Ford Ranger Will End Their Production

Ford ranger is the name of two distinct lineages of pickup trucks sold by the Ford Motor Company:

* North America: designed and engineered by Ford for sale only in North America for the 1983 through to 2011 model years. During the 1994 through 2010 model years, Mazda badge engineered this North American variant as the “Mazda B-Series”.

* International: originally a badge engineered Mazda B-Series (unrelated to the North American B-Series), designed and engineered in Japan (1998–2006). Second generation versions (2006–2011) were also designed by Mazda, being rebadged versions of the Mazda BT-50. Third generation models (from 2011) were designed and engineered by Ford Australia.

In North America, the ford ranger is Ford’s compact pickup truck. The Ranger replaced the Ford Courier, an American version of the Mazda B-Series, in a segment largely defined by the Toyota and Datsun pickup trucks. The Ranger was the best-selling compact pickup in America from 1987 to 2004. The “Ranger” name had previously been used for a premium styling package on the F-Series full-sized pickup trucks since 1965. The name was moved to this line of North American compact trucks for the 1983 model year.

In recent years, Ranger’s competitors, from the Nissan Morano to the Toyota Tacoma have been redesigned and enlarged towards the mid-size market, leaving the Ranger the only truck in the US compact market segment. The ford ranger remains a decent seller for Ford, with companies like Auto Zone buying them regularly as well as those individuals seeking good fuel mileage in a compact truck.

Ford has confirmed that they will end production on the ford ranger in 2011, and have no plans to offer the next generation in the United States, which means that the T6 version will only be available outside North America. The decision as to why the Ranger will no longer be available in America is that the new global platform is simply too close in size to the F-150. Another factor is due to declining sales, as Ford’s Vice President of Global Product Development, Derrick Kuzak, notes that the compact pickup market in America has been declining for the past 15 years, dropping from eight percent of the industry in 1994 to around two percent in 2010. The ending of the ford ranger in the United States also marks a departure for Ford from the compact truck segment after 30 years.On June 22, 2011, a report from the United Auto Workers 879, which represents workers at the factory where the North American Ranger is produced, was released which stated that production of the ford ranger was planned to end on December 22, 2011.