October 15, 2019 • 24 mins
The Ford Ranger has been out of production (in the U.S., anyway) since 2011, and ever since it went away, Ford owners have wanted it to return. In 2019, they got their wish. But will the return of the Ford Ranger satisfy the needs of small pickup truck owners?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Car Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
How Stuff Works. Hi, Welcome to car Stuff, and I'm
your host Scott Benjamin and uh for today again, I'm
going to kind of walk us through this one solo.
No guest today, nothing like that. But I wanted to
um talk about the Ford Ranger. It's a a Ford
(00:21):
product that is coming back into its production line. And
if you're living somewhere outside of North America, that's really
nothing new to you. I mean, you've had it for
quite some time. But here in the North American market,
it's something that has been gone for a significant amount
of time. Now it's been gone at least seven years,
maybe eight, it depends on when you're listening to this.
But it was in production here in the United States
for a significant amount of time and it just kind
(00:43):
of went away. It was around from about nineteen eighty
three these are model years three until about two thousand
and eleven. So that's right there, that's twenty nine years
of production and for nineteen it's back and it's going
to be back here in the market. And it's of
course had some facelifts along the way, you know, where
I want to talk a little bit about the history
of of the vehicles as well as the the current vehicle,
(01:06):
you know, like the you know what you can expect
to see on on Ford show room is very very
soon and um gosh, where should I start, you know what? Actually,
I'm gonna start with a bit of a personal note.
Back in high school, this would have been back in
the late eighties. I graduated in I had a friend
who named Steve, and Steve owned a Ford Ranger pickup
and I believe it was a first generation Ford Ranger pickup.
(01:27):
I don't know what exactly the model year was, but
it had to have been closer to the nine three
version than uh, you know. It wasn't brand new by
any means it was. It was silver, had a had
a four cylinder engine. I know that. Um, trying to
think of everything I know about this thing. It was
very very small. It was a it was a compact
pickup back in the day. It's that's changed for nineteen
(01:48):
but again back then, it was a compact pickup. We
used it as a work truck, I believe it or not.
It was a daily driver for him, you know, to
and from school. It was a good car to just
get back and forth from home to school and back
in fourth But we did use it as a work
truck on many many occasions. We know, you know, either
hall stuff in the bed or we even had a trailer.
I mean, it was able to pull a decent sized trailer,
(02:09):
lawn equipment and leaves and yard debris and all that
kind of thing. Overall, it was really a solid little truck.
And if you look back at the first generation of
Ford Ranger, that's the kind of I'm talking about, the
very first one with the square headlights. Um, it's tougher
to describe it more than that. It's just a mini
pick a small pickup brother. But there were several generations
of these, in fact here in the United States over
(02:29):
those twenty nine years. The first generation was from nineteen
eighty three until about nineteen eighty eight, and that's the
one that again, my friend had. Then there was a
facelift that happened around nineteen eighty nine to nineteen nine two.
They continue to sell the first generation, but it's just
a little bit updated, had just a little bit more
I don't know if you want to call it streamlining
or what, but there were some minor updates to the body.
The second generation came about in around nineteen until about
(02:53):
nineteen seven, and then the third generation was to two
thousand and then of course there was a facelift on
the third generation as well, so you know, over time
they just try to modernize these things with different trim packages,
different options, you know, a lot of a little bit
of exterior and interior changes and things that shifted around.
And then, uh, then they began production in South America
(03:14):
and um and some of these exports. Now the exports
actually began and around ninet I think that's when Ford
Ranger began to be available in select Latin and South
American countries. So they started to expand, I guess, expand
the horizons. They allowed them to be uh purchased around
the world, and they have been in production ever since,
on a much larger scale than just here in the
(03:36):
North America market. But again they're back here for nineteen
and there's several things well, you know, and let's talk
just a little bit about the h I guess maybe
the history of the Ford Ranger, of the Ford Ranger
name plate rather because this is not the first time,
you know, three I guess was not the first time
when Ford used the Ranger name and it might surprise
(03:57):
you or maybe not. I I'm not sure if you've
a car stuff fan, you've already heard about this. But
the name plate was used on three different model lines
of vehicles. Now, of course, we know the one that
we're talking about. You know, the primary one here is
the Ford Ranger. The mini pickup truck or the compact
pickup truck came about in nineteen eighty three and that
replaced um a pickup truck that was called the Ford
Courier here in North America. And the Courier was actually
(04:20):
a Mazda rebadged Mazda B eighteen hundred, So that was
that was being produced in nineteen seventy two until about
nineteen eighty two, ten years for that when that's when
Ford picked up the Ranger name plate for this compact truck.
The other two places that it was used, and again
this might not surprise you if you're a car staff listener,
was in the nineteen fifty eight the ed Sel Ranger
was introduced as the base trim level of the Edel
(04:42):
model range. And that was nineteen fifty eight when that happened.
So Edzel Ranger was the first time that Ford used
that name, and then between nineteen sixty five and nineteen
eighty one, Ranger was used to denote the different trim
packages on the Ford F series pickups, the full size
pickups as well as the Ford Bronco, and the Ranger
line actually served as the mid to top trim level
(05:04):
for those vehicles. So if you had a Ford F
Series that was a Ranger, it was either mid or
top trim level, and the same with the Ford Bronco.
And by the way, I've got not breaking news, but
I mean, for you know, the Ford Broncos coming back
as well, So that's going to happen in who knows,
maybe we'll will put together a show about that as well.
And you know, now that we're talking about the Bronco,
I guess I should mention this too, is that the
(05:26):
new Ford Ranger is going to be manufactured at the
Ford Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, Michigan, along with the
new Ford Broncos, so right there at the same assembly
plant which is supposedly coming back in We'll see how
that goes. I mean, you know how you know how
things happen. But there is a kind of an interesting
tie in here to production. I guess over the twenty
nine years that it was produced here in North America,
(05:47):
the truck was actually built on three different Ford assembly
plants or on a different assembly lines. And uh, and
that's pretty unusual. Usually a line or a model like
that happens to be built in one plant. They usually
typically just keep it right there or the extent of it.
I mean, if it does move once, that's unusual. But
to have three different assembly plants for smaller compact pickup
truck like that, that's that's pretty unusual for that to happen.
