The Ranger pickup is making a highly anticipated return to the Ford roster this year. The company’s timing in bringing the model back after its demise in 2011 is admittedly a little off, since the resurgence of the mid-size truck category has been underway for a few years already.
Better late than never, of course. In any case, Ford’s chances of success with its reborn Ranger are pretty high – the name has great recognition among pickup consumers, and what we’re heard and seen of the product gives us reason to be optimistic.
Meanwhile, a clear trend within the mid-size segment is the increase in the average size of its entrants. Virtually all models competing in this category are bigger than they were in the 1980s.
Some had hoped that the Ranger itself would be more compact than it appears it will be. This reflects a certain need in the market for smaller-sized pickup trucks.
Ford, it appears, intends to answer that need. According to Automobile magazine, which cites several anonymous sources, the company has decided to go ahead with development of a compact pickup.
The new model would be a successor to the Ford Courier, built in Brazil and sold in a number of markets until 2013. The replacement would be a little larger than that mini-pickup, and instead of being based on the Fiesta chassis like the Courier would move to the Focus platform. But we’re still talking about a mini-mouse of a pickup.
It’s expected that Ford dealerships could welcome the as-yet-unnamed truck as early as 2022.
We’ll have to wait and see if these unconfirmed rumours are, in fact, fact, or if Ford will deny all of this. Still, since we love that old cliché about there being no smoke without fire, we can already picture a third truck joining the Ford lineup in the next few years.
It certainly makes sense, since there is clearly demand among consumers for pickup trucks that are much smaller and, not incidentally, less expensive.
It will also be worth watching the reaction of other manufacturers if Ford does go ahead with the project. We could see a sudden influx of mini-pickups!