MUDDY SNORTERS

Ford's new V6-propelled, motorsport-damped Ranger Raptor hurls a big glob of excitement into muddy-shire off-roading. Matt Prior wonders if it will leave the Jeep Wrangler floundering

- Matt Prior

I$f you want to know how wet it's been, ask a farmer-or, failing that, the owner of an off-roading centre. I feel like I've been cold and damp to the core since October, but no, I'm told it has been so dry that extreme 4x4 drivers - mud-pluggers to the end - have found the quarry that we've come to already insufficiently challenging, even though it's only the start of March. As they're not wading up to their eyeballs, they now won't be happy until it's warm enough to go rock-crawling by day and barbecuing by night.

But I don't know. Two hours later, when I fish a front numberplate out of a water trough that has two feet of gloop the same consistency as a decent leek and potato soup, it still feels convincingly wet to me.

We've been having a go at getting these two cars stuck, see. They're two of the most capable off-roaders on the market at the moment, even if mud isn't necessarily at the forefront of their minds.

The new car, and the reason we're here, is the Ford Ranger Raptor. It has already impressed us in Spain, across a vast dry ranch where there was so much space that I could compete with colleagues to see who would get the most air underneath the wheels. I've since had a go in the UK, too, and got on pretty well with it - but I think wide, open territories are where it shows its abilities most convincingly. And you feel less of a berk than you do on the M25.

There's a Baja option among its driving modes for good reason. The Baja California Desert, on a Pacific side Mexican peninsular, is home to rallies that bear the Baja's name, the most famous being the 1000 (actually around 800 miles), into which Ford entered a stock Ranger Raptor last year (see box, right).