FORD RANGER is billed as one of the most capable pick-ups in its class. PHOTO | COURTESY
Someone at Ford Motors (I don’t remember
who, it’s been many months) said, “There is no point showing off our
new 2.2L Ford Ranger to you gentlemen if you don’t see how we
manufacture them.”
He was addressing a bunch of
motoring journalists (I’m not one, but I acted like one by asking a
pretentious question about ‘handling’).
So we were
shipped off to their manufacturing plant at Silverton Assembly Plant in
Pretoria East, South Africa, an obscenely massive and dutiful plant
opened in 1967, spanning some 279 acres and employing thousands of
people.
The fully automated plant that had sunk an
investment of Sh20.5 billion in Ford’s local operations for the Everest
and Ranger production programmes makes about 400 Ford Ranger units a
day.
In August 2016, the Ford Ranger had their best
month that year with some 8,548 locally assembled units leaving South
Africa port to markets in the rest of Africa, Europe and the Middle
East; 148 markets.
With our hard hats and our safety
clothing we watched as the long arms of the robots lifted, inserted,
aligned, wedged, polished, pushed all these parts that eventually
produced a gleaming Ford Ranger all in a matter of minutes. The Ford
executives stood by leaning on the tall mast of their proud smiles— and
deservedly so.
The next morning we hopped off the
plane at George, a city in the West Cape of South Africa, halfway
between Cape Town and Port Elizabeth.
The city is cast on a 10-kilometre plateau between the
Outeniqua Mountains to the north and the Indian Ocean to the south.
People like to use the word “picturesque” to describe very normal
landscape. That adjective should be reserved for the landscape of
George.
Mountains rose and plunged as roads wound
around them like dark necklaces. The landscape was green at one point
then brown at another then sexy the next. This is where we took the Ford
Ranger to test it mettle.
There, up winding roads and
off these roads to gravel tracks and to a sandy dunes by the ocean and
through pools of streams gushing through valleys, we quickly recognised
the personality of the vehicle.
First, Ford Ranger
looks— to use an American euphemism for tough “badass.” The design team
built it for toughness and with these outboard nostrils features that
maintain its excellent aerodynamics features.
However,
there are trucks that look tough but whimper when put to the test. Ford
Ranger isn’t one of them. In water for instance, with its wading depth
at 800mm and ground clearance at 230mm it felt like if we slapped a
mast on it, it could boat off to India if given half a chance.
You
also realise quickly that apart from its sturdiness, the Ford Ranger
also brings a level of comfort and finesse to its segment. It can go
from the city to the bush without losing its mojo.
“It
[the car] represents a smarter kind of tough,” said Tracey Delate, the
general manager, marketing, Ford Motor sub-Saharan Africa.
Or in other words — beauty and brawn.
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