Dirty minded
AUTOMOTIVE powertrain engineers say ‘WOT’ quite frequently, not because they’re all a bit deaf, but because it’s techy, acronym-speak for ‘wide-open throttle’. You and I probably just call it ‘pinning the bastard to the boards’. Whatever the term, I’ve been doing it for a couple of minutes now and both revs and road speed have ceased to shift, so it’s safe to presume that this is V-max. At 4400rpm, the Raptor’s 2.0-litre twin-turbo-diesel doesn’t sound uncouth, more an insistent, gravel-edged snarl. It feels like the automotive equivalent of the heart, lungs and legs of a decent middle-distance runner coming onto the stadium’s home straight; there’s harmony and robustness, mixed with a clear sense that this is all it has to give. Our speed? A GPS-corrected 173km/h.
A kerb weight of 2332kg and the aero slipperiness of a site office will do that. If we stay with the runner analogy, it’s like asking Mo Farah to hold the lid of a wheelie bin out in front of him for the final lap of the men’s 5000m. So yes, my top-speed run is just a bit pointless, but hey, the Raptor built for speed, and I was compelled in the interests of science toin the region of South Africa where plenty of car companies come to do their high-speed testing. It’d be rude not to, etc.
