Ute-bashing has backfired in respect to the country’s top-seller.

 ONE hundred orders placed in a single morning of this week, 1000 sales expected to be achieved this month and projection the year’s total will hit 11,000 registrations.

One-tonne utes might seem to have become an enemy of the state, but people who favour Ford’s Ranger clearly aren’t buying into that sentiment. Quite the contrary.

Already running hot prior to the Clean Car Discount announcement of June 13 in which before Government called out diesel tray decks as being particular baddies of the new vehicle scene, the buy-in for this enduring best seller has now intensified all the more, current data shared by the brand suggests.

Only supply chain disruption – a potential Ford says it cannot disregard – can keep Ranger from this year achieving an 11,000-unit sales tally for 2021, a count thought greater than any previously achieved by a one-tonne ute locally.

As is, there’s a buyer rush that seems fuelled by consumer acceptance that incoming legislation aimed at turning the market away from high CO2 culprits will add extra cost to the model from the start of next year.

Over the past fortnight there’s been fresh commitment to high-end editions – Wildtrak X and FX4 Max in particular - already subject to waiting times.

Also noted is a growth in interest in variants running the 147kW/320Nm 3.2-litre five-cylinder that, with a CO2 count of 229g/km, is more likely to be negatively impacted by the emissions tax than the 157kW/500Nm 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo diesel, for which Ford cites 177g/km – which seems to be with the band where there’s no fee.

Last week’s Fieldays near Hamilton was unsurprisingly a busy time for the brand but the interest didn’t abate when the country’s biggest agricultural event closed up last Saturday.

“We had 100 orders in one morning after Fieldays,” says Ford New Zealand managing director Simon Rutherford (above).

“Those are signed customer orders that weren’t previously allocated.”

“I think that people were processing the feebate structure and figuring out who gets what. They understood what was happening this year (with electric product) and are now figuring out what will happen next year. 

“If you’re a diehard 3.2-litre Ranger person you’ve figured out that it will attract a higher penalty than the 2.0-litre biturbo – there seems to be an understanding that, if you really still want a 3.2, now is the time to move.”

This lift has accentuated the order bank for an already busy year; 3000 NZ-market Rangers are already built but have yet to be delivered and every one is pre-assigned. But the waiting list won’t be cleared..

Even before the emissions impost was an issue, in-house indicators have been increasingly pointing to 2021 being a year in which Ranger’s previous annual peak performance, 9904 registrations achieved in 2018, will be utterly overshadowed.

However, the Clean Car intent has definitely accelerated interest, he feels.

“Assuming we don’t get an interruption to supply, we’re looking to be selling about 1000 a month for the balance of the year – we should have achieved 5000 by the end of this month, so we think we will achieve 11,000 by the end of the year.” 

Whether that’s enough to satisfy market demand is uncertain. Gut feeling is that, if they could get more, they’d sell more.

“We obviously will get a bit of a hockey stick (in growth pattern) toward the end of the year as more vehicles arrive, but we may or may not be able to satisfy everybody. We’ll do our best.”

At the moment, head office is not allocating any Rangers to dealers unless there is a signed order. “We think that’s the fairest way for us to do it, it’s the most customer-focused way and there’s no waste in the system. 

“A lot of the forward orders are weighted toward mid to high series, but there is also what I would call another pocket, of work utes, the XL four-by-fours that are also taking off.”

The year didn’t start out looking the way it does now, Rutherford says; if anything, Ford NZ was putting more effort into pushing its passenger portfolio  - particularly with the new Puma and Escape sports utilities – and wouldn’t haven surprised if Ranger had dialled back. As it initially did.

“Up until the end of May we’d done about 4200, so we’d been running behind (the annual trend).”

However, coronavirus and the associated semiconductor shortage significantly hammered passenger vehicle availability and Ranger began to surge ahead again.

Rutherford finally has fresh passenger stock arriving, has managed to finally make headway with the Escape plug-in hybrid and batterey-assisted Transit and has had delight from the Ranger-spun Everest SUV also achieving enhanced popularity (though with less than one tenth the ute’s count). Everest volume is expected to enliven all the more with the addition of the new Base Camp variant. Nonetheless Ranger will end the year as it often does; as the make’s biggest bread winner by far. 

That’ll be will be a great send-off for the current T6 line, which bows out in mid-2022 after 11 years of production; a year later than originally planned. The delay has been caused by coronavirus crisis.

Ford is expected to roll out more information – and share some photos – in respect to the new vehicle, whose development is overseen by the same Ford Australia team responsible for T6, but this time with new partners.

Whereas previous Ranger was a co-share with Mazda, the next is also going to become the new Volkswagen Amarok, both sourcing from South Africa, thus curtailing the current arrangement of provision from a Ford plant in Thailand. Amarok is not expected until 2023, so Ford might have up to a year’s head start.

