zzdcar
Home
/
Reviews
/
Trucks
/
Ford Robbed Us Of The Old Four-Door Ranger To Give Us The Explorer Sport Trac
Ford Robbed Us Of The Old Four-Door Ranger To Give Us The Explorer Sport Trac-November 2024
2024-02-19 EST 22:13:04

Image for article titled Ford Robbed Us Of The Old Four-Door Ranger To Give Us The Explorer Sport Trac

By definition, a big truck like a or struggles to be small. Even in its smallest, most trucky configuration — a two-door single cab — a full-size truck is relatively large and comes with a sizable bed for hauling cargo. But a small truck like the third-generation can do a pretty good impression of a big truck by adding two doors.

The closest the U.S. ever got to a Ford Ranger with four full doors prior to the return of the in 2019, when the fourth-gen model debuted in America, was the Explorer Sport Trac. But Ford did, in fact, make a four-door (or “SuperCrew” Ranger) on the third-gen platform; Ford just never sold it here, opting instead to make the double cab Ranger exclusive to Latin American markets.

Image for article titled Ford Robbed Us Of The Old Four-Door Ranger To Give Us The Explorer Sport Trac

In Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, among others, Ford sold the familiar Ranger to those who wanted a small truck with enough room for a family or group of workers. Seeing one of these little big trucks on the border is a hoot because the proportions always seem slightly off.

The bigger cab and stubby five-foot bed makes the Ranger look like a caricature of itself. Maybe that’s why it doesn’t bother me whenever I see one, and it’s one of few four-door pickups I actively root for — the others being the similarly weird four-door and long bed, double cab Nissan Frontier of the same era.

That’s why it strikes me as odd that Ford never sold the four-door Ranger in the U.S.; by the early aughts, Toyota, Nissan, Chevy and Dodge all sold a four door compact truck. Or rather a midsizer, since that’s around the time that midsize trucks supplanted compacts.

Image for article titled Ford Robbed Us Of The Old Four-Door Ranger To Give Us The Explorer Sport Trac

The Explorer Sport Trac might very well have been a better match in terms of size and mechanical output to duke it out with rivals. But, in retrospect, the Sport Trac had no staying power. It seems like a flash in the pan compared to long-running badges like Tacoma, Frontier or the Ranger itself.

Of course, it’s unlikely that Ford would’ve brought a vehicle conceived of by its subsidiary, which came up with the double cab Ranger due to the unexpected popularity of the U.S. Ranger in South America. But importing a truck designed for another market can be a success, as in the case of the Australian-designed , which underpinned the 2019 Ranger.

I guess I just love a quirky little truck, and the old double cab Ranger is quirky. It looks wonderfully anachronistic with its two-tone paint finish and chrome accents on the side mirror caps and bumpers. It even came with the option for a turbocharged 2.5-liter four-cylinder diesel engine. A manual transmission was standard equipment, as it should be. The U.S. would get the last laugh with its own four-door version, but by then it wasn’t really recognizable as the little Ranger anymore.

Image for article titled Ford Robbed Us Of The Old Four-Door Ranger To Give Us The Explorer Sport Trac

Image for article titled Ford Robbed Us Of The Old Four-Door Ranger To Give Us The Explorer Sport Trac

Image for article titled Ford Robbed Us Of The Old Four-Door Ranger To Give Us The Explorer Sport Trac

Comments
Welcome to zzdcar comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
Trucks
The Nissan Navara Was The Overdue Frontier We Deserved A Decade Ago
The Nissan Navara Was The Overdue Frontier We Deserved A Decade Ago
gets dunked on for letting models like the languish for years. But, the truck saw a model update well before the release of the , which is mechanically much like an with a design. Outside of the U.S., the successor to the second-generation Frontier came in 2014 with the...
Nov 21, 2024
There Was Once A Glorious Compact Chevy ZR2 Truck
There Was Once A Glorious Compact Chevy ZR2 Truck
Those who saw the meteoric rise of through the 2010s and onward probably associate the badge with the . The was Chevy’s halo midsize truck when it was released in 2016, but the ZR2 badging goes all the way to the when Chevy made the S-10 ZR2. It’s gnarly....
Nov 21, 2024
Deer Flies Directly Into Pickup As Its Prospective Buyer Arrives
Deer Flies Directly Into Pickup As Its Prospective Buyer Arrives
No square inch of the Northeast is safe from deer, as video out of New Jersey shows. A deer, tearing through the suburbs, managed to leap over a Pontiac Vibe and Honda CR-V before landing on the bedside of a 2007 Chevy Silverado — just as a prospective buyer arrived...
Nov 21, 2024
Ford Robbed Us Of The Old Four-Door Ranger To Give Us The Explorer Sport Trac
Ford Robbed Us Of The Old Four-Door Ranger To Give Us The Explorer Sport Trac
By definition, a big truck like a or struggles to be small. Even in its smallest, most trucky configuration — a two-door single cab — a full-size truck is relatively large and comes with a sizable bed for hauling cargo. But a small truck like the third-generation can do...
Nov 21, 2024
The 2025 Ram 1500 Ramcharger Is The Hybrid Truck America Probably Needs
The 2025 Ram 1500 Ramcharger Is The Hybrid Truck America Probably Needs
In addition to the all-electric , the truck brand announced this week that it will also release a engine gasoline-powered hybrid version of its electric pickup, called Ramcharger. The goal here is to use the V6 engine as a generator for the electric powertrain when the 92 kWh battery...
Nov 21, 2024
Porsche Built A 911 With Portal Axles To Go Where Unimogs Can't Reach
Porsche Built A 911 With Portal Axles To Go Where Unimogs Can't Reach
No car has ever driven at higher altitude than this 992-generation Porsche 911 Carrera 4S with portal axles. On Saturday the Porsche crew, led by racing driver Romain Dumas, reached the highest peak of the west ridge of the Ojos del Salado volcano in Chile, . That’s the tallest...
Nov 21, 2024
Copyright 2023-2024 - www.zzdcar.com All Rights Reserved