With Top Gear in a state of … transition, it seems as if someone forgot to shut the Stig down before packing up the set. He’s still out on the track, banging out hot laps on the test track with whatever he can get his hands on. His latest track toy has been the Hennessy VelociRaptor, a mad sport truck more designed to rip through road unpaved.
Hennessey has taken Ford’s already tremendously fun F-150 Raptor and added — among other things — a 2.9-liter supercharger to the Raptor’s 6.2-liter V8. This brings the output of the monstrous engine up from 411 horsepower to a mighty 600 ponies.
Fully loaded with a spare tire in the truck bed, an optional winch, and light bar accessories, the VelociRaptor also has a damp track to contend with. Not that any of this is going to hinder the Stig in any way. It is programmed to do one thing: Drive things. Fast.
This is evident in even the first turn as his Stigness chucks over 6,000 pounds of truck through the bend, tires and suspension desperately fighting the conditions. Liberal application of the extra power on hand gets the VelociRaptor to slide sideways around hammerhead corner shortly thereafter.
After much struggling to keep the truck in check, the finally crosses the line in … well, we don’t know. The guy who usually does that part isn’t there anymore.
The VelociRaptor really showed its prowess in this most recent, albeit truncated series, when co-host Richard Hammond was left alone on a mountain in British Columbia, prompting the other two hosts to recover him. While James May drove the Chevrolet Silverado, Jeremy Clarkson, appropriately, drove the very shout-y, yellow, and ridiculously overpowered Velociraptor. It did well to trudge through the mountain snow until a tire punctured and began shredding off… heck it did well even as the oafish presenter soldiered on in that state.
While the future of Top Gear cloudy, we at least feel comforted that, no matter what happens, the Stig will still be out there, endlessly looping the track.
