In light of oncoming federal regulations regulating fuel economy, Ford is turning increasingly to aluminum to make their vehicles lighter. First we heard rumor of the extensive use of aluminum in the new upcoming 2015 Mustang. We now know the 2015 F-150 will use an all aluminum body to reduce the truck’s overall weight by as much as 700 pounds.

A recent report by Automedia also holds that our favorite version of the F-150, the SVT Raptor, will live on with an aluminum body of its own. If the Raptors weight savings are close to that of the regular F150, that could translate into greater performance for the off road oriented pickup.

Since the current Raptor has a curb weight of 6,900 pounds, a loss of as much as 700 would get it to 6,200. This would have a big impact on street performance as well as off road prowess. The current truck does 0-60 mph in 6.9 seconds, if engine performance remains the same, the weight loss could result in much faster acceleration.

The current 6.2 liter Raptor also gets miserable fuel economy at 11/16 respectively. Weight loss would obviously raise those numbers, and would likely be key for Ford to continue building the trucks with more stringent CAFE standards coming.

There’s no official word out of Ford yet that a new Raptor model even exists, however as Automedia reports, other sites have posted spy photographs and information on a new version of the truck testing. No word yet on what will power this truck, will the 6.2 live on, or will it be replaced by a more powerful 5.0, or even an EcoBoost? You can check out Automedia’s report on an aluminum bodied Raptor at the Automedia web-site.