[Image Removed Upon Request]

Eventually, even your most diehard SoCal bro grows up and starts a family, or at least knocks a couple broads up, and suddenly he finds himself needing two extra doors on his desert hauler. Enter: the Ford F-150 SVT Raptor Supercrew.

Introduced to an awestruck audience (which included us) last year, the Ford Raptor turned the world of 4×4’s on its ear when it hit the scene as the first baja-ready production pickup truck in history. Shortly thereafter, pleas came pouring in from fanboys for a 4-door version. “We’ve had requests for a crew cab,” acknowledged Ford marketing manager Mark Grueber, “We haven’t made any decisions but there’s some demand for it. Not everyone is going to use [the Raptor] for aggressive off-roading. It could be something similar to the four-door Wrangler.” With these new spy shots, however, it seems they’ve advanced considerably beyond merely toying with the idea.

Courtesy Boston Globe

Sometimes crackpot ideas end up being pretty good. The Wright brothers lifted off the ground in what was essentially a giant box kite. Surely it seemed like a bad idea at the time, but it worked. When Local Motors put out the word that they wanted to build a kit car based on a submitter’s design, it must have seemed like quite a risk. The resulting Rally Fighter is intriguingly awesome, packing a BMW turbodiesel out of the 335d into a Dakar-rally-looking street legal package. (In case you don’t recall what makes the 3.0 twin-turbo diesel special, possibly the 265 HP and 425 ft-lbs of torque, available at 1,750 RPM, will remind you.)

We’ve been ridelust-crazed for months now in anticipation of the 2010 Ford F-150 Raptor SVT finally hitting the market, but speculation over the price tag has continuously placed a significant damper on our amorous affections. Dangling juicy morsels like “6.2L BOSS V8″ and “400 horsepower” in front of our face, Ford made sure we were good and seduced before dropping the buzz-killing bombshell: the price. According to the official release, the 2010 Raptor will begin with a base price of $38,995, which includes the standard 320-horsepower, 390 lb-ft of torque, 5.4L Triton V8 engine and all the promised desert-hauling goodies. To get their hands on the 400-horsepower, 400 lb-ft of torque 6.2L BOSS V8, SoCal baja bro-skies will have to shell out $41,995, which doesn’t include the $1,995 luxury leather seating package, the $1,075 exterior graphics package, or the $395 interior accent package. What both the $38k and $41k models do include, however, are 35″ of BF Goodrich All-Terrain TA/KO 315/70-17 tires and custom built Fox Racing shocks (capable of 11.2″ of travel in the front, 13.4″ rear) that effectively make the 2010 Raptor the first production pickup to ever come outfitted with position-sensitive internal bypass shocks.