By Sajeev Mehta
February 1, 2008 -
Thanks to John Steinbeck and Nat King Cole, Route 66 is an American icon. But Highway 77 in South Texas gives "kicks" of the international kind. As this highway winds down Mexico way, we find neglected and discarded compact trucks in pairs, towing their belittled brothers to a new life south of the Border. And while America's insatiable demand for new product continues apace, Highway 77 speaks to a silent majority who favors cheaper and smaller vehicles. It's the spiritual home of the Ford Ranger.
The Ford Ranger is more WYSIWYG than Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. Unlike its mid-size competition, the Ranger is perfectly happy without top-drawer flares, flashy paint, extensions and bulges. While the Blue Oval Boyz updated the grille and side mirrors to mimic big brother F150, nobody's buying it. (Literally.) But the Ranger's low beltline, expansive greenhouse and modest 15" steel wheels work as promised. The Ranger is a simple, respectable pickup truck.
The ease of ingress offers another reason why this ancient platform feels more timeless than outdated. Its thickly textured flight bench seat is both reassuring and supportive. The solid rubber floor smells like a new pair of professionally-endorsed kicks. Fit and finish is class average. No surprise there; this is the same interior that Clinton-era Eddie Bauer fans snapped up for more than twice the price. Other than its complete lack of fashion sense, the Ranger has aged well.
Sliding out of the Ranger is just as easy as entering; if only all trucks knew that "small" is the new "big." But adding a CD/MP3 player and a sliding rear window to the Ranger provides an honest driving experience not normally associated with today's electronic overkill.
Since options cost money, there are only two that earn their keep: the mid-grade V6 and its automatic five-cog gear swapper. The cast iron "Vulcan" mill walks the fine line between four-banger affordability (a $300 option) and V6 power, getting the Ranger to work early with 180lb-ft of pushrod twist. Even with the close ratio transmission keeping the meager 148 ponies at their peak, the Ranger moves with no sense of urgency. The zero to sixty "dash" take around 10 seconds.
But what the numbers don't tell you is that the Ranger's engine offers smooth power delivery and a flat powerband. Unlike its thrashy four-banger competition, the 3100lb Ranger scoots like a big truck and tows a Ridgeline-beating 5860lbs behind its puny frame. Fuel economy penalty be damned, ye olde Vulcan is still a peach.
Not to mention the fact that the torquey Ranger is fun to drive. Its not rocket science. Take a tiny rear wheel-drive truck, add a beefy powertrain, responsive steering, a modicum of roll control and voila! Cheap thrills. Sure the Continental tires have zero grip, and an unladen bed gives the solid axle plenty of wiggle room. But the Ranger gladly explores its limits at speeds safe enough for Ralph Nader's approval. Push any harder and the Ranger quickly points out it isn't a modern truck, much less a mild-mannered econobox.
But when the performance-anxiety reality sets in, the Ranger's parking lot skills and distraction-free visibility are a breath of fresh air. U-turns are effortless in this 69.3" wide platform. It's so nimble that a fleet of Rangers could perform in a down-home drifting team, touring the nation behind Toby Keith's tour bus.
That said, the blue-collar Ranger's inherent ugliness on bumpy roads reveals that this pickup's frame has all the torsional rigidity of half-cooked tortellini. Its underpinnings lose composure over every pothole, no matter how miniscule its proportions. Sadly, this neglected rig has none of the mighty engineering prowess of its F150 brother. And that's a damn shame.
With the departure of the compact Toyota Tacoma in 2004, the Ranger is the only safe haven for "right-sized" truckers. The Ranger's long bed carries a full 43.6 cubic feet of cargo, with a metal tailgate that easily closes with a single hand. And while the latest Ford F150 boasts class-leading stepladders to access its bountiful bed, Ranger-philes need not stretch a single vertebra to grasp a misplaced tool in their pickup's cargo hole.
After my time with a Ranger, the words "reasonable" and "honest" sprung to mind. As gas prices soar, the housing market tanks and sales of mid/full size pickups return from whence they came, the time for the Ranger to shine is now.
But the staggering neglect and obligatory demise of another famous Blue Oval product is proof positive that Ford is lowering its overhead via unnecessary self-mutilation. As the threat of mini-rigs from once-foreign lands grows more credible, the low-brow Ranger is a potential profit center. Come 2009, Ford's decision to kill the Ranger will soon become another haunting melody from another, better time.