(06:10):
UM just found that kind of interesting. And you know what,
we're going to have the rest after the break now
with all this talk about the new Ranger, and you know,
we're gonna get to that. You know, the specs and
you know some of the information about it, and you
know what makes it different or unique or interesting. I
still want to talk about, you know, the two thousand
(06:32):
and eleven Ford Rangers just a little bit. They were
extremely popular here in the United States and and a
lot of people might wonder why they even went away
in the first place. I mean, you know what, what
was the problem. Because they were top selling, they were
you know, they were the leader in the in the market,
I guess for that size vehicle as far as sales go,
a lot like the Ford F Series, which has been
what decades of you know, top selling vehicle. But the
(06:53):
nine two thousand eleven Ranger was one of the most
popular pickups on the road, but it disappeared as the
car company started moved toward oversized trucks. And then, um,
you know, of course SUVs, and you know, we've heard
this story many many times from different manufacturers, they started
to drop some of their smaller product. You know that
we're the fuel efficient, smaller vehicles and they were lightweight
and had a lot of features that everybody really liked
(07:15):
and enjoyed, and they were you know, top sellers, but
they had to make room for the production of some
of these bigger SUVs, bigger pickup trucks. People wanted the
bigger vehicles. And this is back when you know, fuel
prices were at an all time low, and you know,
they just back to kind of that idea that excessive
weight and size didn't matter at that time. But then,
you know, we've kind of pulled that back a little
(07:35):
bit a couple of times here and there, and you know,
it's it's just going through these different fluctuations where people
want different things at different times, and Ford just kind
of gave up on the Ranger at a certain point
in two thousand eleven, but not entirely as I said.
You know, they started those exports that went to South America, Argentina,
you know, the Latin American, the Latin American Ranger, which
was around for you know sometime, the Global Ranger, I guess, so,
(07:56):
I think it's what they call it. But you know,
the thing is, once they did that in two thousand up,
and there were still a lot of people that really
wanted the Ranger to return ever since, and you know,
we're talking about a good seven eight years now, so
there's a lot of people that are pretty excited about
seeing a return. Now it is coming back as a
slightly larger vehicle. It's going to be a midsized truck.
It's going to be in the midsize market. They're basing
(08:17):
this on the idea that the success of you know
other models that are competitors to this, you know, the
trying to think of what other ones that are. There's
the Chevy Colorado, you know, a bigger one like the
crew cab that has four wheel drive. There's the Honda
Ridge Line, which again all wheel drive. There's the Toyota Tacoma,
same thing, you know, the double cab Toyota Tacoma. Because
we'll talk about, you know, vehicles in this class that
(08:38):
are closely matched to what the Ford Ranger you're going
to see on the streets is going to look like
and behave like. But the Chevy Colorado is really kind
of the barometer for these midsized truck sales. And I
guess the sales on those are up something like eighty
three percent since two thousand fourteen, So there's definitely a
market for this vehicle. And Ford, of course is bringing
the Ranger back hoping that they can cash in on
(08:59):
some of that succes us and that it can be
a smaller but still solid alternative to it's f one
fifty line. You know that it's it's such a popular seller.
The pricing, I just go ahead and lay it out
here right now, what the what the pricing is on
this thing, because it's it's actually more affordable than you
might think or might have thought it would start at.
And the X there's three model lines here that we
are trim levels rather for the Fraud Ranger, at least
(09:20):
in this first year in twenty nineteen, and this is
coming right from Ford dot com. The XCEL model, which
is kind of the base level Forward Ranger, is starting
right around twenty four thousand, three hundred dollars. The x
l T, which is the mid range, is right around
twenty eight thousand, one and twenty dollars. And then there's
the top level, which is the Lariat, and the Lariat
Edition is right around third, so it does go up
(09:44):
significantly from that point. Now, I also want to point
out that I'm reading a few articles here from Car
and Driver, Road and Track, you know, places like that
that review these vehicles, and they say that, you know,
of course you can get one for three, but it's
not gonna have many bells and whistles. It's gonna be
pretty plain. The one that they tend to send to
these uh these automobile magazines are a little bit more
decked out with some of the uh, the fancy bells
(10:06):
and whistles and some of the fun stuff on them,
you know, all the options. So if you get real
fancy with the options, the cost can go up to
something like forty five dollars. So you're talking about forty
five grand for a mid size pickup and when you
see the size of it, forty five grand might seem
like an awful, awful lot for a pickup truck. I mean,
it's it's a strong little truck. Though. I mean, we
can talk about some of the features that make it desirable,
(10:28):
you know, like why you might want to buy one,
and honestly, maybe the number one thing that you should
consider is that you know, over looking at if you're
looking at a FOURD F one fifty, if you don't
need something quite that large, if you want something just
a little bit smaller. It does provide better fuel economy,
and of course it has um handling and maneuverability that
is is better than the F one fifty just due
(10:50):
to its size. I mean, that's inherently part of the design.
It's just going to be that way. It has a
high strength steel frame, which is actually pretty nice. It's
it supports a mostly steel body, which is it was
really good because there's a big push to move to
aluminum for a lot of these pickup trucks now, and
it's of course it's high strength aluminum or military grade
or however they want to market this stuff. But um,
(11:12):
the steel frame again mostly mostly steel body that's used.
There are some elements of the vehicle that are aluminum,
and that would be the hood, the front fenders, and
the tailgate, which are really the only areas where aluminum
is used. Right now, they're saying, they're saying that, you know,
there's a chance that eventually this thing might go the
same way as the fone fifty with you know, more
(11:32):
aluminum used. As far as the power plant goes, they
have used the Eco boost engine again, so it's the
two point three Leader Eco Boost engine. It's right around
two hundred and seventy horse power, which has it's about
three pound feet of torque, so it's pretty strong. I
think it's a decent little work truck. Again, like my
friend Steve's truck was. You'd be surprised, you know, how
much how much you can do with a small truck
(11:53):
like this. Seven thousand, five hundred pounds of is the
towing limit. That's if you have the trailer towing path page,
which of course is an add on which costs you
more money. So the way the pros and cons of that,
if you need the trailer tone package and has a
ten speed automatic transmission, which, all right, we've I need
to pause here from it and talk about the ten
speed automatic transmission because I have in the past talked
(12:16):
about the transmission. I believe it's an eight speed transmission
that was on my wife's Jeep product. She had a
Jeep Renegade. It could just be a difference in manufacturers.
