Back when Ford’s Special Vehicle Team leveraged its off-road racing exploits to develop a production truck that could conquer the desert and cruise to work with ease, there was a mandate in place. Ford didn’t advertise those vehicles. They had to sell on their own merits. These days, modern Raptors built by Ford Racing are mainstream machines. Promoting them as halo rides helps sell other vehicles.
To that end, Ford enlisted Ben Affleck to direct a commercial that reflects on the storied history of its off-road-ready trucks. The spot features Jon Bernthal, who plays The Punisher in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, narrating the story alongside real-life Ford Racing engineers Derek Bier, Tim Smith, and Chris Paiva.
“Directed by Ben Affleck and featuring Jon Bernthal alongside Ford Racing engineers, ‘How to Make a Monster’ brings Raptor’s origin story to life, from a wild idea in 2006 to years of testing, racing and pushing to create a new kind of off-road truck,” Dan Barbossa, of Ford Communications, said. “Raptor started as a wild idea from a small group of Ford engineers inspired by the Baja 1000. More than 15 years later, Raptor sits at the top of Ford’s off-road performance portfolio and has helped build an entire community around going fast off-road.”
The commercial traces the program to engineers who wanted to build the kind of off-road machine they would drive themselves. Inspired by Ford’s Baja 1000 racing efforts, the team set out to bring that desert-running capability to a production pickup, complete with the performance hardware needed to back up its aggressive stance.
“Like many off-road enthusiasts, I’ve long been inspired by the trophy trucks that compete in desert races like the Baja 1000. These high-performance rigs represent the peak of off-road capability, soaking up monster ruts, whoops and jumps at speeds of more than 120 mph,” Mark Rushbrook, Global Director of Ford Racing, said back in 2025 in celebration of the truck’s 15th anniversary. “Nearly two decades ago, these trucks sparked an idea at Ford. And like the company has done so often throughout its history, we aspired to make an idea accessible to more people, this time by expanding the boundaries of performance from solely pavement-focused to include off-roading.”
The idea wasn’t universally embraced. Bernthal’s narration recounts how the project was killed six times, only for the engineers to return to testing, refining, racing, and breaking their creation. The spot even pokes fun at Bier spending so much time in Baja that he learned Spanish.
That persistence eventually produced the original F-150 SVT Raptor, introduced in 2009 for the 2010 model year. Rather than leave owners to piece together an off-road builds, Ford delivered a factory-engineered pickup designed to tackle demanding terrain while retaining everyday practicality.
Some 16 years later, the Raptor name spans Ford’s off-road performance portfolio and has cultivated a loyal following. What began as an unconventional engineering exercise has become a cornerstone of Ford’s performance-truck lineup.
The commercial debuts today on Apple TV during Formula 1 coverage of the United States Grand Prix in Austin. It will also air tomorrow on ESPN during the Ole Miss versus Texas football game.
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