People Pay Way More For Ford F-150 Raptors Than Any Other Truck

It’s the day before Thanksgiving, which means home cooks around the country are collecting what they need to make a meal for their loved ones (and/or family). You’re my little family here, and I’m collecting data points to make you a warm, starchy, and filling Morning Dump–wow, that’s a sentence.

I’m going to start with a big number, which is how much people pay on average for a Ford Raptor compared to, say, the Ram RHO or Silverado ZR2. You want a bigger number? The 2026 Audi Q3 is way, way, way more expensive this year.

Here’s a smaller number: The number of Stellantis execs who showed up for an important meeting in front of Canada’s parliament. And, finally, I’ve got the number of minutes it takes for a car stolen with a certain technology to be returned.

The Raptor Was Clearly A Stroke Of Genius

Here’s a fun story from when the Raptor first launched. I was out doing a video/review with a buddy, and we’d even secured a Wrangler for a little comparison. The Raptor was brand new, and the early/pre-production version we had was one of the first ones in the great State of Texas. Driving it around an off-road park in East Texas (more the Jeep’s playground than the Raptor’s), I might as well have been in a neon green flying saucer for all the attention it got.

People were fascinated by the truck, which was designed more for dunes than the kind of muddy, rocky terrain that Jeep built its legacy on. That fascination continues today, with Ford realizing that people always want more capability than they need, and that the aesthetics are maybe even more important.

The F-150 Raptor wasn’t the first off-road truck from an automaker, nor the first expensive trim level. There are many reasons for its success, including the fact that it’s built on the most popular truck platform, but I think the biggest is just that it looks the coolest.

That’s simplyfying it a lot, of course, given the incredible performance, but it’s what I believe.

If you consider all of the vehicles built on the half-ton truck platforms in the United States, it represents about 15% of the total market according to S&P Global Mobility. If you take into account the profits, it likely makes up a way larger share for most automakers with half-tons.

There’s a bunch of interesting data in this report, like this bit:

The Ford F-Series and Chevrolet’s Silverado, the segment leaders, have remained in front throughout this decade, and their market shares are inversely correlated with one another: as one increases, the other declines. In contrast, the Dodge Ram’s position has deteriorated since mid-2022 and is just now beginning to improve, while the Toyota Tundra gained share from January 2022 to May 2024 but is now plateauing.

I’ve written about this effect before, and it seems like Ram/Tundra will continue to be locked in a battle for also-ran supremacy, which says a lot about Ram’s many, many problems, although the brand seems to be turning it around.

Here’s the table that really got me, though, which shows the registration volume and average loan monthly payments for the leading full-size half-ton pickups:

Damn. The F-150 Raptor’s average loan payment is $1,425. That’s a lot of scratch and a little less than double what people are paying for STX-trim model. The second-highest loan for any truck is the Tundra Crewmax Capstone, which Toyota sold a whopping 89 of in Q2, compared to 2,802 Raptors.

Obviously, some of this has to do with pricing. The Raptor starts at $82k and stretches beyond $110k for the Raptor. By comparison, a Ram RHO starts around $70k, and the most expensive ZR2 4WD Silverado isn’t that much more. Obviously, all of these vehicles can be optioned up and, really, none of them are Raptors, so it’s hard to entirely compare.

Still, that gap is impressive and huge given the giant volumes. Also, look at the STX versus the Silverado 1500 Custom. The average loan cost was within $5, which shows you how close the competition is.

The Audi Q3 Will Now Come In One Trim, Cost Way More Than It Used To

While automakers have been able to sneak tariff costs into things like delivery fees this year, that’s not going to be enough for everyone. Audi, which is the large brand probably at the biggest risk from tariffs, is going to have to deal with it the old-fashioned way: raising prices.

Case in point, the new Audi Q3, in spite of its cool turn signal stalks, is going to be a lot more expensive, according to Automotive News. Not only will pricing in the U.S. jump to $44,995, or a $3,900 increase over last year, but it’ll only be available in one trim line: S Line.

Why? The Q3 is built in Gyor, Hungary, and therefore subject to tariffs on cars from the EU.

Stellantis Accidentally Blows Off Canadian Parliament

While we’re on the topic of tariffs, the sudden move away from Canadian production has incensed lawmakers in that country (as well as trying to claim it as the 51st state). Teresa Piruzza, a Stellantis executive, was supposed to show up via videoconference for a Parliamentary committee about the millions of dollars the government has poured into the company for it to build cars there.

Per the CBC, she ghosted them:

“I am incredibly annoyed that Stellantis has not been able to join us,” said Vince Gasparro, the Liberal MP for Eglinton—Lawrence. “This is incredibly frustrating and […] at this point, unacceptable.”

Stellantis claims the company tested the connection and made it work initially, but that some sort of error stopped them from connecting a second time. You know who’d have been there? Former CEO Carlos Tavares, pictured above.

This mistake opened the company up for a ton of criticism:

Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, one of the vice-chairs of the committee, told McCauley she was “speechless” that Stellantis still hadn’t appeared more than an hour into the hearing.

“Because clearly, when you make electric vehicles, when you are on the cutting edge of technology, it’s unbelievable that you have internet issues,” said Gaudreau, the Bloc Québecois MP for Laurentides—Labelle, in French.

There’s good fishing in Quebec, but also super ornery lawmakers. Figure it out, Stellantis!

Car Theft Recovery Firm Coming To The United States

Hey, Stellantis, take notes. When I’ve got somewhere important to be, I just show up, in person, like a professional. Or, at least, I do it when it’s at somewhere fun like the Classic Car Club Manhattan, and I’ve been promised a sandwich.

The event was to discuss Ituran, a global telematics and car security firm, which is bringing its somewhat white-label fleet management system to the United States. If you run a small rental firm, it might be worth checking out, though there’s a bit of data that I found more interesting.

Using a little black box that connects to the vehicle, the company can track and remotely immobilize a car. The trick, Deputy CEO Udi Mizrahi pointed out to me, was that the system tracks behavior and therefore sends an alert that it thinks the car might be stolen.

There are false positives (if the car suddenly moves at 3:00 am to take someone to the hospital, for instance), so the system sends an alert to the owner to ask if everything is chill. That helps keep the average recovery time down under 60 minutes.

The other reason for the speed is the places where the system is being most widely used: Mexico City, Tel Aviv, and São Paulo. According to Mizrahi, in many of these markets, there’s a narrow window to stop the car before it’s taken somewhere and chopped up for parts. While there’s no plan for this in the United States, Ituran uses its own enforcement units to chase down the vehicles.

Mizrahi says the “chasing” isn’t of the high-speed variety. Instead, anyone on the enforcement team following a stolen car is waiting to see when the vehicle is in a place where it’s safely stopped (like a traffic light) to immobilize it remotely. The enforcement units might even utilize a loudspeaker to tell the thief to scram:

“I don’t really care about the thief, I care about the car,” Mizrahi told me. “With the [thief] I’m just saying ‘walk away.'” That’s very Road Warrior, but you get the idea.

The company also does fleet services and can give drivers a score based on how safe they drive, and I’m tempted to install these units on our cars just to see who the worst driver is.

What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD

Massive Attack just put “Safe From Harm” off its album Blue Lines on YouTube, so let that set your Thanksgiving mood.

The Big Question

Which car are you most thankful for?

Top Photo: Ford