What Ford should've done instead of the Ranger
 

While I'm happy to see a smaller truck offering from Ford, I don't think I'm the only one who is dissatisfied with the direction that they went. The new Ranger is big... like the Colorado or the Tacoma, not the true compact truck that we used to have. Therefore, why call it a Ranger?.

Many of you may remember that a few years ago, Ford threw around the idea of making an F-100. It would've been a slightly smaller truck built on a modified F150 chassis. It would fit right in for people needing a slightly smaller, less capable truck. Lower tow/payload ratings, higher MPG, and it wouldn't be ridiculous to call it an F-100. As an added bonus, it would've counted toward Ford's "F-series" sales numbers.

I get that they're going for the familiarity of the Ranger name, but not sure they've made the right choice. The mid-size trucks are just small enough to be a lot less comfortable inside. The space efficiency of the old 90's trucks is gone, these things are crammed full of plastic that makes you feel cramped. Glad I didn't wait around for the Ranger/F-100.

https://www.bluespringsfordparts.com/blog/f-100-pickup-rumor
http://www.trucktrend.com/future-tru...ied-ford-f100/
http://www.motortrend.com/news/ford-f-100/

Still would have taken R&D time and money. The T-6 and powertrain are already all in use in other arenas, little to no R&D required. The small truck sales were lagging badly by the time the Ranger was finally killed off, so a "small " truck was a no go from a sales standpoint. A new "small" truck would have sold to fleets, parts distro, etc, but would have been savaged in the market in reviews, which would have nuked sales in the general market.

Modification of the T-6 for the US market made more economic sense than attempting to engineer a 4/5 F series, which is what they were discussing at the time.

Ford uses the Ranger name world wide and only the Toyota Hilux out sells the Ford Ranger world wide outside of North America. Therefore there is a lot of value in the Ranger name. Selling it in North America will probably push their world wide sales ahead of Toyota and allow Ford to advertise the Ranger in other countries as the best selling truck. And you know how much Ford loves their best selling advertising slogan.

"Many of you may remember that a few years ago, Ford threw around the idea of making an F-100."

Owned a 61 F100! Big as an F150. Had the cab/bed was unitized not separate, fuel tank behind the seat. "Fred".was like dirving an armored truck, the sheet metal was sooo thick. KM

Certainly the New Ranger's size is a drawback, longer, almost as wide, bit shorter, as heavy as my st cab 2017 F150. KM

I just don't think there is the market there that you think there is for a truck that small. Ford, as well as all manufacturers do survey's, and bring in people to figure out what will sell BEFORE they even begin designing it. They just don't build something and hope it sells. There may be a niche market for tiny trucks, but the Tacoma, Ranger, and similar sized trucks are closer to a mid size, and that is what sells by a wider margin.

I had a chance to participate in one of those sessions back in the early 90's and my input, as well as lots of others played a role in determining how the new models in 1997 looked and how they were equipped. I got a letter and was asked to show up at a hotel conference room on a certain date and time. I spent about 2 hours being interviewed and filling out forms stating my preferences for various options, I got $50 for my time. I sure wasn't the only person there and I'm sure the same thing was done all over the country. A lot of questions didn't make sense at the time, but as soon as the new trucks were introduced it all became clear.

Back in the day I had a 1976 F100 Ranger, it was a RCFS with a 390 and a C6, my buddy had a 1976 F150 Custom with a 300 Straight 6 and a 4 speed RCLB. the rear suspension was different and I think the front springs were lighter, the only difference was the GVWR was about 500 different but other than that it was it was the same truck. So why would Ford make a F100 and it be different than the F150.
BTW the Ranger was a package just like the STX was in 2003 added to the rest.

Did you know there is already a thread about the new Ranger ?

It is barely larger than the old Rangers. It is 4" wider than my 2002 Ranger Scab and the bed isn't longer.

Dumb idea to ever quit making the ranger, but I'm not an analyst and cannot' forecast any truck market. Hindsight is 20/20.

I do know that the most common truck I see everywhere I go is a Tacoma. Not the tundra, the Tacoma.

Big like the Tacoma? Which also used to be a compact truck.
Same with the Colorado and the Frontier.

My dad's new Tacoma is taller and longer than my 10th gen F150.
But the much bigger Tundra is what competes with the current F150 market.
Heck, even the old F250s look small next to the current F150s.

Most "mainstream" vehicles are just getting bigger these days. Part of it is for safety, part is for added tech, part is for the illusion that you're driving a bigger vehicle than you actually are. Most people live under the misconception that a bigger vehicle is better and safer in an accident; even though that's not true, it still helps sales. Same reason many companies add weights to products like pens and chairs, people falsely assume the added weight is a better build quality and better product.

