Turning Our Ford Ranger Raptor into an Overland Truck Hurt Its Performance in All but One Area

• Our long-term 2026 Ford Ranger Raptor is currently outfitted with overland gear that increases the truck’s curb weight by nearly 450 pounds.
• The extra heft reduced its 60-mph time by 0.6 second, though it did stop shorter from 70 mph, thanks in part to its more even front-to-rear weight distribution.
• Along with the added weight, the drag-inducing rooftop tent hurt the truck’s highway fuel economy, dropping it from 18 to 16 mpg at a steady 75 mph.

Welcome to Car and Driver's Testing Hub, where we zoom in on the test numbers. We've been pushing vehicles to their limits since 1956 to provide objective data to bolster our subjective impressions (you can see how we test here).

Overlanding continues to be a popular trend, with enthusiasts taking their vehicle of choice and adorning it with all sorts of accessories to essentially turn it into an off-road-ready camper. Recently, Car and Driver contributor Jonathan Ramsey completed a roughly 8000-mile round trip in our long-term 2026 Ford Ranger Raptor that included traversing treacherous parts of northern Canada. To survive the adventure, he outfitted the truck’s five-foot cargo bed with a gear-laden rack and a rooftop tent. When it returned, we decided to see how the extra 446 pounds of bulky add-ons affected its test numbers. While most of the performance trade-offs were expected, one result was surprising.

When we initially tested our Ranger Raptor, the unladen pickup tipped our scales at 5358 pounds. Once Ramsey added the aforementioned tent and bed rack—with its gear pods, water dispenser, and three tanks of gas—the truck’s curb weight rose by 446 pounds to 5804 pounds.

At the test track, the heavier Ranger Raptor needed 5.8 seconds to hit 60 mph and 6.5 ticks to accelerate from 5 to 60 mph. Compare those with the truck’s 5.2- and 5.8-second runs, respectively, without all the gear. For anyone crazy enough to take their overland-equipped Ranger Raptor to the drag strip to see how quickly it’ll go 1320 feet, we’ll save you the time. Our Shelter Green Metallic long-termer completed the quarter-mile in 13.9 seconds at 98 mph in its natural state, but that increased to 14.6 seconds at 93 mph with all the gear.

With most of the additional 446 pounds over the Ranger Raptor’s rear axle, it actually helped create a nearly perfect front-to-rear weight distribution. The rear-mounted accessories put 49.7 percent of the truck’s weight bias out back and 50.3 percent up front versus the unladen version’s 55.2/44.8 percent front/rear distribution. Still shod with the standard 33-inch BFGoodrich All-Terrain T/A KO3 tires, the heavier Ranger Raptor stopped from 70 mph in 211 feet—12 feet shorter than the lighter version.

Despite the improvement in our emergency braking test, the Ranger Raptor’s slower acceleration was accompanied by worse fuel economy. Not only did the overland setup make it heavier, but the rooftop tent’s blunt edges exponentially increased the truck’s drag coefficient, especially at prolonged highway speeds. A previous, mechanically identical Ranger Raptor test vehicle scored 18 mpg on our 75-mph fuel-economy route; our long-termer netted 16 mpg with all the additional gear.

Despite our long-termer’s worse acceleration and fuel economy, we received a lot of positive comments from passersby about its rugged, military-grade appearance with all the accessories. Alas, we’re ready to shed those add-ons and install a much more aero-friendly tonneau cover. So, this test-hub story should help explain why our Ranger Raptor’s fuel economy sucks.

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Eric Stafford’s automobile addiction began before he could walk, and it has fueled his passion to write news, reviews, and more for Car and Driver since 2016. His aspiration growing up was to become a millionaire with a Jay Leno–like car collection. Apparently, getting rich is harder than social-media influencers make it seem, so he avoided financial success entirely to become an automotive journalist and drive new cars for a living. After earning a journalism degree at Central Michigan University and working at a daily newspaper, the years of basically burning money on failed project cars and lemon-flavored jalopies finally paid off when Car and Driver hired him. His garage currently includes a 2010 Acura RDX, a manual '97 Chevy Camaro Z/28, and a '90 Honda CRX Si.