What’s old in the auto business definitely is new again, as reports from Detroit indicate Ford Motor – despite years-long denials – plans to return to the midsize pickup truck market with a new-generation revival of its Ranger nameplate.
Since it sold the last Ranger in 2012, Ford (F) has insisted that it saw no future – more pointedly, no profit – in selling pickups smaller than its fullsize F-150, which has been the nation’s best-selling vehicle for more than three decades. But that was before gasoline prices plummeted, post-recession buyers again began flocking to pickups – and, most bitingly, rival General Motors (GM) perfectly caught the wave when it returned to the market last fall with its own new line of midsize pickups for its Chevrolet and GMC brands.
The Detroit News first reported about the Ranger’s likely return, the prospect bubbling to the surface as the paper covers Ford’s current labor-contract negotiations with the United Auto Workers (UAW) union. Ford riled the UAW last month – and later, Donald Trump – when it announced just before the contract negotiations began that the company will quit building the small Focus and C-Max cars at its assembly plant in Wayne, Michigan, with production of those models likely headed to Mexico.
The Ford Ranger midsize pickup currently sold in numerous international markets - but not yet in the... [+]
Ford’s relocation of its small-car production ignited speculation about how Ford might continue to run the plant that employs some 4,000-plus UAW workers.
Now it appears the company will do what it long said it wouldn’t, reviving the Ranger to get a piece of the action in a market segment that the domestic car companies left for dead after the recession. What remains to be seen is if the market for smaller pickups truly is primed for a sustained recovery (there’s still plenty of speculation from industry analysts about that) and if Ford will be able to make the Ranger a compelling and competitive addition to a segment that still represents barely 2% of the overall U.S. car industry.
What will intrigue industry watchers, not to mention Ford investors, is exactly what form the new-generation Ranger will take. A probable move is to simply adapt the new-ish Ranger that Ford already sells in numerous international markets. That would be the most cost-effective and quickest solution.
But that Ranger is comparatively orthodox. Will there be anything to differentiate the Ranger for expectational U.S. customers, after rivals GM and Toyota Motor (TM), with a just-released but also utterly conventional new Tacoma, have been snapping up truck buyers for at least two years before the new Ranger reportedly sees the showroom in 2018?
Could Ford be pondering making the new Ranger’s body aluminum, as it did with the groundbreaking 2015 F-150? That certainly would differentiate the new-generation Ranger from the rest of the midsize-pickup crowd and presumably deliver a significant boost in fuel efficiency, a key consideration as the car companies grapple with tightening fuel-economy regulations.
But converting the Ranger to aluminum bodywork would be a costly solution, flying against a presumed appeal of smaller pickups. And because the Wayne assembly plant’s UAW labor already squeezes Ford from a fixed-cost standpoint, adding aluminum bodywork, despite its advantages, seems an extravagance that wouldn’t survive the business-case equation.
One final aspect that may have convinced Ford to take the plunge back into a market it said it would leave to its competitors: the company could knock out an SUV based on the Ranger, reanimating another storied name from the past: Bronco.
Ford needs an affordable, meatier SUV to battle FiatChrysler’s surging Jeep brand. The Bronco may just be the ticket – and the chip that convinced Ford to get back in the small(ish) pickup game.
