Does anyone else kind of wish the new Ranger wasn't so awesome?

2012 Ford Ranger: One Tough Tease .: Articles

 

Hmm. This is the same one they've been showing forever.

I'll pass.

 

Yeah i dont like how it looks like a toyota , But the roll bar looks cool lol

 

I'd rather have one of those over a new F150. Especially with the diesel option.

Ford, are you listening? I thought not.......
I've been asking for the duratorq option for years, in cars and trucks. 35 MPG in that big of a truck, along with the 7300 Lb towing capability, who wouldn't want one?

 

I'm confused by the statement: "...that it would overlap with portions of the F-150 line. As we learned in marketing 101, competition is trouble for businesses, especially if it’s competition with one’s self."

What difference does it make if both vehicles are made by the same company? Seems to me they would make money either way... By dropping the Ranger in fear of declining F150 sales, they're shooting themselves in the foot. The F150 will always have a niche market and so would the Ranger - I really don't see how the Ranger can hurt the F150 that badly...

"GM just recently announced they’ll be jumping back into the mid-size truck game by offering a new Chevrolet Colorado in the U.S." - Yet one more justifiable reason for Ford to keep a mid-size truck line going in the U.S....

"American and Canadian safety and emissions standards, as well as the long-standing 25% import tariff imposed on non-American built light trucks, pretty much seals the deal on the T6 Ranger from ever being imported to North America." - This pretty much sums up the problem with the U.S. economy in relation to businesses and jobs - over-regulation and over-taxation...

 

reminds me of a nissan titan but I like it a lot! Wish they had that over here!

 

25% tariff on non-American built trucks. Retool the current plant that builds Rangers, build them here. Keeps more Jobs here in the USA, eliminates the tariff issue, and keeps the plant from getting moth-balled. Besides, most import branded trucks sold in the USA are built here already, to get around that 25% fee.
If offering this truck here were to cut into sales of the F150 by even 10%, what real difference would it make? Ford would still be making a sale, therefore getting the profit. Beats the heck out of their current plan, let the rest of the automakers get 100% of the small truck market share.......
The upside to offering this truck here, is the higher MPG numbers (particularly with the diesel engines) would mean less burden on the current oil supplies, plus a higher CAFE for the company as a whole.
The sales of Rangers started to decline when the cost of buying one capable of handling a decent payload starting getting very close to equaling the cost of buying an F150. MPG was also rather close, so the cost to drive per mile wasn't much different either.
The F150 having an option for rear doors and seats that weren't totally a joke like those offered in a Ranger didn't hurt either. The Ranger is one of the few small trucks never offered here with a "Double cab" option. Instead, that option was called Explorer SporTrac.

I don't even want to start in on the (stupid) saftey/emission regulations mentioned in the article......... I figure a Euro 5 Star rating is pretty impressive, and the Euro emission standards are strict enough. A world-wide standard should be adopted. If a vehicle is safe for Europe, Asia, or Austrailia, it should be safe for the USA.
Of course, to meet Euro emission standards, our fuel supply would need to be cleaned up. On European diesel, that diesel engine would more than likely meet USA standards, but it cannot on USA diesel. Our diesel is just way too filthy.
Europe may have some pretty silly regulations, but they are enjoying the benefits of having numerous vehicle options that get better than 50 MPG, a figure the US automakers claim is years away from being attainable........

 

Wait i thought the diesel option wasnt offered in the US

 

No diesel Ranger in the US since 86/87. That's the problem......

 

Call me superficial, but the look isn't growing on me yet. And, I'm suspect of a truck that has a bed so small that it's not much good for runs to the Lowe's to get some sheetrock.

 

looks funny with the steering coulmn on the wrong side, id have to shift left-handed. does that mean the layout of gas-brake-clutch pedals are swapped also? cant get it here anyhow, so i guess it doesnt matter. i was hoping on that mahindra diesel coming to the u.s. but it seems to have not got off like it was supposed to. not a big fan of the new F150 either. sure that twin-turbo V6 looks good on paper. but one day a turbo or 2 goes, then you need a 1,000 dollar rebuilt turbo to get going again. i driven farm tractor where a turbo has failed, its reason enough to want to stay with a natural aspirated (non-turbo) engine. and 6 lug hubs? whats up with that? pretty soon you wont be able to find a manual transmission anymore, they are pretty scarce now. think i'll just keep my '93 on the road until theres nothing left of it. sure the 4.0 ohv is old-school. but its been darn dependable. and i can still work on it. not sure how much i could work on this new-fangled stuff.

 

I can't really get into how I know, but these are currently failing IIHS crash tests on an epic scale. Euro ratings are much more lax.

So maybe it's ok we don't have them here...yet.

 

There is a standard cab version with a 7.5' bed. Sure many of you will pass because you can't buy it anyways!!

 

I'm a little more cynical than most guys... okay, a LOT more cynical. I've been "down the road" and behind the wheel for more than half a century, and I have learned a lot in those decades, and developed some opinions about the industry.

My studied opinion and prediction with the Ranger:
Small truck sales are dwindling; even the vaunted Toyota sells a lot fewer trucks than it used to. One reason is cost, another is fuel efficiency, another is advertising (or lack of it). The current US-built Ranger needs a total overhaul and redesign, an expense Ford can't justify unless it can be spread over the world-wide marketplace.
Thus, Ford is killing the US Ranger so it can shut down the only US plant that builds the Ranger (and no other product, coincidentally) and get rid of one more UAW contingent. With the Twin Cities plant and its UAW aggregation out of its way, Ford will then push a low-cost version of the F-150 and probably offer a shortbed Regular cab (maybe calling it an F-100) with the 2.0 liter ecoboost engine as a peace offering to those who would have bought a Ranger. When (and if) this doesn't work, Ford might "see the error of its ways" and begin assembling the overseas T-6 Ranger in one of its plants already in Mexico. "This will allow Ford to better supply its Ranger customers in Central and South America" and not-so-incidentally also be able to bring them into the US and Canada without paying the 25% chicken-tax tariff, thanks to NAFTA.This will (also not-so-coincidentally) cut the cost of building the US-bound Ranger, and allow Ford to be much more price competitive with GM's Missouri-built Canyon/Colorado in the US market.

That's just the way I see it...

Please constructively point out any holes you might find in my analysis...

 

i could care less about crash ratings. my wifes '93 taurus weiged in at 3,000 pounds and folded up like a accordian but would get 28 mpg. put some metal in them and they can take/give a hit better but fuel economy goes down. i buy a vehicle to use not wreck. i mount a grille guard up front just as a precaution. another thing about the ad. yes its ment to be a foreign ad, but with the horsepower/torque ratings all in metric form, its impossible to know what you could really be getting. i saw a new explorer the other day and cant believe how theyve ruined that.