Ford Ranger

The Blue Oval’s market-leading pick-up truck gets a major reworking

MODEL TESTED 2.0L TD ECOBLUE 205PS WILDTRAK

Price £48,265 Power 202bhp Torque 369lb ft 0-60mph 9.8sec 30-70mph 9.9sec Fuel economy 28.9mpg CO2 emissions 234g/km 70-0mph 55.1m

You might think of a pick-up truck as a purely utilitarian vehicle, a tool simply to haul hay bales, sheep and building materials. But it appears that for many UK buyers, their Ford Rangers are much more than that.

Take this for a stat: in the UK, 80% of Rangers of the last generation were ordered in Wildtrak spec. To those less familiar with Ranger trim levels, that's the bells-and-whistles version with nice alloy wheels, leather upholstery, soft-touch interior materials and all sorts of other car-like features.

It's a trend that seems to have come from the US. The Ford F-150 has been the best-selling vehicle there for years, and quite obviously not all of them are farm trucks. A lot of them are lifestyle vehicles as well, suited to towing boats, transporting camping gear and the like.

For 2023, Ford is introducing a new generation of its European pick-up, so with the genre's evolved remit in mind, we are testing a Ranger Wildtrak with the midrange 2.0-litre twin-turbocharged diesel engine to see how well it works on the road as well as off it.

DESIGN AND ENGINEERING 

As light commercial vehicles, pickup trucks aren't quite as beholden to the whims of fashion as cars, so new generations don't come along as often. The outgoing Ranger was launched in 2011 - ancient in automotive terms- but thanks to a major facelift in 2015 and the introduction of a new powertrain in 2019, it remained a class leader.