I quietly judged Ford Ranger Raptor owners. I was wrong | Opinion

I’m going to be totally honest with you, when news of the first Ford Ranger Raptor surfaced, I felt it was little more than an automotive curiosity.

Like the eyeball-scarring Chrysler PT Cruiser. Or the Fiat Multipla, which looked like it was based on a clay model that had been unfortunately sat on by a very large opera singer, and then — short of time, or money, or both — the Italians just pushed on with making it anyway.

And so it was with the Ford Ranger Raptor. A sporty ute? It felt like teaching an elephant to ice-skate. Mildly entertaining, I suppose, and sure to be adored by idiots, but that pachyderm’s unlikely to bother the Olympic figure skating team anytime soon.

That term ‘ute’ by the way, is short for ‘utility vehicle’, and they were so named because that was their intended purpose – to be a practical, useful tool of any trade. And so making a sporty one made as much sense as fitting a turbocharger to your ladder.

I know, I know, the Raptor was’t first. HSV had the Maloo, and FPV the Super Pursuit. But utes were small then, and low to the ground, and car-based with monocoque bodies. Picture them like Usain Bolt running with a bucket in each hand – not going to break any world records, but still pretty fast, and slightly more practical.

Today’s dual-cab utes are giant, high-riding, ladder-framed, tax-deducting beasts. And we want to make them sporty?

This week, through chance, a Ranger Raptor became mine, and my preconceptions weren’t helped by the fact it was painted the colour of something you might see a doctor to have lanced.

Ford calls it Code Orange, by the way, which also sounds like a warning issued around the White House when the 47th president is in one of his moods.

But, and this part is truly shocking, I love it. I mean really and truly love it, to the point where my wife and I have had several in-depth conversations about whether it might actually be our perfect family car.

Sports cars are, almost by design, uncomfortable. Stiff suspension and a wire-taught chassis do make cornering a blast, but can also turn your daily commute into a tooth-rattling nightmare. Plus they can usually carry less stuff than a pair of cargo pants, and the really good ones usually only have seating for two.

But the Raptor is very comfortable – ridiculously so. At slow speeds it is utterly car-like in the way it goes about its business, and the magic weaved by the 17-inch off-road wheel-and-tyre package and the Fox shocks somehow vanishes road imperfections long before they're felt in the cabin.

It's also very practical, particularly with the addition of the power roller shutter (apparently an extra $3800). Far more so, even, than almost any SUV. We threw a pram, a cot, a bouncy chair thingy, play mats, toys, and the billion or so other items now required to leave the house for more than 15 minutes since our family grew by one into the sizeable tray, closed the roller, and we were off, all five seats still in place.

But perhaps most importantly, it's just silly, stupid fun every time you climb behind the wheel. You can set the exhaust from 'sensible' to 'should be illegal', the new twin-turbocharged V6 petrol engine delivers a sizeable 292kW and 583Nm of grunt, and it feels quick, too, especially given you're in something the size of an apartment. Sure, the fuel use is diabolical (we're averaging 13L/100km, with A LOT of highway driving), but that's also true of most sports cars.

It feels purposefully unrefined in places, too. In the wet, for example, you can often feel it wanting to step out on you slightly. Not enough to terrify, but definitely enough to sharpen your focus.

And I guess that's the ultimate point. The very best cars make every trip feel like an event, and that is absolutely true of the Raptor. And so, Ford fans, I owe you an apology. The Raptor is the business. And I think I want one.

But maybe we can all agree to not follow the car in front quite as closely from here out? We want more people in our broad Raptor church, and that probably isn't helping.