I don’t do trucks, Pickups, light commercial vehicles, or whatever else you care to call them. I am not a farmer, or a builder, I don’t want to ferry young camels from one place to another and I have no need for a vehicle that can carry a huge payload, on or off-road, so what is the point?
I don’t mind admitting that some of them, like the gloriously named Ford F150 Raptor, look ultra cool and sound brilliant but they are ridiculously large and almost impossible to park (I speak from experience having made a right plonker of myself doing a 64-point turn trying to get out of a car parking space in a large Dodge truck without demolishing everything around me).
Apart from driving one merely to intimidate other motorists and have a bit of a laugh, I have nothing but a passing interest in them…or at least, that is what I thought.
The new Ford Ranger Wildtrak has proved to be a personal game changer. Okay, I am still not what you would call a fully fledged trucker – I said trucker! – but I now sort of understand why these vehicles have so much appeal in this part of the world. The reason the Ranger Wildtrak hit the spot with me is because this new one has been moved, ever so slightly, up market, which means that while it may be tougher than ever before and capable of doing everything a pickup was built to do from a workhorse point of view, it is also now more refined. I never thought I would use the word sophisticated to describe a truck or pickup but that is exactly what this vehicle is, when you compare with others in its class.
So what we now have is a Ford Ranger, an iconic Pickup, which is super versatile as a vehicle that can be used by a farmer, a builder, or even those who want to ferry surf boards or jetskis down to the beach, or load up for a weekend in the desert, whilst being comfortable enough and looking refined enough not to scare fellow motorists, and actually be a fun machine to drive.
Ford say the new Ranger sets new benchmarks in the light commercial vehicle segment and its hard to disagree. It remains robust and well put together but the excellent redesign has taken the hard edges off it and the technology that has been loaded into this vehicle makes it a smarter piece of kit.
So, let’s look at the exterior first. It is a large vehicle with a bold, more modern look, which gives it an inviting, rather than intimidating, persona but a powerful stance which leaves you in now doubt that it is not going to muck around if it has to roll up its sleeves and get stuck into some heavy duty hauling.
It has a dynamic looking front with a muscular bonnet, and a striking new deep trapezoidal grille which flows nicely into the projector headlamps and spotlights. The side view is also more refined although there is a limit to what you can do with a Pickup and the back is surprisingly stylish. All in all this is a pretty cool looking vehicle sitting on 18-inch aluminum wheels.
There is also a new interior which has been designed to create a more comfortable, contemporary car-like environment and it is very much like driving an SUV, rather than a truck.
You are not going to get carbon fibre and top end leather in a Pickup where practicality has to remain a high priority but Ford have done a great job, using nice soft-touch materials, some leather and carbon-fibre-look trims to create a cabin which is very pleasant place to be.
As mentioned earlier, there is more technology and driver assists in this Ranger Wildtrak than before including a new dual-TFT instrument cluster, a central eight-inch touchscreen and the latest generation of Ford’s connectivity system, SYNC 2, which can be used for voice commands. So we have a truck, that, feels like a nice SUV, and even has tuned suspension to make it more comfortable, but at the end of the day the Ranger Wildtrak remains one of the best Pickups in its class and none of that capability has been compromised.
The Wildtrak is powered by an extremely impressive 3.2-litre Duratorq TDCi five-cylinder diesel engine with 197bhp and torque of 470nm. It is incredibly responsive and amazingly quiet and a new exhaust gas recirculation system helps improve fuel efficiency by a claimed 18 per cent.
It has an exceptional 800mm water wading depth, 230mm of ground clearance and it is designed and engineered to handle most environments thrown in its path. You can also shift from 4×2 to 4×4 at the switch of a knob on the centre console next to the gear lever. It has three settings: two wheel drive, 4×4 high range and 4×4 low range.
It has a towing capability of 3,500kg and as you would expect in a Pickup impressive payload capacity in the back. I was genuinely surprised by how much I enjoyed driving this vehicle and although I still won’t be rushing out to pick up a Pickup, when it comes to pulling power and value the Ranger Wildtrak is pretty tough to beat.
