2019 Ford Ranger first drive: All the towing and payload most of us need

Ford looks to add to its dominance in the American truck market with a new medium-size Ranger sporting a 270-hp, 310-lb-ft 2.3-liter turbo four-cylinder engine, 10-speed automatic and SuperCab or SuperCrew configurations with 6-foot or 5-foot beds and rear-wheel drive or 4X4. Towing capacity maxes out at 7,500 pounds, and payload is rated at 1,860.

Why add the new truck when Ford is already kicking asphalt in the truck class? Because we Americans love trucks, all sizes of trucks.

So far this year, as of the end of November, we have purchased 2,552,619 pure pickups. Those are full-size and medium-size open-bed generic pickup trucks that any 3-year-old would look at and say “truck!” (Or maybe “twuck!”) That figure does not include the swarms of crossovers and SUVs.

Pickup truck sales are up almost across the board, too, with the all-conquering F-150 leading the field, as it has for the last 41 years. As of the end of November, Ford had sold 821,558 of its F-150s, a figure that is over 300,000 more than the second-place Chevy Silverado. That’s a lot of F-150s.

 




































But as sales of F-150s went up, so did prices. The prices and, to a certain extent, the increasingly huge size of the F-150 was too much for some truck buyers, who wanted the utility but didn’t have the garage space or the cash. The mid-sized truck segment has more than doubled since 2014, to over half a million, lead by the Toyota Tacoma. And as sales of Tacoma, plus the Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon took off, Ford had to realize it was losing truck customers to its biggest competitors.

“It was pretty clear to us that there was a price band and size that would fit under the F-150,” Ford’s president of global operations Joe Hinrichs told our sister publication Automotive News. “We knew we needed to work to make the business case.”

They didn’t need to work too hard, since Ford was already selling a mid-size Ranger in other markets around the world. All that was necessary was to adapt that global Ranger to the specific needs of U.S. buyers.

“(Americans) value high-payload, high-towing capacity and a high level of refinement,” Rick Bolt, chief program engineer for the Ranger, told us last week at the new truck’s introduction. “So we’ve made a lot of changes (to the global Ranger) to bring that level of high payload, towing and refinement that North American consumers expect.”

Ford engineers started with the frame of this body-on-frame pickup, adding more high-strength steel, reinforcements and bracing to improve its stiffness. On the suspension they reduced unsprung weight with forged aluminum front knuckles instead of cast-iron, and they swapped in welded-steel upper and lower control arms where other markets get stamped steel. At the rear of the truck, where those other markets make do with conventional multi-leaf springs, Ford engineers used a longer parabolic spring instead. What’s a parabolic spring?

“(A parabolic) spring manages the stress out toward the ends of the spring so it doesn’t put as much stress into the bending load,” said Bolt. “In the process you’re going to essentially get the same vertical stiffness at the center of the spring with a lot less metal and fewer leaves. It lets you load the metal better, load it more efficiently so that with less metal you can get the same stiffness and the same durability.”

While there are coil springs in the rear in some other Ranger markets, they weren’t the best choice for the American Ranger buyer.

“At the end of the day it’s not a super-aggressive off-road truck, it’s not the Raptor,” said Bolt. “It’s kind of a more daily drivable, useable truck.”

 

The U.S. Rangers also get hydraulic engine and cab mounts.

“Hydraulic mounts mean you can put not just spring into it, but you can put damping into it,” Bolt said. “It adds some refinement, it adds some ride quality, it makes the truck more what the North American consumers expect.”

The 2.3-liter four, meanwhile, is a fairly sophisticated device, with a twin-scroll turbocharger, intercooler, direct injection and two independently variable camshafts that can be phased relative to each other and relative to the crank. Bolt says it produces four-cylinder fuel economy – 23 mpg combined – with V6 torque – 310 lb ft. Hence, Ford saw no need to offer a V6 in the Ranger.

The ten-speed automatic, co-developed with Chevrolet and found on cars as disparate as the Camaro SS, was chosen not just for its fuel economy but also for towing. With the available tow package the Ranger is rated up to 7500 pounds of trailer capacity, better than any other gasoline-powered competitor.

“Having the ability to manage engine rpm more precisely and more accurately, you can have it at the right point in the rpm range more often because you’ve got more choices as speed varies,” Bolt said. “You can optimize that the engine runs at its most efficient rpm more often. We’ve tuned it to what people want in a mid-sized truck. Its pleasant to drive on roads like we’ve been driving on, pleasant to drive with a trailer, pleasant to drive off-road.”

That’s awfully pleasant. There’s some sophisticated traction management in the drivetrain, too. A twist-knob on the center console allows easy selection of 2HI, 4HI and 4LO. In the center of that knob are the letters “TM,” for Terrain Management. TM lets you scroll between four driving modes: Normal, Grass/Gravel/Snow, Mud/Ruts and Sand. Insider tip: Sand gives you the most yaw, at 30 degrees of tail-hanging goodness, while Normal is closer to ten degrees.

With all this in mind, we finally got in the rig and drove.

The first thing you notice about the new Ranger is that it is remarkably well screwed together. There is very little noise going along on pavement, neither from the tires nor from the wind. And no squeaks nor rattles reared their faulty heads. Most of the instrument panel is shared with the global Rangers. The first Ranger we tried out had an eight-inch touch screen along with an instrument cluster consisting of two LCD “productivity screens” for NAV and audio.

The two cab configurations offer plenty of room for the front-seat passengers. The rear seats of the shorter SuperCab are not what you’d call comfortable for adults and might not even be comfortable for kids. Most people use SuperCab rear seats for cargo, Bolt said. The SuperCrew cab, however, would work for regular transportation for up to five people of almost any size. The tradeoff is that with the SuperCrew you only get a five-foot-long truck bed. The stunted SuperCab gives you a six-foot bed. Life’s so unfair.

Torque from the 2.3-liter four is impressive, and really moves the 4,145 to 4,441-pound truck off the line. A non-scientific, handheld-iPhone-timed launch returned a 0-60 of 7.25 seconds. Later drives with about 500 pounds of dirt bikes in the back felt just about as quick. A city drive towing a 5,500-pound ski boat on a trailer was a little more intrusive, but the Ranger did the job – even on a short uphill stretch – without complaint. Suffice it to say that a Ranger could do a lot of what you might think you need an F-150 to accomplish.

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