Ford Ranger

The Ford Ranger is the name of two distinct lineages of pickup trucks sold by the Ford Motor Company:
The Ford Ranger is a compact pick-up truck, but don?t let its size fool you. It still remains a capable choice for people looking to get some work done at an affordable price. The Ranger is offered in Regular and SuperCab body styles, in XL, XLT and Sport trims, and your choice of a 6 or 7 foot bed and 2WD or 4WD, depending on the configuration. Engines range from a 143 horsepower 2.3-liter inline 4-cylinder to a 207 horsepower 4.0-liter V6. Standard equipment includes air conditioning, cruise control, an adjustable steering wheel and MP3/Satellite audio.

The Ranger's 2.5-litre, four-cylinder diesel engine provides 141bhp, which is pretty good, but falls well short of the Nissan Navara. It's an eager performer nonetheless and feels quicker than the official performance figures suggest. A healthy 243lb ft of low-down shove helps when towing or if the load bay is full, but the gearshift is heavy. Top-of-the-range Double Cabs have a 3.0 TDCi but we'd stick with the smaller unit.

Like most pick-ups, the Ranger feels crude compared with modern lifestyle 4x4s. The suspension is tailored more towards carrying loads rather than giving passengers a comfortable ride and is often bouncy and unforgiving. The steering is ok and there's modest grip, but the Ranger isn't too unwieldy around town and off-road its switchable four-wheel drive and low-ratio transfer box come into their own.

By saloon car standards, the Ranger's diesel engine is hardly quiet, but it's one of the smoothest and most refined in a pick-up and isn't too intrusive at motorway speed. Road noise is well isolated, too, but the boxy shape kicks up a fair amount of wind noise.

As Ford's popular small pickup approached the new millennium, features such as a five-speed automatic transmission (for V6 models) and rack-and-pinion steering were added in an effort to keep the Ranger competitive. Although it received a freshening in 2001 that brought more power and a serious off-road version called the FX4, the Ranger fell behind rivals from Toyota and Nissan that benefited from full redesigns a few years later. Up until 2009, a 3.0-liter V6 was available.

Throughout its life the Ford Ranger has offered a number of trim and body styles, ranging from serious off-road versions with raised suspensions, skid plates and big tires to sporty "flareside" trucks with flashy graphics and fancy wheels. For much of its early and midlife, the Ranger rode the top of the sales charts. But the one thing the Ranger didn't offer was the crew cab body style, a configuration that became popular among its competitors as automakers began to cater to buyers who wanted a pickup truck that could double as a work vehicle and a family car.

With its solid reliability record, wide choice of body and trim styles and lower pricing than comparable Japanese rivals, a well-maintained late-model Ford Ranger makes for a respectable choice in the used vehicle market.

The final generation of Ford's Ranger offers an optional Personal Safety System, complete with Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS) and SecuriLock now offered on all models.
It should all cost less in the long run too, thanks to newly extended service intervals, now at 7,500 miles.

Three engines were once offered, all with the choice of either a five-speed manual or five-speed automatic transmission. But now Ford has narrowed the choices down to a single four-cylinder and a single V6.

The base is a 2.3-liter all-aluminum four-cylinder, good for 143 horsepower at 5,250 rpm along with 154 lb-ft of torque at 3,750 rpm. This engine makes the Ranger the most fuel-efficient truck in America, with a highway rating of 27 highway, 22 city with the manual transmission.

The top engine is the same German-built V6 that was once found in the Mustang pony car, displacing 4.0-liters split among the six cylinders in a V configuration. It makes 207 hp at 5,250 rpm and 238 lb-ft at 3,000 rpm, down slightly in this application but tuned to deliver the power slightly lower in the rev range as befits a truck.

The four-cylinder Ranger is the only one that can't be had with four-wheel drive. Braking is done with a front disc, rear drum set-up, with standard ABS.

Standard wheels are painted steel 15-inchers, with larger 16-inch cast aluminum rims as options. The Ranger can be had with a Regular cab, with a two or three-person seating capacity, or as an extended SuperCab with either two or four doors (the rears are suicide-style half-doors) and four or five-person seating capacity.

The SuperCab can only be had with a six-foot long Styleside bed, while Regular cab models also get a seven-foot option. For its final year, only three trims are offered: XL, XLT and Sport - gone is the FX4 Off-Road trim level.

All Rangers have a 1,260 lb payload capacity. Towing capacities range from 1,580 lbs to a maximum of 5,800 lbs.