Test drive Ford Ranger 1992 - 2010 compartment

Both one and a half

After the introduction of new duties on foreign cars, the price of pickups jumped on average 2.5 times! But this has not yet been reflected in the market ... Ford was the first to endless cars. The price of the base Ford Ranger with 700 thousand rubles. Taken to 1 million rubles. True, the already updated Ranger (which softened the situation) fell under the financial press. So what has changed the new truck, in addition to the price tag?
Our meeting with the 2009 Ford Ranger of the model year took place in Karelia. Well, what can you say? .. There are few updates, nevertheless they are. The color palette of bodies expanded, the interior decoration changed, facilifting was carried out and gear rates in the checkpoint were adjusted. In addition, in our market they began to actively promote cars with a half -of -the -term cabin and, accordingly, increased length of the cargo platform. Yes, if desired, they could be ordered before, but neither sellers nor buyers were noticed in special activity.
But in the sense of traction, dynamics, handling and suspension work, nothing has changed. In the first approximation, the updated pickup rides exactly like Ford Ranger or Mazda BT-50 of the previous model year. In the meantime, I tried to catch the promised transmission nuances. He caught: the first and especially the second programs became a little shorter. True, alas, this, alas, does not save from the lack of traction on the bottom when driving on off -road. Perhaps in this case, the changes are designed to improve not off-rock, but the starting dynamics of Ranger at full load. Perhaps, but this assumption failed to check - the subjects of the subjects were empty.
If we talk about other changes, then this is exactly the case when I have to argue about tastes ... Personally, I did not like the muzzle of the updated Ford Ranger. Moreover, other members of our again updated editorial office are in solidarity with me. And according to our general demotional opinion, the new Ranger has become even more unified with the Mazda BT-50 produced by the same Thai factory. But what is surprising - Ford representatives shall be my suspicions. According to them, the opposite is true: Ford headed for a radical separation of appearance from Mazda. Surprisingly ... it just seemed to us that the national affiliation was much more noticeable in the previous generation (see photo). It is so more noticeable that, choosing from these two pickups, I preferred Ford with its courageous appearance. And now I don't know ...
By the way, despite the obvious difference in the weight of the axes between the two versions of the Ranger (with double and one and a half cabins), the winding and pierced Karelian highways and graders did not reveal a noticeable difference in the behavior of the cars. We tested pickups without cargo, and in our case, the discrepancy in the stiffness between the front and rear suspensions completely erased the rest of the nuances of perception. In both modifications, the rear half of the chassis simply did not manage to fully join the work. However, the subtleties of controllability are the topic for another section of our magazine.
 
 
Text: Evgeny Konstantinov
Photo: Ford
 
 
 

Source: "Autopilot"