Ford is having trouble keeping up with demand for its new mid-size Ranger compact pickup.
It’s a good problem to have for any automaker, but it’s a problem nonetheless. The Ford Ranger has been such a huge hit since returning to North America that the brand is having trouble keeping up with demand.
Ford intends to incur “massive” amounts of overtime at the Ranger assembly plant this month in order to catch up to the Ranger’s popularity according to what Ford North America boss Kumar Galhotra told Automotive News recently.
Ford Ranger sales have reached 1,200 units in the first month and Ford says nearly 300,000 people have expressed some kind of willingness to buy a Ranger, far exceeding expectations.
That would certainly put the new Ranger in the top spot in the fairly small mid-size pickup truck segment. The current sales leader, the Toyota Tacoma, sells roughly 250,000 units a year while the rest of the segment doesn’t reach 200k combined.
The new Ford Ranger is powered by a 2.3-liter EcoBoost four-cylinder engine with 310 pound-feet of torque. You can tow up to 7,500 pounds with the base Ranger, more than any other gas-engined mid-size truck.
The Ford Ranger was a sales leader in the segment back in the 1990s. It will have to face a new 2020 Toyota Tacoma as well as the new Jeep Gladiator this year, however. Ford will want to get as many sales in as possible before Toyota and Jeep catch up and then those three will themselves quite the battle.
2019 Ford Ranger Images Gallery
[…] are on the cusp of a mild explosion in the compact pickup segment. The new Ford Ranger is hot, Nissan has talked about a new Frontier that is to come, we will get a new Toyota Tacoma […]