It could just be that this one was not working
right or whatever. But I had a heck of a
time with that eight speed transmission, the automatic searching for gears.
It was like it never could find the right gear
to be in, whether that was going uphill, downhill, flat road,
(12:38):
whatever it was. The thing was constantly searching for gears,
and it just didn't ever feel right to me. Maybe
it wasn't a smoothness issue. Maybe it was a you know,
software issue. I don't know. Maybe it was a manufacturer
It could have just been flawed to begin with. But
I'm hoping that this ten speed automatic is a little
bit smoother in the in the forward Ranger, and the
only way to find that out, I guess, would be
(12:58):
to get some seat time this thing and to be
able to drive one, which I haven't done. Yet, but
I would love to so maybe, you know, someday I'll
take one for a test drive and kind of suss
it out for you a little bit and see if
you know, I can report back to you anything positive
or negative on that, because I don't know. I would
love to hear from somebody who maybe already owns one
of these, and if you do have an issue with
that transmission, or actually any transmission that has you know,
(13:20):
upwards of six gears when when you get up to
you know, the eight ten speed transmissions, um, I think
you'll find a lot of problems sort of like what
I have. And and uh, maybe that's not the case
in every situation, but again, i'd love to hear from
listeners about that. We talked about the trim levels, so
you know, there's the entry level XL, there's the mid
level x L T, and then there's the high level
areat which you know, honestly, when you get to that level,
(13:42):
you're starting to have a lot of cosmetic options as well.
It's not just adding different engine transmission combinations or you know,
whatever that the case may be. Uh, you're starting to
add things like the chrome packages and the sport appearance
or the f X off road appearance packages or you know,
things like that. So look carefully into that. And right now,
you know, this is another thing that we should talk about.
(14:03):
Ford has its Raptor line of the F one fifty,
the that whole F line product outstanding vehicle performance, vehicle,
I guess if you can call it that off road
performance really. But right now, as far as the Raptor
package goes for the Ranger, they're saying that right now
they don't have any plan to do anything like that.
But um, I can just about guarantee that the next
couple of years they're going to come out with a
(14:24):
Raptor version of this whole thing, and maybe we can
do another podcast about that, because that will be an
exciting one to drive. I'm sure a a mid range
or i'm sorry, midsize pickup that has performance on level
with you know, something of of the the Raptor line.
I think that will be exciting to report on. But
you know, before we get too much further into this,
we're going to have the rest in just a moment
after the break and we're back, and you know what,
(14:52):
I've neglected one thing when we're talking about the different
models and I think I might have just hinted at this,
but the mileage on these things is actually pretty decent
for truck I suppose maybe you have to, you know,
put it in that context. But the city mileage in
particular at twenty one miles per gallon. That's across all vehicles,
so the x L X L T and the Lariat
the city mileage is twenty one miles per gallon, which
is a best in class, and it's only one mile
(15:14):
per gallon behind the Honda ridge Line, and it's tied
with the Chevy Colorado for the highway mileage, and the
highway mileage is uh, it's twenty six, so not the
great and it's not fantastic mileage. You're not getting like
a you know, city car mileage or anything like that.
But again, it's just a small pickup truck and the
cabins a little bit larger than the previous Rangers, and
it's got a pickup truck bed. It's not the most
(15:34):
aerodynamic vehicle in the world, of course, so you have
to give up something there. And of course you've got
the ability to haul things and you know, pull trailer
or whatever. So I would say that across the lineup
is really not that bad at all. We did talk
about the competitors a little bit. I do want to
say that the new Ranger, of course, it's a four
cylinder vehicle, which is competing against a lot of six
cylinder competitors. Now, the six cylinder vehicles that I mentioned
(15:57):
were the Chevy Colorado. I didn't mention that the We're
cix cylinder cars before, but the Ridge Line, which is
also a six cylinder, and the Toyota Tacoma. But it's
very comparable in just about every case with all of
those competitors. So the Ranger, I guess, is standing up
to the competition. They're they're they're they're putting it right
in the middle. There just sounds like I'm selling forwards,
don't I should be a Ford salesman when I do
(16:17):
stuff like this. I feel I feel like I need
to say that every now and then when we're doing
these episodes, you know about a specific vehicle, specific new
vehicle that I'm not selling these. I'm not trying to
get you to buy one or anything like that. I
just I want to get the discussion going on these
because there was there was a lot of interest in
this vehicle coming back. A lot of talk surrounding, you know,
the Ranger and the Bronco coming back. So we'll probably
(16:38):
talk about the Bronco too, But I am not again,
I'm not being paid by Forward or anything like that.
I guarantee you that. And uh, I just found the
line interesting. And you know, I had some previous experience
with the Ranger in the past. I guess my my
friends Ranger and uh just kind of an exciting product.
I like talking about little pickup trucks anyway, So um,
this is a fascinating one to meet. You know that
(16:58):
that it's back again. So there I've said that. Now
that's my disclaimer. Buy one or don't buy one. I
don't care either way. All right, So I'm looking at
the I think, you know, I don't have a whole
lot more to share with you about this car. I mean,
we'll have a little discussion here at the end. I
promised something different, but entirely different. But I want to
tell you that this is the specs for the two
(17:19):
thousand nineteen Ford Ranger x l T Super Crew four
by four, and this is the one that was given
a car and driver for its testing. And I'll just
kind of tell you some of the things, you know
that maybe we'd covered, maybe we didn't. You know, there's
a few things here. Oh gosh, here's the here's the
vehicle price. Now, the one that we're looking at, I
guess the thirty five three ten. I think that must
have been the Lariat edition that they were they were
(17:39):
looking at that they had brother for for testing. The
base price again thirty five three, but the one that
they tested, and this is way way more expensive. It's
almost forty two dollars, so the price went up significantly
for whatever they had on their test vehicle. It's a
little bit heavy. It's a four thousand, five hundred and
thirty six pound vehicle, so what is that. It's right
around two tons. It's of course a front engine, rule drive.
