Long before the current spike in used vehicle prices across the board, the Ford F-150 Raptor enjoyed some of the highest resale values of any vehicle on the road.
It was great for those who purchased one new, and tough for anyone who thought they could get a deal buying a Raptor secondhand.
Still in Demand
Today though, the earliest Raptors are over a decade old and one might think they’ve become old and cheap enough to deliver better value on the used car market.
So we thought we’d take a look at the current prices of the first generation V8 Raptor to see if a used model is the way to go.
Searching around the various used car sites, it appears the cheapest you can get any first generation Raptor that’s not wrecked or salvaged is gonna be about $20,000 — and at that price you can expect it to have around 200,000 miles on it.
The prices go up from there, with a truck in the 100,000 mile range priced in the low to mid $30,000s. And if you are looking for a minty example with less than 100,000 miles, look to pay anywhere between $40,000 and $50,000 depending on specifics, and that’s still for a truck that’s about a decade old.
Bang for the Buck?
Considering all of this, it’s hard to recommend a used Raptor for any sort of budget-minded buyer. Not only are you gonna need to pay a lot of money to get one, but you’ll also want to make sure you find one that wasn’t abused too badly.
After all, the Raptor was sold as an off-road monster that could blast through desert at crazy speeds, and there aren’t gonna be many babied examples out there.
If you desperately want the V8 over the twin turbo EcoBoost V6 in the later Raptors, there are plenty of ultra nice, low mileage first-gens available, and those trucks will always be in high demand with prices that can rival or possibly even eclipse a newer model.
But for those looking for Raptor performance without overpaying on the used market, there are two alternatives while staying in the Ford family.
Used First Gen Raptor vs. Brand New Raptor
The first is simply to buy a brand new Raptor. This may sound crazy given that the MSRP on a new Raptor starts around $66,000 —well beyond any of the price ranges we just talked about. But there’s more to it than that.
At that price you are not only getting a more modern, better performing truck when compared to the first gen, but you’re also getting a brand new vehicle with no miles on it, and a full factory warranty.
But what makes the purchase of a new Raptor more sensible is that aforementioned resale value. It may be costly to purchase initially, but it’s unlikely the truck is going to lose substantial value as long as you take care of it.
If you ever decide it’s not for you or want to move on to something else, you’re likely to get most of your investment back.
To be fair, a nice used first-gen Raptor probably won’t depreciate too much either but at that age it will likely need more mechanical upkeep, and you might be more hesitant to drive it like it was designed.
Used First Gen Raptor vs. Aftermarket F-150 Build
The other, much cheaper alternative would be basically to build your own cheaper version of a Raptor from a normal F-150.
The cost-effectiveness of this plan will depend on your performance goals, but the price difference between a 10-year-old Raptor and a 10-year-old standard F-150 4×4 can buy you a lot of performance upgrades.
The power of a newer EcoBoost F-150 is well known, or if you are partial to the V8, you should be able to find a nicely cared for 5.0-powered F-150 and do some serious upgrades while still coming out ahead.
A quality suspension setup, wheels and tires, or even a supercharger if you want to boost power output and it shouldn’t be too hard to match or beat the performance of a stock Raptor.
Obviously one of the benefits of the Raptor is that it delivers all of that capability using factory-equipped parts, but at that age it’s not like there’s a warranty behind them, so aftermarket alternatives start to make a lot more sense.
There’s no denying that the F-150 Raptor is one of the most popular and well-respected performance vehicles of the modern era — it’s just a matter of how much you are personally willing to pay for the Raptor experience.
Keyword: Secondhand V8 First-Gen Ford F-150 Raptor: Overpriced or Used Bargain?