Bigger vehicles are safer, that is not a misconception from what I have personally witnessed.

no, its not an f-series truck. just as a colorado doesn't count as a silverado sale, tacoma doesnt count as a tundra etc.

If we're talking about a dump truck crashing into a Honda Civic, I'd much rather be in the dump truck due to mass.

But for standard road going cars, size doesn't matter a whole lot. I've personally witnessed many more fatal or serious injury accidents from passengers in large vehicles as opposed to small. This is backed by three friends who work for the fire department and deal with many extractions.

Just because there's more metal between passengers and the object of impact, doesn't mean all that metal is all for impact absorption. Leading to whiplash and spinal injuries.
Half the time it's just puffed up panels for aggressive lines anyway.

It comes down to the safety features. Mercedes and Volvo has boron steel frames that have proven to make them the safest cars on the road. Subaru also has a record for some of the safest vehicles and their line up is almost all cars and small SUVs. I'm talking about real world crashes, not controlled environments where a car smacks a wall.
Of course, there's also the debate that SUVs and trucks are more likely to roll over in an accident due to the higher center of gravity, making it more dangerous for passengers. The extra weight also makes them harder to stop and less nimble to react, which has sparked further debates as to whether the roads would be safer without big vehicles. But that will never change.
But then we also get companies like Hyundai, Kia, and even Chevy, that are putting air bags and restraint systems in cars to make them pass the tests with flying colors, but they give a bad name to small cars on the road because of accident injury/fatality rate. You get what you pay for...

Of course, there can be too small. The Mercedes Smart car is technically safe on paper, but the small size means it "bounces." Most people were protected from the initial impact, but the 2nd or 3rd bounce is what hurt them.

It all comes down to the trend in cars. As manufactures continue making bigger cars, the others will make bigger cars to answer. But just because it's big doesn't mean it's safe and just because it's small doesn't mean it's unsafe.

Another reminder that when the Ranger was canceled, it was the only compact pickup truck still on sale in the U.S. and it was still the #2 seller in the segment, despite using the same cab as the 1993 model. Quite astonishing.

I feel like a compact truck WOULD have been the way to go, however, since they are using the global model as the basis for this one, hopefully they can keep the price at compact truck levels. Price is the #1 factor here. If you've only got to go up a small amount to get into F-150, that'll kill sales.

I owned 3 extended cab Rangers, then went to a midsized Frontier crew cab, and now am in my F150 crew cab. There isn’t that much of a difference in size between the compacts and the midsized. And all of the benefit goes to passengers in the rear seats, and today’s customer wants extended and crew cabs. On the flip side, my F150 is huge in comparison to my Frontier. It's longer, wider, and a lot heavier.

I’m one that actually likes midsized trucks. They do better off-road on trails, are easier to zip around on narrow back-roads, and have all the capability I need. I’m really only in my F150 so I can fit 3 kids in the back, as soon as they are grown I’ll probably go back to a midsized because I REALLY miss my Frontier.

Ford and GM made it obvious with the Ranger and S10 that they didn’t want customers buying them, they really wanted you to buy a ½ ton. A “fully loaded” Ranger basically got you an automatic transmission, crappy V6, and motorized door locks and windows. On the flip side, with the Tacoma and Frontier you could get things like heated seats, leather, motorized seats with lumbar, a flow through console, sunroof, and a pretty powerful engine. If Ford was smart they would have given us the “rest of the world” Ranger years ago, but they decided they’d try to force us into F150’s instead. Apparently it didn’t work, because just like GM did they are offering a midsized truck. I’m for one happy to see the Ranger come back. The midsized market has been pretty dead since the mid 2000’s, this will force some competition.

I like mid sized trucks, but pound for pound they are too expensive compared to a half ton.

A lot of why trucks are bigger is based on "capacity creep". Chevy introduces something that beats Ford by a little. Ford answers with a 1 up that tops Chevy. Chevy responds, etc. etc. You sell more trucks when you can brag about bigger, faster, more capable.

My '86 J10 pickup was based on a design that first showed up in 1963. Jeep never spent money keeping up with the big 3 so the chassis and most of the sheet metal never changed from 1963 to 1987, When Chrysler bought Jeep in 1987 they killed off the full size Jeep trucks completely because they wanted to stay with the Dodge Ram and Jeep was selling less than 1,000 full size trucks each year. As a result, my truck pales in comparison to modern trucks.