(18:02):
It's four wheel drive. Five passengers, which is nice. Four
door pickup which is good too, so you can get
the you know, the kids or the crew or whatever
you happen to be carrying it in there. We talked
about the horse power already, two hund seventy horse power,
three or ten pound feet of torque. Tends to be automatic,
which I'm not a big fan of. But we'll see
talked about the mileage. It seems like, you know, there's
just a lot here. I'm not even gonna talk about
the zero sixty times or any of that stuff. It's
(18:23):
not so important in a pickup truck, although it does
stand up to its competition as far as those times
and what they got on the on the test courses.
But in the real world, I don't know. Do zero
to sixty really matter in a pickup truck? Typically it doesn't,
but you know there's that off time when you do
want to have a little bit of fun in it too,
so I understand that. But honestly, like I'm just overall,
I just wanted to say that I was excited about
(18:45):
talking about the Ford Ranger and really use this as
kind of a springboard to to get everybody also excited
about maybe I don't I don't know. I mean just
to uh, at least investigate it and just be knowledgeable.
I guess that it's going to be back on the
road and all new for nineteen here in the United States,
in North America, and I don't know. I'm just excited
about I hope you are too, So if you own
one right in, I'd love to hear about it, you know,
(19:06):
any past experiences with the Ford Ranger, if you if
you have any um you experience with you know, a
first gen or second gen or third gend, whatever it
happens to be. You know, maybe it's your first vehicle,
like it was my friend's first car. Right in and
tell me about it. Because I like small pickup trucks
like this. I just always have. I've liked the uh,
you know, the little Toyota trucks of like little Volkswagon
pickup trucks that they was always just fascinated to me.
And I'd still love to have a small pickup truck
(19:29):
like this kind of just kind of bomb around in
the weekend, you know, just to have fun and be
able to carry things. There's just so much utility to
having a small vehicle like that as a second car. Now.
I don't think as a primary vehicle it works for everyone,
but for some people it would. And if you're in that, uh,
in that zone, if you know that you're somebody that
could use this as a daily driver, I think it's
maybe something worthwhile looking into. Outside of that, gosh, I
(19:51):
think we're gonna let you go here today, and uh,
i'd probably have already talked you'r off too much about
the Ford Ranger. I didn't want to oversell it in
any way. But you know, I guess there's one last
thing that I want to mention here. And I might
have said this on a previous podcast, you know, many
many years ago, but it involves my friends Sword Rangery Steve. Again.
This is back in high school, and it's kind of
as a tie into something else that we talked about
(20:13):
on this show. So I know we discussed this, But
there was something called whistle tips and the news. Uh
this is a few years ago, and uh, there was
a infamous online video of a news story of a
guy I think his name is bub Rub or something
like that, the guy that this is a man on
the street that they were interviewing about these whistle tips.
And it was actually these uh, these whistles that people
(20:34):
would weld into the exhaust pipe of a vehicle so
that as you drive at whistles it it makes this
high pitched scream as it drives down the road. And
it's a hilarious news clip. It's become a joke online
and and I'm sure that many of you've already seen
it and if not, it's worth a second watch anyway,
you know, even if even if you have but just
maybe whistle tips bub rub bu b r u B
(20:56):
I think as icebells. The name just quite a character,
him and his uh I think his his sister, I
think it was she called herself a little cists or
something like that. Anyways, it's funny, but along the same
lines as these these whistle tips. This is many many
years priors. This would have been late eighties. You know,
when you go into a I don't know, Spencer Gifts
someplace like that maybe, and you can find those those
(21:17):
gag gifts, you know, the gum that snaps your finger,
or you know the the the bug in the ice
cube or whatever they happened to be, the you know,
the jokes that are hanging on or the pranks I
guess that are hanging on a rack in the back
of the store. I bought this insert that was like
it was like a whistle tip, only it was something
that you just inserted into the tail pipe without There's
no welding or screwing it in or anything. It was
just he placed it in there. So one one weekend
(21:41):
when we were headed out to a to a job
on you know, like a lawn job or whatever we
were doing in this uh and this little pickup truck
that my friend had, and he was very very conscientious
of any like new sound or any problem with this truck.
You know, he was very always had the windows down
and was like carefully listening to the engine for ticks
and and uh, you know, any noises. Right, So we
had the windows down, and uh, I had while he
(22:02):
was inside, I had in searched this this whistle tip
into the back end of his pickup truck. And so
it didn't quite work the way I thought. It was
more of a pulsing sound. So there was like a
like a whistling that was like and it was pulsing
as the engine was was pulsing. And uh, it drove
him insane trying to figure out what the heck that was.
And we I pretended as if I didn't even hear it,
(22:26):
And so we drove all the way of the job,
and you know, he's still just going nuts, like what
in the hell could that be? And he, you know,
as he would speed up or has he has read
the would read the engine, it would speed up as well.
Drove him crazy, and it was. It was probably the
best you know, two or three dollars I ever spent
that whole decade. Maybe it was so much fun. And
I got away with putting that in another friend's car
at some point, but I started it on his car,
and you know, once he knew the gag, it was over,
(22:48):
you know, it was, it was no good anymore. But
oh man, that was fun, fun times. And if you
can find one of those little inserts to put in
that that's or something that's harmless to do to someone's
vehicle like that, I recommended. It's so much fun you'll
have a good laugh out of it. Of course I
got I think I got punched in the arm several times,
you know, over the thing. And you know, no no
hard feelings, no harm done to the truck or anything
like that. But man, it was fun. And it does
(23:09):
remind me every time that I think about it of
the whistle tips story that you know, much later came online,
So check that out if you get a chance. And Okay,
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(23:31):
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(23:52):
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(24:13):
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I appreciate it. Car Stuff is a production of I
(24:39):
Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my
heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Car Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
How Stuff Works. Hi, Welcome to car Stuff, and I'm
your host Scott Benjamin and uh for today again, I'm
going to kind of walk us through this one solo.
No guest today, nothing like that. But I wanted to
um talk about the Ford Ranger. It's a a Ford
(00:21):
product that is coming back into its production line. And
if you're living somewhere outside of North America, that's really
nothing new to you. I mean, you've had it for
quite some time. But here in the North American market,
it's something that has been gone for a significant amount
of time. Now it's been gone at least seven years,
maybe eight, it depends on when you're listening to this.