3 / 5 Stars | 2008 Ford Ranger rating summary and performance review
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February 1st, 2008 at 1:01 pm
There will be an announcement of a Ranger replacement strategy within the year, I think. We are scheduled to be getting the T6 (global compact truck) from Australia in 2010, and there have been persistent (but unconfirmed) rumors of a mid-size truck being worked on as well.
February 1st, 2008 at 1:05 pm
The Ranger is Exhibit A in the case of Ford’s decline. This is a segment they used to OWN. Then they failed to substantially update the Ranger for 15 years, no doubt because it’s hard to make a business case fly in this entry-level segment.
February 1st, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Killing the Ranger? Brilliant. Just f’ing brilliant.
I like the size of my Ranger. I don’t want another truck to replace it when the time comes, but if I did, a Ranger would probably be it.
February 1st, 2008 at 1:09 pm
This article does a fine job at extracting the enormous promise that many of FoMoCo’s old products had, and could still have into the future. But here is another product that has withered on the vine for far too long.
What I mean when I say promise for the future is just as the author alludes to: FoMoCo is again a day late and dollar short in stopping the wheels set in motion that will lead to this and the Panther platform’s demise in 2009, just when both platforms could’ve been revised and injected with new life.
February 1st, 2008 at 1:27 pm
I have an aversion to ford products but the Ranger is both affordable used and actually reliable compared to it’s big brother. Gas mileage with the six is surprisingly bad, the four is far better on gas.
February 1st, 2008 at 1:36 pm
I was glad to read a respectful eulogy for the Ranger. It’s enormously refreshing, in today’s truck market, to find a pickup that just does what it says on the tin. No lifestyle-enhancing, yacht-towing, “off to run the Baja 1000″ pretense.
I also appreciate the mechanical honesty and (relative) directness to the Ranger’s controls; other (4,500+ lb) “compact” pickups just can’t duplicate it.
I’d argue that the base model, with its Mazda 2.3L Four and smoothish five-speed stick, is an even better deal than the Six. One of my buddies recently picked one up, brand-new, for $12,000.
February 1st, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Well, there is a Ranger with the “pretense,” the FX4 Level II. The husband of one of my wife’s college friends bought one. Even loaded up, he liked the price.
February 1st, 2008 at 1:47 pm
The new management has deliberately set about refreshing the line-up. Ford’s reputation and products among the car world were much more appalling than the Ranger’s when Fields started pushing on Ford’s product pipeline. While keeping the Ranger fresh may have gained an extra 50-75k in sales for Ford, the market has been in decline for while, and those trucks would not have turned in nearly as much profit as paying attention to growing markets such as crossovers and its own bread-and-butter the F-150. The Ranger had its niche, and while it would slowly wilt away, it wasn’t the most pressing of Ford’s many concerns.
A similar statement can be made for the Crown Victoria.
Now, Ford has completely overhauled its development program. Instead of relying on a small batch of North American engineers to develop everything, Ford of NA has been aligned with world development schedules. It just so happens that those development schedules couldn’t get a small pick-up replacement here sooner. Ditto RWD platforms.
It’s not like Ford still doesn’t realize that the Ranger is out-of-date. We need to make a clean break here between old management of products and the new management. Mulally and co. realize it, but it is not worth investing anything into the Ranger for the moment because resources are scarce, tooling is expensive and anything they do would be a patch job and not really worth the effort at this point. It will be replaced in about 2 years with a worthy successor if the sources are correct. One method was just disregard for proper product planning while the other is prudent investment of limited capital and leveraging all resources effectively to bring appropriate products to the markets most in need of them - and sometimes, that looks to an outsider like they are still neglecting the segment today.
February 1st, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Future historians analyzing the demise of the once mighty Ford Motor empire would do well to study the case of the Ranger. In the mid 90’s, Ford consistently held 5 spaces on the top 10 best-selling vehicles lists. The Ranger was one.
How a manufacturer could let a cash cow wither and die is a question for the ages. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I am currently very happy with my 3rd Toyota Tacoma.)
February 1st, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Shame on Ford if/when they kill the Ranger. The fact that you see so many of these units on the road should be testament enough. I see people drive these things until they die which is usually a very long time.