Ford Motor Co. revealed on Friday, Oct. 23 its first major TV commercial highlighting its Raptor high-performance, off-road trim as the Dearborn automaker bets on the high-margin segment to drive sales, profits and consumer enthusiasm.

The 90-second spot will debut on Apple TV this weekend during the Austin Grand Prix and also appear on ABC during the University of Mississippi-University of Texas at Austin college football game on Saturday. It comes as U.S. sales of Raptor trucks and SUVs were up 4.6% year-over-year through September and as Raptor vehicles have been a focused passion product for the brand in international markets. Additionally, Ford Racing marks its 125th anniversary in 2026.

"As we celebrate that milestone of 125 years," Will Ford, general manager of Ford Racing, said during a virtual briefing, "there's no better way to celebrate what Ford Racing is, what racing means to our company than to tell the story of Raptor and particularly the origins of Raptor."

The Ben Affleck-directed "How to Make a Raptor" advertisement features "The Odyssey" actor Jon Bernthal and Ford Racing engineers Derek Bier, Tim Smith and Chris Paiva, telling the story of their efforts past six cancellations to adopt Ford's Baja 1000 racer to an on-the-road retail product for enthusiasts. The Raptor trim launched for the 2010 model year on the F-150 pickup. Affleck owns two Raptors, after being introduced to the vehicles by Bernthal, who drove one while the two were filling "The Accountant."

Smith, Ford Racing's vehicle architecture manager, said the project didn't start out with an off-road focus. Ford's Special Vehicle Team was working on what it thought would be the third-generation SVT Lightning, a high-performance gasoline street truck (not the all-electric model that more recently wore the Lightning badge). It was happening as the 2007 Ford Shelby GT500 was in development.

"The truck we were working on, it just wasn't enough," Smith said. "It wasn't going to hit. It didn't seem to do anything really special. We had kind of gotten to the end of that line."

The engineers took a step back and thought about Ford's history with trucks and landed on off-roading, noting Ford's 1969 Baja win and other successes in the 1970s, '80s and '90s, Smith said.

"We had a lot of people who knew how to go fast, but the off-road thing was very new to all of us," he said. "Then it was just about the team running with it, and learning how to develop the processes, learning how to develop new skillsets, going places we'd never gone before, and just figuring out how to make it work."

One of the biggest challenges was balancing the on-road driving experience with high-speed off-road capability, said Paiva, Ford Racing vehicle dynamics supervisor. Fox Shocks at the Specialty Equipment Market Association's trade show introduced an internal bypass shock that brings that durability into a production-friendly package, he said. The SVT team sought to learn more in a "cold call" appearance in Fox's lobby.

"From there, the rest is history," Paiva said. "That partnership with Fox and the ongoing damper development is really a core element of what makes Raptor a Raptor."

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