But it was in production here in the United States
for a significant amount of time and it just kind
(00:43):
of went away. It was around from about nineteen eighty
three these are model years three until about two thousand
and eleven. So that's right there, that's twenty nine years
of production and for nineteen it's back and it's going
to be back here in the market. And it's of
course had some facelifts along the way, you know, where
I want to talk a little bit about the history
of of the vehicles as well as the the current vehicle,
(01:06):
you know, like the you know what you can expect
to see on on Ford show room is very very
soon and um gosh, where should I start, you know what? Actually,
I'm gonna start with a bit of a personal note.
Back in high school, this would have been back in
the late eighties. I graduated in I had a friend
who named Steve, and Steve owned a Ford Ranger pickup
and I believe it was a first generation Ford Ranger pickup.
(01:27):
I don't know what exactly the model year was, but
it had to have been closer to the nine three
version than uh, you know. It wasn't brand new by
any means it was. It was silver, had a had
a four cylinder engine. I know that. Um, trying to
think of everything I know about this thing. It was
very very small. It was a it was a compact
pickup back in the day. It's that's changed for nineteen
(01:48):
but again back then, it was a compact pickup. We
used it as a work truck, I believe it or not.
It was a daily driver for him, you know, to
and from school. It was a good car to just
get back and forth from home to school and back
in fourth But we did use it as a work
truck on many many occasions. We know, you know, either
hall stuff in the bed or we even had a trailer.
I mean, it was able to pull a decent sized trailer,
(02:09):
lawn equipment and leaves and yard debris and all that
kind of thing. Overall, it was really a solid little truck.
And if you look back at the first generation of
Ford Ranger, that's the kind of I'm talking about, the
very first one with the square headlights. Um, it's tougher
to describe it more than that. It's just a mini
pick a small pickup brother. But there were several generations
of these, in fact here in the United States over
(02:29):
those twenty nine years. The first generation was from nineteen
eighty three until about nineteen eighty eight, and that's the
one that again, my friend had. Then there was a
facelift that happened around nineteen eighty nine to nineteen nine two.
They continue to sell the first generation, but it's just
a little bit updated, had just a little bit more
I don't know if you want to call it streamlining
or what, but there were some minor updates to the body.
The second generation came about in around nineteen until about
(02:53):
nineteen seven, and then the third generation was to two
thousand and then of course there was a facelift on
the third generation as well, so you know, over time
they just try to modernize these things with different trim packages,
different options, you know, a lot of a little bit
of exterior and interior changes and things that shifted around.
And then, uh, then they began production in South America
(03:14):
and um and some of these exports. Now the exports
actually began and around ninet I think that's when Ford
Ranger began to be available in select Latin and South
American countries. So they started to expand, I guess, expand
the horizons. They allowed them to be uh purchased around
the world, and they have been in production ever since,
on a much larger scale than just here in the
(03:36):
North America market. But again they're back here for nineteen
and there's several things well, you know, and let's talk
just a little bit about the h I guess maybe
the history of the Ford Ranger, of the Ford Ranger
name plate rather because this is not the first time,
you know, three I guess was not the first time
when Ford used the Ranger name and it might surprise
(03:57):
you or maybe not. I I'm not sure if you've
a car stuff fan, you've already heard about this. But
the name plate was used on three different model lines
of vehicles. Now, of course, we know the one that
we're talking about. You know, the primary one here is
the Ford Ranger. The mini pickup truck or the compact
pickup truck came about in nineteen eighty three and that
replaced um a pickup truck that was called the Ford
Courier here in North America. And the Courier was actually
(04:20):
a Mazda rebadged Mazda B eighteen hundred, So that was
that was being produced in nineteen seventy two until about
nineteen eighty two, ten years for that when that's when
Ford picked up the Ranger name plate for this compact truck.
The other two places that it was used, and again
this might not surprise you if you're a car staff listener,
was in the nineteen fifty eight the ed Sel Ranger
was introduced as the base trim level of the Edel
(04:42):
model range. And that was nineteen fifty eight when that happened.
So Edzel Ranger was the first time that Ford used
that name, and then between nineteen sixty five and nineteen
eighty one, Ranger was used to denote the different trim
packages on the Ford F series pickups, the full size
pickups as well as the Ford Bronco, and the Ranger
line actually served as the mid to top trim level
(05:04):
for those vehicles. So if you had a Ford F
Series that was a Ranger, it was either mid or
top trim level, and the same with the Ford Bronco.
And by the way, I've got not breaking news, but
I mean, for you know, the Ford Broncos coming back
as well, So that's going to happen in who knows,
maybe we'll will put together a show about that as well.
And you know, now that we're talking about the Bronco,
I guess I should mention this too, is that the
(05:26):
new Ford Ranger is going to be manufactured at the
Ford Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, Michigan, along with the
new Ford Broncos, so right there at the same assembly
plant which is supposedly coming back in We'll see how
that goes. I mean, you know how you know how
things happen. But there is a kind of an interesting
tie in here to production. I guess over the twenty
nine years that it was produced here in North America,
(05:47):
the truck was actually built on three different Ford assembly
plants or on a different assembly lines. And uh, and
that's pretty unusual. Usually a line or a model like
that happens to be built in one plant. They usually
typically just keep it right there or the extent of it.
I mean, if it does move once, that's unusual. But
to have three different assembly plants for smaller compact pickup
truck like that, that's that's pretty unusual for that to happen.