My truck is small by comparison sitting next to a modern truck. It really does look like a compact or mid size truck. The bed of my J10 is roughly the same size as a Dodge Dakota, though I get a full 8' of capacity. From the factory, my truck had a 5,000 pound tow rating with a payload capacity of well less than 2,000 pounds. The average Chevy Colorado has a similar cargo capacity and can tow up to 7,000 pounds. And that's a "compact" truck. A modern "half ton" truck quite possibly can best the "one ton" trucks from the 1960's when it comes to hauling and towing. I've upgraded my truck over the years. I've swapped in 3/4 ton axles and done disc brake upgrades, along with several other upgrades. But I doubt I'd be able to handle a lot more than 10,000 pounds safely on a bumper pull trailer. The F150 I ordered comes from the factory rated to tow over 11,000 pounds. The 3/4 tons can handle double that or more. But go back in history, and my J10 was probably on par with a stock F150 from the 70's. Probably similar dimensions and similar capacities. But any of those old trucks would be left far behind by the capability enhancements they've been adding over the years.

Overall length? Cab height? If it's comparable to the current Colorado and Tacoma, then it's a lot bigger. Also, none of these mid-sizes are offering a single cab truck anymore.

No matter, I am just glad I went with the F150, because for a while I was kinda waiting on the F100 that would never be...

not sure where youre getting your data from. as of 2014 (newest year on record) iihs small four door cars fatality rate have the chevy cruze at 42 out of an exposure of 2,220,302 and the hyundai elantra at 44 out of an exposure 1,509,235. compare that to the subaru impreza, which has a rate of 54 out of an exposure of only 117,068 and the ford focus with a death rate of 68 out of an exposure of 1,000,942.

http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/driver-death-rates

I don't know of a "crappy v6" in any Ranger. HP doesn't make a good engine. Reliability and longevity does.

I'm referencing accidents that I have personally witnessed (seen a lot when I was commuting 900 miles a week through Atlanta) and that my three emergency response friends have seen.
That same website also shows that a bunch of cars and small SUVs (including 4 Mercedes on a list of 21) that had the lowest fatality rate in accidents, while the highest fatality rate goes to Hyundai, Kia, Scion, and Chevy (Hyundai having 3 on a list of 21).

It's not completely fair to compare Cruze and Elantra to an Impreza and a Focus when you consider the Impreza and Focus have sporty models with a rally pedigree. I guarantee that the later two's higher fatality rate was due to excessive speeding / racing. Of course there's good examples and bad examples within every manufacturer.

ill give you that on the impreza, as its a low volume car all together and the sti could have skewed the results. the focus however, was only counting the 2011-2014 model years, the st didnt go on sale until 2013 and was a low volume model so i doubt it had a big impact on the results (the sample size was over 1,000,000 cars). the rs wasnt counted in the results, since it wasnt on sale yet.

Ah, you're right!

Either way, size isn't the only factor in vehicular safety and the new Ranger was properly named as a Ranger. :turned:

I don't know about stats, but I do know that a focus and a f-150 met here about 4 days ago, the f-150 driver was treated and released, they buried the 3 occupants of the focus yesterday. Now there's some real life stats for you.

IIRC, overall wheelbase, bed length, legroom and headroom was about the same on the outgoing Ranger compared to the Tocoma, Frontier and Colorado. The only real dimensional difference was width, where the midsized were around 4" wider.

Well, the Tacoma and Frontier's V6 engines had excellent reliability AND power in their V6's. The older Ford 4.0 OHV was a pretty decent truck engine even if it did top out at around 160 hp. I wasn't as impressed with the newer 4.0 SOHC, but it was still relatively reliable. Still, it put out around 205 hp, while the Tacoma was doing 240ish and the Frontier 265. I loved my Frontier, I bet I redlined the engine every single day, beating the snot out of it for 11 years before I finally got rid of it only because I needed something larger.

But Ford did put a crappy engine in the Ranger. I had the 3.0 V6 for 18 months, it was nothing but trouble and underpowered to boot. I'd have traded it back for my 2.9 V6 in a heartbeat. I've never owned a car/truck for that short of period of time, but the 3.0 was that much of a turd I sold it as soon as I had enough to get something else. I'd love to know how many hours I spent troubleshooting and working on that thing, all engine related too. After that I had the 4.0 OHV, which like I said was a relatively good engine. Not much hp, but it was torquey and did well as a small truck engine.

The only reason I have a f150 instead of a Colorado/Canyon, Tacoma or Frontier is tow capacity. The tongue weight and GVW on my small TT is too high for either of them.

I don't know of a good one they used in Ranger. The 4-cylinder was a joke. The diesel couldn't hardly move the truck itself, let alone a load. The 2.9 V6 was Ok I guess, but wouldn't go the distance. The 3.0 Vulcan was garbage. And the 4.0 Cologne engine ate timing chain guides like candy and made very little power. The final SOHC version of the 4.0 was decent, but still had issues with the timing set and the occasional bottom end failure. A very long history of "just OK" engines plagued the Ranger.

However, back in the days of the Ford 4.0 V6 and Jeep 4.0 I-6, both of those engines became legendary because everything else on the market was actually worse.

