insideKENT Magazine Issue 47 - February 2016 | Page 125

As a result, flatbeds have tended to focus on
practicality and usability, sometimes at the
expense of style, blessing them with a very similar
status to the one estate cars had a few years
ago. Not so with the latest Ford Ranger
though, which manages to be rugged and
robust, but still sports some fantastic, all-American
good looks, leaving its Japanese and European
rivals looking... well... a little ‘pedestrian’ in
comparison. When a Ranger rumbles down the
street, it is going to turn heads every time.
Ford has always taken the quality of their
engineering very seriously, and this has never
been more true than in the Ranger. Ford is, quite
rightly, very proud to tell us that the Ranger has
been tested to extremes, from cold starts in 40ºC at 4,500 metre altitudes, to sun-baked
vehicles towing fully-laden trailers up long inclines
in blistering 50ºC heat. Additionally the Ranger
has been rigorously tested all over, resulting in
a service interval of 20,000 miles or two years!
And unlike the many ‘soft roaders’ us Europeans
tend towards, this is a bona-fide, red-blooded
4x4. The Ranger's four-wheel-d