(06:10):
UM just found that kind of interesting. And you know what,
we're going to have the rest after the break now
with all this talk about the new Ranger, and you know,
we're gonna get to that. You know, the specs and
you know some of the information about it, and you
know what makes it different or unique or interesting. I
still want to talk about, you know, the two thousand
(06:32):
and eleven Ford Rangers just a little bit. They were
extremely popular here in the United States and and a
lot of people might wonder why they even went away
in the first place. I mean, you know what, what
was the problem. Because they were top selling, they were
you know, they were the leader in the in the market,
I guess for that size vehicle as far as sales go,
a lot like the Ford F Series, which has been
what decades of you know, top selling vehicle. But the
(06:53):
nine two thousand eleven Ranger was one of the most
popular pickups on the road, but it disappeared as the
car company started moved toward oversized trucks. And then, um,
you know, of course SUVs, and you know, we've heard
this story many many times from different manufacturers, they started
to drop some of their smaller product. You know that
we're the fuel efficient, smaller vehicles and they were lightweight
and had a lot of features that everybody really liked
(07:15):
and enjoyed, and they were you know, top sellers, but
they had to make room for the production of some
of these bigger SUVs, bigger pickup trucks. People wanted the
bigger vehicles. And this is back when you know, fuel
prices were at an all time low, and you know,
they just back to kind of that idea that excessive
weight and size didn't matter at that time. But then,
you know, we've kind of pulled that back a little
(07:35):
bit a couple of times here and there, and you know,
it's it's just going through these different fluctuations where people
want different things at different times, and Ford just kind
of gave up on the Ranger at a certain point
in two thousand eleven, but not entirely as I said.
You know, they started those exports that went to South America, Argentina,
you know, the Latin American, the Latin American Ranger, which
was around for you know sometime, the Global Ranger, I guess, so,
(07:56):
I think it's what they call it. But you know,
the thing is, once they did that in two thousand up,
and there were still a lot of people that really
wanted the Ranger to return ever since, and you know,
we're talking about a good seven eight years now, so
there's a lot of people that are pretty excited about
seeing a return. Now it is coming back as a
slightly larger vehicle. It's going to be a midsized truck.
It's going to be in the midsize market. They're basing
(08:17):
this on the idea that the success of you know
other models that are competitors to this, you know, the
trying to think of what other ones that are. There's
the Chevy Colorado, you know, a bigger one like the
crew cab that has four wheel drive. There's the Honda
Ridge Line, which again all wheel drive. There's the Toyota Tacoma,
same thing, you know, the double cab Toyota Tacoma. Because
we'll talk about, you know, vehicles in this class that
(08:38):
are closely matched to what the Ford Ranger you're going
to see on the streets is going to look like
and behave like. But the Chevy Colorado is really kind
of the barometer for these midsized truck sales. And I
guess the sales on those are up something like eighty
three percent since two thousand fourteen, So there's definitely a
market for this vehicle. And Ford, of course is bringing
the Ranger back hoping that they can cash in on
(08:59):
some of that succes us and that it can be
a smaller but still solid alternative to it's f one
fifty line. You know that it's it's such a popular seller.
The pricing, I just go ahead and lay it out
here right now, what the what the pricing is on
this thing, because it's it's actually more affordable than you
might think or might have thought it would start at.
And the X there's three model lines here that we
are trim levels rather for the Fraud Ranger, at least
(09:20):
in this first year in twenty nineteen, and this is
coming right from Ford dot com. The XCEL model, which
is kind of the base level Forward Ranger, is starting
right around twenty four thousand, three hundred dollars. The x
l T, which is the mid range, is right around
twenty eight thousand, one and twenty dollars. And then there's
the top level, which is the Lariat, and the Lariat
Edition is right around third, so it does go up
(09:44):
significantly from that point. Now, I also want to point
out that I'm reading a few articles here from Car
and Driver, Road and Track, you know, places like that
that review these vehicles, and they say that, you know,
of course you can get one for three, but it's
not gonna have many bells and whistles. It's gonna be
pretty plain. The one that they tend to send to
these uh these automobile magazines are a little bit more
decked out with some of the uh, the fancy bells
(10:06):
and whistles and some of the fun stuff on them,
you know, all the options. So if you get real
fancy with the options, the cost can go up to
something like forty five dollars. So you're talking about forty
five grand for a mid size pickup and when you
see the size of it, forty five grand might seem
like an awful, awful lot for a pickup truck. I mean,
it's it's a strong little truck. Though. I mean, we
can talk about some of the features that make it desirable,
(10:28):
you know, like why you might want to buy one,
and honestly, maybe the number one thing that you should
consider is that you know, over looking at if you're
looking at a FOURD F one fifty, if you don't
need something quite that large, if you want something just
a little bit smaller. It does provide better fuel economy,
and of course it has um handling and maneuverability that
is is better than the F one fifty just due
(10:50):
to its size. I mean, that's inherently part of the design.
It's just going to be that way. It has a
high strength steel frame, which is actually pretty nice. It's
it supports a mostly steel body, which is it was
really good because there's a big push to move to
aluminum for a lot of these pickup trucks now, and
it's of course it's high strength aluminum or military grade
or however they want to market this stuff. But um,
(11:12):
the steel frame again mostly mostly steel body that's used.
There are some elements of the vehicle that are aluminum,
and that would be the hood, the front fenders, and
the tailgate, which are really the only areas where aluminum
is used. Right now, they're saying, they're saying that, you know,
there's a chance that eventually this thing might go the
same way as the fone fifty with you know, more
(11:32):
aluminum used. As far as the power plant goes, they
have used the Eco boost engine again, so it's the
two point three Leader Eco Boost engine. It's right around
two hundred and seventy horse power, which has it's about
three pound feet of torque, so it's pretty strong. I
think it's a decent little work truck. Again, like my
friend Steve's truck was. You'd be surprised, you know, how
much how much you can do with a small truck
(11:53):
like this. Seven thousand, five hundred pounds of is the
towing limit. That's if you have the trailer towing path page,
which of course is an add on which costs you
more money. So the way the pros and cons of that,
if you need the trailer tone package and has a
ten speed automatic transmission, which, all right, we've I need
to pause here from it and talk about the ten
speed automatic transmission because I have in the past talked
(12:16):
about the transmission. I believe it's an eight speed transmission
that was on my wife's Jeep product. She had a
Jeep Renegade. It could just be a difference in manufacturers.
It could just be that this one was not working
right or whatever. But I had a heck of a
time with that eight speed transmission, the automatic searching for gears.