Talk is that the engine choice will start with a recently revised 2.0-litre single-turbo diesel four-cylinder paired to a six-speed auto, lifted from the Transit van.

The current biturbo drivetrain is remaining, however, there’ll also be a 3.0-litre turbo diesel V6 – not a VW unit but one borrowed from the Ford F-150 in the US – that Australian media suggest will be for the next XLT, Wildtrak and Raptor, the latter’s being in a higher state of tune.

Though none of the above has come from Rutherford, he says it won’t be long before Ford starts to discuss the new model, in part because it will feel need to give confidence to customers. 

Isn’t there potential that, ultimately, NZ ute ownership might fall away simply because of external influences?

Rutherford says it’s highly likely the T6 line in 2023 will be refined to meet the changing environment and also concurs that “there will be those people who really can move (out of utes) will … but there will also be others for whom it just won’t a viable choice.

“They will try to minimise their (Clean Car) penalty and I hope we can offer them what want – which is power, torque, towing and carrying.”

The biggest grey area is whether or not the vehicle will also deliver with a hybrid system of some kind. Government, of course, is in hot water for suggesting major player are close to delivering an electric ute. Both Ford and Toyota here are on record as saying nothing is in the immediate forecast. 

Toyota, though, has admitted a hybrid Hilux will eventuate at some time in the future. As for Ford?

Rutherford really has nothing to add, save that he says recent speculation about such a product being developed in Europe, where Ford has committed to creating electric versions of its current passenger models (and one wholly electric car using VW’s MEB platform), has no firm grounding, simply because utes are not particularly relevant to that part of the world.

“When you look at the Ranger volume in Europe it’s obviously not their bread and butter.” 

A fully electric Ranger would a tough challenge. “It’s up to us as manufacturers to find the right solutions, but it’s a bit trickier in that segment because of how things are used.

“It’s a technological challenge to the industry to find a substitute vehicle that can do all the things a diesel ute can do today at an affordable price, with that same capability or better … our biggest challenge is getting it right.”

Hang on … what about the electric Lightning version of the make’s US best-seller, the F-150 pick-up. Not really. In addition to being a much larger vehicle designed for North America, is also only tailors in left-hand drive.

“I think the F-150 is highly unlikely (for NZ). It is a very capable and wonderful vehicle I would love to have, but it would have to make a left-hand-drive to right-hand-drive hop … they might change in time.”

Ford US also produces the Mustang Mach-E sports utility, and has begun right-hand drive production. Does that offer better opportunity?

“We’d love to have Mach-E but the markets that are further down the (electric driving) track than NZ are at the front of the queue. It’s something we are chasing and, yes, NZ now having rebates puts us at the table whereas, before, we weren’t even that close.”

So Ford NZ continues on as it has for the best part of the last decade, as the Ranger Car Company?

As much as Rutherford might not prefer not to validate that tag, he agrees the ute has been a powerful influence.

With exception of its first year of availability, Ranger has never accounted for less than 60 percent of Ford NZ’s annual business and has, on three occasions, charted as the country’s most popular vehicle. There’s no argument that seeing it hobbled to any great degree would be challenging for the brand.

Could it be? Government has made clear it wishes ute ownership was more defined; it just doesn’t like these models on city streets and apparently being employed as nothing more than trophy trucks.

Rutherford suggests that view is an over-simplification; Ford knows enough about its customer base to be firmly convinced  the vast majority of Rangers are used for legitimate purpose. Sure, they’re proud of their choices, these show ponies also tow, heft and earn their keep.

Could they be substituted? No.

“There aren’t any suitable alternatives to perform the duties that people buy Ranger for.  

“The timing of the incentives and feebates is a little unfair because it is premature in terms of the industry being able to offer a viable choice to those people who buy them (utes) because of what they can do.

“They buy them because it’s either work or play for them. Whether they are towing a boat, putting a motorbike on the back or taking their rubbish to the tip … any number of things.

“I think people want functionality, they want what suits them and they have a right to that.”

Ute ownership is also fuelled by value factors, he argues. Residuals are higher than for cars and will probably go, also, as a buy-in, a one-tonner “is probably the best value proposition for how they use their vehicles every day.”

On that matter though, is there a double-edged side to the best-selling variants being the most expensive and extravagant editions. Does help or hinder Ranger’s broader public image?

Well, it’s just a fact that owners expect utes to be as safe, as comfortable and as sophisticated as cars, Rutherford says.

As much as Government would like the types to be used primarily for practical undertakings in the future, Rutherford says there is no way the next Ranger will be any less sophisticated or well-dressed as the current has become. Likewise, the days of this category returning to being the basic vinyl-seated, uncarpeted and creature-comfort-light trayed tools they were 15 years ago are never going to be repeated.