RTR has always been more than one thing. Performance and lifestyle. Pavement and dirt. Mustangs and Broncos. And now, two facilities to match. Alongside the RTR Lab in Concord, North Carolina, we are proud to introduce our brand new off-road headquarters in Farmington, New Mexico, the beating heart of everything RTR does in the off-road space.
Two years in the making, through land searches, setbacks, and countless hours of planning and building, this facility is now up, running, and ready to push the RTR Off-Road program further than ever before.
Why Farmington
This isn’t a random pin on the map. Farmington, New Mexico is where Loren Healy grew up, where he spent weekends learning the terrain of Chokecherry Canyon right in his own backyard. That connection to the land made Farmington the natural home for an operation built to support off-road racing, product development, and vehicle builds like El Bandito and both our 4400- and 4600-class Ford Bronco Raptors. The ability to roll straight out of the shop and onto dirt is not a perk. That is the point.
The Facility
Walk through the doors, and the vision becomes immediately clear. The main prep area is designed to function like a showroom for race-ready machines, clean, organized, and purposeful. Offices, a media workspace, shipping and receiving, and even a kitchenette for the crew round out the front of the building. This is a place built for a team that plans on standing on podiums, and this is where it all starts.
Out back is where things get serious. The fabrication shop is where the real metal magic happens, staffed by a team of builders who show up every day and create things from nothing. Miller welders, a Mazak press, belt sanders, a stomp shear brake, bandsaws, and sheet metal tooling line the space. Organized, intentional, and humming with energy. Spare engines, tires, axle shafts, and drive shafts fill the storage area, because in off-road racing, being prepared for everything isn’t optional.
The Vehicles
A shop tour is only as interesting as what is sitting inside it, and the RTR Lab Farmington does not disappoint. Look around, and the first thing you’ll notice is Bronco, and a lot of it. This facility is now home to all Ford Racing Raptors run by the RTR Vehicles Off-Road team. This includes the 4400 and 4600 class Bronco Raptors and the Ford Raptor Ranger and F-150 Raptor R. Builds like the recent Pikes Peak International Hill Climb winner, El Bandito, also call this home and serve as a reminder of what is possible when creativity and engineering collide.
Also calling the new facility home is the Fun Runner, familiar to anyone who has visited the RTR Lab in Charlotte, which has also made its way to Farmington, where the vast terrain and open land make it a far more capable test bed for product development. Suspension geometry, portal upgrades, and ongoing refinements have already taken place since it arrived.
Of course, we can’t forget the Bronco RTR and Bronco RTR ROVR, several examples of which will be in and out of the building as we continue to test and develop products for our production vehicles.
The Bigger Picture
This facility exists to serve four things: product development, customer experiences, vehicle builds, and racing. The land surrounding the shop offers the kind of testing ground that simply does not exist in Charlotte, and the team is already putting it to work. Down the road, the vision includes an obstacle course and event space where RTR owners can come out, play, and experience what these vehicles were built to do in their natural environment.
As Vaughn put it, it took over a year to build the community and culture around the Charlotte Lab. Farmington is at the beginning of that same journey, and the foundation could not be stronger.
This is Just the Beginning
Two years of work. One incredible team. And a canyon full of dirt as far as the eye can see. The RTR off-road program has a proper home now, and we couldn’t be more fired up about what comes next. Stay tuned. The best is ahead.