It was like it never could find the right gear
to be in, whether that was going uphill, downhill, flat road,
(12:38):
whatever it was. The thing was constantly searching for gears,
and it just didn't ever feel right to me. Maybe
it wasn't a smoothness issue. Maybe it was a you know,
software issue. I don't know. Maybe it was a manufacturer
It could have just been flawed to begin with. But
I'm hoping that this ten speed automatic is a little
bit smoother in the in the forward Ranger, and the
only way to find that out, I guess, would be
(12:58):
to get some seat time this thing and to be
able to drive one, which I haven't done. Yet, but
I would love to so maybe, you know, someday I'll
take one for a test drive and kind of suss
it out for you a little bit and see if
you know, I can report back to you anything positive
or negative on that, because I don't know. I would
love to hear from somebody who maybe already owns one
of these, and if you do have an issue with
that transmission, or actually any transmission that has you know,
(13:20):
upwards of six gears when when you get up to
you know, the eight ten speed transmissions, um, I think
you'll find a lot of problems sort of like what
I have. And and uh, maybe that's not the case
in every situation, but again, i'd love to hear from
listeners about that. We talked about the trim levels, so
you know, there's the entry level XL, there's the mid
level x L T, and then there's the high level
areat which you know, honestly, when you get to that level,
(13:42):
you're starting to have a lot of cosmetic options as well.
It's not just adding different engine transmission combinations or you know,
whatever that the case may be. Uh, you're starting to
add things like the chrome packages and the sport appearance
or the f X off road appearance packages or you know,
things like that. So look carefully into that. And right now,
you know, this is another thing that we should talk about.
(14:03):
Ford has its Raptor line of the F one fifty,
the that whole F line product outstanding vehicle performance, vehicle,
I guess if you can call it that off road
performance really. But right now, as far as the Raptor
package goes for the Ranger, they're saying that right now
they don't have any plan to do anything like that.
But um, I can just about guarantee that the next
couple of years they're going to come out with a
(14:24):
Raptor version of this whole thing, and maybe we can
do another podcast about that, because that will be an
exciting one to drive. I'm sure a a mid range
or i'm sorry, midsize pickup that has performance on level
with you know, something of of the the Raptor line.
I think that will be exciting to report on. But
you know, before we get too much further into this,
we're going to have the rest in just a moment
after the break and we're back, and you know what,
(14:52):
I've neglected one thing when we're talking about the different
models and I think I might have just hinted at this,
but the mileage on these things is actually pretty decent
for truck I suppose maybe you have to, you know,
put it in that context. But the city mileage in
particular at twenty one miles per gallon. That's across all vehicles,
so the x L X L T and the Lariat
the city mileage is twenty one miles per gallon, which
is a best in class, and it's only one mile
(15:14):
per gallon behind the Honda ridge Line, and it's tied
with the Chevy Colorado for the highway mileage, and the
highway mileage is uh, it's twenty six, so not the
great and it's not fantastic mileage. You're not getting like
a you know, city car mileage or anything like that.
But again, it's just a small pickup truck and the
cabins a little bit larger than the previous Rangers, and
it's got a pickup truck bed. It's not the most
(15:34):
aerodynamic vehicle in the world, of course, so you have
to give up something there. And of course you've got
the ability to haul things and you know, pull trailer
or whatever. So I would say that across the lineup
is really not that bad at all. We did talk
about the competitors a little bit. I do want to
say that the new Ranger, of course, it's a four
cylinder vehicle, which is competing against a lot of six
cylinder competitors. Now, the six cylinder vehicles that I mentioned
(15:57):
were the Chevy Colorado. I didn't mention that the We're
cix cylinder cars before, but the Ridge Line, which is
also a six cylinder, and the Toyota Tacoma. But it's
very comparable in just about every case with all of
those competitors. So the Ranger, I guess, is standing up
to the competition. They're they're they're they're putting it right
in the middle. There just sounds like I'm selling forwards,
don't I should be a Ford salesman when I do
(16:17):
stuff like this. I feel I feel like I need
to say that every now and then when we're doing
these episodes, you know about a specific vehicle, specific new
vehicle that I'm not selling these. I'm not trying to
get you to buy one or anything like that. I
just I want to get the discussion going on these
because there was there was a lot of interest in
this vehicle coming back. A lot of talk surrounding, you know,
the Ranger and the Bronco coming back. So we'll probably
(16:38):
talk about the Bronco too, But I am not again,
I'm not being paid by Forward or anything like that.
I guarantee you that. And uh, I just found the
line interesting. And you know, I had some previous experience
with the Ranger in the past. I guess my my
friends Ranger and uh just kind of an exciting product.
I like talking about little pickup trucks anyway, So um,
this is a fascinating one to meet. You know that
(16:58):
that it's back again. So there I've said that. Now
that's my disclaimer. Buy one or don't buy one. I
don't care either way. All right, So I'm looking at
the I think, you know, I don't have a whole
lot more to share with you about this car. I mean,
we'll have a little discussion here at the end. I
promised something different, but entirely different. But I want to
tell you that this is the specs for the two
(17:19):
thousand nineteen Ford Ranger x l T Super Crew four
by four, and this is the one that was given
a car and driver for its testing. And I'll just
kind of tell you some of the things, you know
that maybe we'd covered, maybe we didn't. You know, there's
a few things here. Oh gosh, here's the here's the
vehicle price. Now, the one that we're looking at, I
guess the thirty five three ten. I think that must
have been the Lariat edition that they were they were
(17:39):
looking at that they had brother for for testing. The
base price again thirty five three, but the one that
they tested, and this is way way more expensive. It's
almost forty two dollars, so the price went up significantly
for whatever they had on their test vehicle. It's a
little bit heavy. It's a four thousand, five hundred and
thirty six pound vehicle, so what is that. It's right
around two tons. It's of course a front engine, rule drive.
(18:02):
It's four wheel drive. Five passengers, which is nice. Four
door pickup which is good too, so you can get
the you know, the kids or the crew or whatever
you happen to be carrying it in there. We talked
about the horse power already, two hund seventy horse power,
three or ten pound feet of torque. Tends to be automatic,
which I'm not a big fan of. But we'll see
talked about the mileage. It seems like, you know, there's
just a lot here. I'm not even gonna talk about
the zero sixty times or any of that stuff. It's
(18:23):
not so important in a pickup truck, although it does
stand up to its competition as far as those times
and what they got on the on the test courses.
But in the real world, I don't know. Do zero
to sixty really matter in a pickup truck? Typically it doesn't,
but you know there's that off time when you do
want to have a little bit of fun in it too,
so I understand that. But honestly, like I'm just overall,
I just wanted to say that I was excited about
(18:45):
talking about the Ford Ranger and really use this as
kind of a springboard to to get everybody also excited
about maybe I don't I don't know. I mean just
to uh, at least investigate it and just be knowledgeable.
I guess that it's going to be back on the
road and all new for nineteen here in the United States,
in North America, and I don't know. I'm just excited
about I hope you are too, So if you own
one right in, I'd love to hear about it, you know,
(19:06):
any past experiences with the Ford Ranger, if you if
you have any um you experience with you know, a
first gen or second gen or third gend, whatever it
happens to be. You know, maybe it's your first vehicle,
like it was my friend's first car. Right in and
tell me about it. Because I like small pickup trucks
like this. I just always have. I've liked the uh,
you know, the little Toyota trucks of like little Volkswagon
pickup trucks that they was always just fascinated to me.
And I'd still love to have a small pickup truck
(19:29):
like this kind of just kind of bomb around in
the weekend, you know, just to have fun and be
able to carry things. There's just so much utility to
having a small vehicle like that as a second car. Now.
I don't think as a primary vehicle it works for everyone,
but for some people it would. And if you're in that, uh,
in that zone, if you know that you're somebody that
could use this as a daily driver, I think it's
maybe something worthwhile looking into. Outside of that, gosh, I
(19:51):
think we're gonna let you go here today, and uh,
i'd probably have already talked you'r off too much about
the Ford Ranger. I didn't want to oversell it in
any way. But you know, I guess there's one last
thing that I want to mention here. And I might
have said this on a previous podcast, you know, many
many years ago, but it involves my friends Sword Rangery Steve. Again.
This is back in high school, and it's kind of
as a tie into something else that we talked about
(20:13):
on this show. So I know we discussed this, But
there was something called whistle tips and the news. Uh
this is a few years ago, and uh, there was
a infamous online video of a news story of a
guy I think his name is bub Rub or something
like that, the guy that this is a man on
the street that they were interviewing about these whistle tips.
And it was actually these uh, these whistles that people
(20:34):
would weld into the exhaust pipe of a vehicle so
that as you drive at whistles it it makes this
high pitched scream as it drives down the road. And
it's a hilarious news clip. It's become a joke online
and and I'm sure that many of you've already seen
it and if not, it's worth a second watch anyway,
you know, even if even if you have but just
maybe whistle tips bub rub bu b r u B
(20:56):
I think as icebells. The name just quite a character,
him and his uh I think his his sister, I
think it was she called herself a little cists or
something like that. Anyways, it's funny, but along the same
lines as these these whistle tips. This is many many
years priors. This would have been late eighties. You know,
when you go into a I don't know, Spencer Gifts
someplace like that maybe, and you can find those those
(21:17):
gag gifts, you know, the gum that snaps your finger,
or you know the the the bug in the ice
cube or whatever they happened to be, the you know,
the jokes that are hanging on or the pranks I
guess that are hanging on a rack in the back
of the store. I bought this insert that was like
it was like a whistle tip, only it was something
that you just inserted into the tail pipe without There's
no welding or screwing it in or anything. It was
just he placed it in there. So one one weekend
(21:41):
when we were headed out to a to a job
on you know, like a lawn job or whatever we
were doing in this uh and this little pickup truck
that my friend had, and he was very very conscientious
of any like new sound or any problem with this truck.
You know, he was very always had the windows down
and was like carefully listening to the engine for ticks
and and uh, you know, any noises. Right, So we
had the windows down, and uh, I had while he
(22:02):
was inside, I had in searched this this whistle tip
into the back end of his pickup truck. And so
it didn't quite work the way I thought. It was
more of a pulsing sound. So there was like a
like a whistling that was like and it was pulsing
as the engine was was pulsing. And uh, it drove
him insane trying to figure out what the heck that was.
And we I pretended as if I didn't even hear it,
(22:26):
And so we drove all the way of the job,
and you know, he's still just going nuts, like what
in the hell could that be? And he, you know,
as he would speed up or has he has read
the would read the engine, it would speed up as well.
Drove him crazy, and it was. It was probably the
best you know, two or three dollars I ever spent
that whole decade. Maybe it was so much fun. And
I got away with putting that in another friend's car
at some point, but I started it on his car,
and you know, once he knew the gag, it was over,
(22:48):
you know, it was, it was no good anymore. But
oh man, that was fun, fun times. And if you
can find one of those little inserts to put in
that that's or something that's harmless to do to someone's
vehicle like that, I recommended. It's so much fun you'll
have a good laugh out of it. Of course I
got I think I got punched in the arm several times,
you know, over the thing. And you know, no no
hard feelings, no harm done to the truck or anything
like that. But man, it was fun. And it does
(23:09):
remind me every time that I think about it of
the whistle tips story that you know, much later came online,
So check that out if you get a chance. And Okay,
that's probably far too much, far too much history that
you didn't want to know really about me, and you know,
other stuff that I was up to back in the nies.
As always, if you want to, I want to contact
is and maybe tell me about some of the pranks
that you've pulled on friends with your cars. Do so,
(23:31):
and you could do that at uh on Facebook, Twitter,
and Instagram, at all those places. We are car Stuff
h s W. And if you want to go to
the website, I understand that as well, go to Car
Stuff Show dot com and that's where you can find
just just about any well, actually everything that we've ever
done in Car Stuff here going back to around two
thousand eight. And some of those early shows were a
(23:52):
little bit rough, so be kind when you listen to those, don't.
I don't write in and say how awful they were.
But we we got better along the years. And I'm
hoping that you're enjoying listening. And I really do appreciate
all of you that have come back to listen to
car Stuff again if you were a fan before, and
of course anyone who's a new fan, welcome to the family,
because uh, you know, that's uh, that's what it feels
like here. We've got, you know, just a pretty tight
(24:13):
knit community. There's a lot of people. But once we
start doing listener mail and start you start understanding the
people that are listening, and the things they're saying, you're
gonna hear names reoccur and uh, and you'll get to
know like you. It will be almost like you. You
know these people. That's the way it ends up. And UH,
I promise you it's a lot of fun. So that's
about all I have for today, and again, thanks for listening.
I appreciate it. Car Stuff is a production of I
(24:39):
Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my
heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
CarStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Scott Benjamin
Ben Bowlin
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