I, too, came to this F-150 I'm in from a 2013 Nissan Frontier CC 4x4 and as far as Nissan goes, they had their fair share of issues. The payload was miserable. The rear ends were prone to failure. And the paint was razor thin and would scratch if you even looked at it the wrong way.

I wish they would spend their time on making a more affordable truck instead of adding a new line. Truck prices are outrageous

I did grenade the spider gears in my Frontier, but it ended up being the OK because I replaced the locker with a True Trac....best mod ever!

IIRC my payload was right around 1,100 lbs on my 2005. I know that after having just at 2,000 of sand in my Ranger, and the same amount of gravel in the Frontier that the Frontier handled the weight way better. I never had a problem with the paint, I even off-roaded it quite a bit on tight trails and never did get that many "kentucky pinstripes".

As long as people are continually willing to pay, that will never change

a 2001 xlt supercrew 2wd had a base msrp of just under $30,000 usd, which is the equivalent of $41,000 in todays money. a 2018 300a xlt supercrew 2wd has an msrp of $40,770.

Concur on the 4cyl It was a deathtrap. Outside of the camshaft position sensor going bad which was a common problem and some issues with the cooling system if not maintained properly, the 3.0 turd was pretty durable.

The 4.0 SOHC was one of the most reliable engines I ever had in a vehicle. I got chain noise around 250k miles and when I crossed 300k miles it still ran fine and didn't burn a drop of oil. Literally never had a repair on the engine outside of the thermostat housing and ac compressor (went at 200k miles).

I would prefer a midsize truck in-between the Ranger and F150 myself .

I wish I'd have known back in 2004 what a 3.0 Vulcan was really like. I'd likely never have bought one of the most reliable engines I've ever had, short of possibly a couple 300 I6. 168K, zero, yes ZERO problems with my POS 3.0. I'll never win a Pikes Peak hill climb with it, or drive 600 miles between fill ups, but I have every expectation of this little guy lasting many more miles. I wish I could say the same for the frame, and the throttle cable stretch thing.
Looks like I must have lucked out and got the rare one.

Love the review of the Ranger death traps. Funny, I put 2 Suzuki water buffaloes in the bed of a Ranger and 2 in a trailer behind and went 40+ miles on a hilly highway with no issues. Good thing I didn't know the 2.3L couldn't get out of its own way with a load.

In addition, the 4.0L and the 2.9L were essentially the same engine, so how the 2.9L could be good and the 4.0L terrible I have no idea, as the 4.0L was edited to fix the major issues with the 2.9L.

I know the 2.9 had problems with oiling, I think, IIRC , the cam bearing towards the back of the engine would wear, oil pressure would drop, and once the engine got warmed up, you'd get a lifter ticking. That happened in an '89 BII I had. That was alright, it ended up with a 5.0 in it.

Everything has a lemon or 2. The 3.slow is known for reliability and longevity, much as the 2.3 na is. If you mean 'turd' as not having a lot of power, So ? It will tow a 4500 pound camper all day long on a HOTT AR summer day and not get hot.

Mine probably was a lemon because I know that engine was pretty reliable in the Taurus. But it should have never gone into a Ranger. It had to work too hard to pull that truck around, when I switched to the 4.0 OHV with a truck that was the same year, same gearing, same everything, my fuel economy went from 16 up to 18. I've seen the same experience on the Ranger forums; it was a car engine that had no business being in a small truck and had no benefit except a lower upfront price.

I agree. My Dad has a 1996 Mazda B3000 with the Vulcan 3.0 V6. Yes it's slow and you'll never win any races but it's pretty much bullet proof. He's had that truck for almost 22 years now and it's still going. The odometer broke I a long time ago at 138,000 miles so I have no idea how many miles are on it. It leaks oil everywhere an engine can leak oil from (never had any gaskets changed) but it still starts every time just like the day he bought it and runs smooth as silk. Even the exhaust pipe is clean with no carbon or soot to be found. The thermostat is bad (the original from the factory along with the water pump) and will be changed before the summer but other than that I wouldn't hesitate to jump in that old truck and drive across country. Would be a little hot though since the A/C compressor gave up about 5 years ago.

Yep, it's a bullet proof little guy. I have changed out the exhaust twice, and replaced brakes, but nothing other than normal stuff on the engine. Still has original water pump and even the original freon. Like you, I'd have zero concern driving to Cali. if I wanted to.;)

My '02 has a new waterpump and exhaust (cats), normal wear and tear like the serpentine belt, cam sync, plugs.

Women will dominate sales of the new Ranger. Ford knows it too.

Source?

Men dominate pretty much all truck sales, even the Ridgeline is mostly bought (and driven) by men.

I dunno. Are you really a man if you buy a Ridgeline? :whistling2:

I dunno. Are you really a man if you need a body-on-frame to justify your manhood? :cheesygrin:

I dunno. Are you really a man if you need four wheels and an engine? :shifty: