Pick-up truck drivers are a particularly tough crowd to please, so the fact that Ford’s Ranger has for years now been the best-selling such vehicle in the UK is no small reassurance that it’s the pick of the bunch.
Pick-ups have always been popular with farmers and builders in the UK, but it wasn’t until the early 2010s that they became a more widely popular choice thanks to the attractive benefit-in-kind rules regarding light commercial vehicles (LCVs).
Many company car drivers were taken by the idea of riding about in a well-equipped, leather-trimmed truck while paying much less tax.
And the P375-generation Ranger’s promised combination of a robust, utilitarian appearance, sophisticated on-road manners and a truly habitable, car-like interior sent it to the top of their shortlists.
This Ranger had an unusually long shelf life: it arrived in 2011, was given a major facelift in 2015, then had a less dramatic one in 2019.
It arrived with a choice of turbo diesel engines – two 2.2-litre four-cylinders and a 3.2-litre five-cylinder – all badged TDCi. With 197bhp, the last of those is our pick, as the lesser versions are pretty ponderous.
This was dropped in 2019 in favour of a 2.0-litre twin-turbo diesel four with 210bhp (badged EcoBlue). Mated to a 10-speed automatic gearbox, it was fitted to the wild Ranger Raptor, a more hardcore model that featured uprated suspension and bigger wheels shod with chunkier tyres.
