Ford Mulling Smaller Pickup, But Global Ranger Is Too Big

Ford is said to be mulling a smaller pickup to slot beneath the F-150, plucked from their existing global product portfolio. One thing we are sure of is that it won’t be the new “global Ranger” sold in world markets.

Despite the relentless insistence of enthusiasts, Ford’s new Ranger will not be sold here because it is simply too big. Calling it “90% of the F-150 size”, Ford’s Dave Scott told USA Today that the new truck would be a true small truck, rather than something mid-size like the new Chevrolet Colorado.

“We’re looking at it. We think we could sell a compact truck that’s more like the size of the old Ranger, that gets six or eight more miles per gallon (than a full-size truck), is $5,000 or $6,000 less, and that we could build in the U.S. to avoid the tariff on imported trucks,” he says.

And there lies the problem. How do you find a product cheap enough to sell at such a price point (the F-150 already starts at around $20,000), and then amortize the cost of producing it in an American factory and homologating it for FMVSS standards while still making a profit? Oh, and there’s the whole CAFE thing as well.

Despite the insistence of the internet small truck brigade, the case for the small(er) truck is largely predicated on desiring variety for its own sake. The obstacles to profitability are extremely high, and there aren’t enough customers demanding a small truck to make the exercise worthwhile. The alternatives are to bring a unibody “lifestyle truck”, as Ford is exploring, or letting your current mid-sizer sit on the vine for years, sans updates, as Toyota and Nissan have done with the Tacoma and Frontier. In Nissan’s case, even developing something affordable for North American consumers on a long amortized platform was deemed to be an economically unfeasible proposition, thanks to burdensome regulations and weak demand.

The alternative is to task a risk, listen to the cheerleaders and bring out a new mid-size truck…and then have your dealers upsell potential customers into a more profitable full-size truck that also happens to have four-figure rebates attached to it. Don’t think that’s going to happen? Go ahead, I’ll wait.