Latest local news from Ford focuses on the models with highest Kiwi interest.

MUSTANG, Ranger … insofar as New Zealand-available Fords go, these two register highest as conversation pieces.

So what’s going on in their respective corners?

In respect the country’s strong-selling one-tonne ute, there’s another set of teaser images – still and moving - of the next-generation model undergoing development testing – on NZ soil (or more specifically, snow) as well as across the Tasman. Again, it’s heavily disguised.

Meantime, news about the pony car is that another special edition is incoming.

The Ranger release enforces just how much effort Ford puts into preparing vehicles, saying the company tests vehicles in hot, cold, and dusty conditions. In short, as one Australian media website points out, “the same torture tests adopted by most major car companies.”
Anyway, Ford’s blurb says the development programme has included about 10,000km of desert driving, the equivalent of 1,250,000km of customer driving, and the equivalent of 625,000km of rugged off-road driving at maximum load capacity.

Ford says its engineers also conducted thousands of hours of computer simulations – and thousands of real-world simulations in laboratories.

The new generation, whose production guise should be fully revealed before year-end though availability won’t begin until mid-2022, is based off the current T6, which has been in circulation since 2011. The T6 underwent all the same rigours and was also updated significantly during its lifespan. Given this, one could assume Ford already had plenty of data to draw from.

Meantime, though Mustang has very much become a low volume car, it maintains high social awareness, not least in its high-end GT V8 format.

So confirmation the RTR editions will go into a second, limited-count issue for 2022 is likely going to rev up the support corner.

Little has changed to the recipe, save it has new 20-inch black mesh RTR wheels and will only issue with the 10-speed automatic because owners apparently are too lazy to bother with the six-speed manual.

Plus, being based on the MY2022 Mustang means it achieves latest updates, including FordPassConnect. With this owners can turn on, lock/unlock, and locate their car remotely on their phone.

RTR, BTW, is a product of Formula Drift legend Vaughn Gittin Jr.

The model is priced at $93,990 not including on-road costs. So, $4k more than the first edition.