is built at Dearborn Truck plant. Deep said it is the only Ford vehicle to ever carry over its project code name to the production model. While Ford does not break out the number of F-150 Raptors sold, Deep said sales of the vehicle are up 6.1% in 2025 compared with 2024 and have continuously risen since launch. A 2010 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor. From racing to retail Spaepen said Ford considers off-road to be a core segment that blends market demand with Ford's desire to bring "passion products" to consumers. Plus, off-road is a growing segment. "It’s not us forcing it on the market. We’ve broadened our lineup to meet that demand," Spaepen said. "On Tremor for example, we just launched it on the Expedition last model year. We will just launch it now on the Explorer. On both of those, they are our fastest turning configurations. We’re actually attempting to keep up with demand on those. So it’s not just because we built it, customers really want it." Ford revealed the Expedition Tremor during a kickoff event for the 2025 Detroit Auto Show at Huntington Place in Detroit, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025. The Tremor upgrade has enhanced suspension, larger all-terrain tires, skid plates, design differentials, and specialized drive modes for rugged terrain. "Our ambitions around off-road are global from our racing ambition — whether it be the Dakar Rally or Baja 1000 — we want to be owning off-road," Spaepen said. "But we also need to translate it to retail — from racing to retail. We want to make sure we meet that customer demand where it is." By racing-to-retail he means taking what Ford learns when its off-road vehicles participate in grueling off-road races and then putting that technology on Ford's other retail vehicles. "Raptor was born and bred at the Baja," Will Ford, general manager of Ford Racing, told the Free Press last fall. "We turned it into a production vehicle that became the F-150 Raptor. We go back every year and take everything we’ve learned and brought it back into the next generation of the Raptor. We have put it into the Bronco and Ranger. We keep making the products better and better." 'We invented the playbook' While Spaepen declined to say how much profit off-road products and trims add to Ford's bottom line, he said, "It is good business for Ford to be in." He said it differentiates Ford in the market. "Bronco (re)launched in 2021 model year, COVID era," Spaepen said. "You’ll recall the very hard decision to exit sedans and smaller format vehicles. That was a cycle choice made at that moment in time to look structurally and strategically at the market opportunity in our business, to say, 'What are the segments where we actually have a real opportunity to win and differentiate ourselves?' " Levine said Ford's strategy of continuing to borrow learnings from races and apply it to technology across the lineup keeps Ford a step ahead of competitors. "You have this amazingly capable vehicle for the desert today that others ... they’re copying us,” Levine said. “We invented the playbook. We found this white space that no one had gone after and it’s spawned F-150s, Rangers and Broncos and people love them around the world.” Jamie L. LaReau is the senior autos writer for USA Today Co. who covers Ford Motor Co. for the Detroit Free Press. Contact Jamie at jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. To sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.
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