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And we're back.
And you know what?
I've neglected one thing when we were talking about the different models.
And I think I might have just hinted at this, but the mileage on these things is actually
pretty decent.
For a truck, I suppose.
Maybe you have to, you know, put it in that context.
But the city mileage, in particular, at 21 miles per gallon, that's across all vehicles.
So the XLXLT and the Lariat, the city mileage is 21 miles per gallon, which is a best
in class.
And it's only one mile per gallon behind the Honda Ridge line, and it's tied with the
Chevy Colorado for the highway mileage.
And the highway mileage is 26.
So not the great, and it's not fantastic mileage.
You're not getting like a city car mileage or anything like that.
But again, this is a small pickup truck.
And the cabin's a little bit larger than the previous rangers, and it's got a pickup truck
bed.
It's not the most aerodynamic vehicle in the world, of course.
So you have to give up something there.
And of course, you've got the ability to haul things and pull a trailer or whatever.
So I would say that 21, 26 across the lineup is really not that bad at all.
We did talk about the competitors a little bit.
I do want to say that the new Ranger, of course, it's a 4-cylinder vehicle, which is competing
against a lot of 6-cylinder competitors.
Now the 6-cylinder vehicles that I mentioned were the Chevy Colorado.
I didn't mention that these were 6-cylinder cars before, but the Ridge line, which is
also 6-cylinder and the Toyota Tacoma.
But it's very comparable in just about every case with all of those competitors.
So the Ranger, I guess, is standing up to the competition, they're putting it right
in the middle there.
I just sound like I'm selling forwards, don't I?
I should be a forward salesman when I do stuff like this.
I feel like I need to say that every now and then when we're doing these episodes about
a specific vehicle, a specific new vehicle, that I'm not selling these.
I'm not trying to get you to buy one or anything like that.
I want to get the discussion going on these because there was a lot of interest in this vehicle
coming back.
A lot of talks surrounding the Ranger and the Bronco coming back, so we'll probably talk
about the Bronco too, but I am not, again, I'm not being paid by Ford or anything like
that.
I guarantee you that.
I just found the line interesting, and I had some previous experience with the Ranger
in the past, I guess, my friends Ranger, and just kind of an exciting product.
I like talking about little pickup trucks anyway, so this is a fascinating one to me,
that it's back again.
So there, I've said that.
Now, that's my disclaimer.
Buy one or don't buy one.
I don't care.
Either way.
Alright.
So I'm looking at the, I think, I don't have a whole lot more to share with you about
this car.
I mean, we'll have a little discussion here at the end, I promise, something different,
but entirely different.
But I want to tell you that this is the specs for the 2019 Ford Ranger XLT Supercru 4x4,
and this is the one that was given a car and driver for its testing, and I'll just kind
of tell you some of the things that maybe we covered, maybe we didn't.
There's a few things here.
Oh gosh, here's the vehicle price.
Now, the one that we're looking at, I guess the 35, 310, I think it must have been the
Lariat edition that they were looking at that they had, brother, for testing.
The base price again, 35, 3, but the one that they tested, and this is way more expensive,
it's almost $42,000, so the price went up significantly for whatever they had on their
test vehicle.
It's a little bit heavy.
It's a 4,536 pound vehicle, so what is that, it's right around two tons.
It's, of course, a front engine, rear wheel drive, it's four wheel drive, five passengers,
which is nice.
Ford or pickup, which is good too, so you can get the kids or the crew or whatever you happen
to be carrying in there.
We talked about the horsepower already, 270 horsepower, 310 pound feet of torque, 10 speed
automatic, which I'm not a big fan of, but we'll see.
Talked about mileage.
It seems like there's just a lot here.
I'm not even going to talk about the 0 to 60 times or any of that stuff.
It's not so important in a pickup truck, although it does stand up to its competition as far
as those times and what they got on the test courses.
But in the real world, I don't know, 0 to 60 really matter in a pickup truck, typically
it doesn't.
But there's that off time when you do want to have a little bit of fun in it too.
So I understand that.
But honestly, overall, I just wanted to say that I was excited about talking about the
Ford Ranger and really used this as kind of a springboard to get everybody also excited
about maybe, I don't know, just to at least investigate it and just be knowledgeable, I guess,
that it's going to be back on the road and all new for 2019 here in the United States
in North America.
And I don't know, I'm just excited about it, I hope you are too.
So if you own one right in, I'd love to hear about it.
Any past experiences with the Ford Ranger, if you have any experience with a first-gen or
second-gen or third-gen, whatever it happens to be, maybe it's your first vehicle.
Like it was my friend's first car.
Right in and tell me about it, because I like small pickup trucks like this.
I just always have.
I've liked the little Toyota trucks.
I've liked the little Volkswagen pickup trucks.
They were always just fascinating to me and I'd still love to have a small pickup truck
like this kind of just kind of bomb around in in the weekend, you know, just to have fun
and be able to carry things.
There's just so much utility to have in a small vehicle like that.
As a second car, I don't think as a primary vehicle, it works for everyone, but for some
people it would, and if you're in that zone, if you're somebody that could use this as
a daily driver, I think it's maybe something worthwhile looking into.
Outside of that, gosh, I think we're going to let you go here today.
And I probably have already talked to you're off too much about the Ford Ranger.
I didn't want to over sell it in any way, but you know, I guess there's one last thing
that I want to mention here, and I might have said this on a previous podcast, you know,
many, many years ago, but it involves my friend's Ford Ranger Steve again.
This is back in high school.
And it kind of has a tie-in to something else that we talked about on this show.
So I know we discussed this, but there was something called whistle tips in the news.
This is a few years ago.
There was a infamous online video of a news story of a guy, I think his name was Bug Rub
or something like that.
The guy, just a man on the street that they were interviewing about these whistle tips.
And it was actually these whistles that people would weld into the exhaust pipe of a vehicle
so that as you drive, it whistles it.
It makes this high-pitched scream as it drives down the road, and it's a hilarious news clip.
It's become a joke online, and I'm sure that many of you have already seen it.
And if not, it's worth a second watch anyway, you know, even if you have.
But just maybe whistle tips, Bug Rub, B-U-B-R-U-B, I think is how he spells the name.
Just quite a character.
Him and I think his sister, I think she called it herself a little siss or something like
that.
Anyways, it was funny.
But along the same lines as these whistle tips, and this is many, many years prior, this
would have been late 80s, you know, when you go into a, I don't know, Spencer gifts,
someplace like that, maybe, and you can find those gag gifts, you know, the gum that snaps
your finger, or, you know, the bug in the ice cube, or whatever they happen to be.
You know, the jokes that are hanging on, or the pranks, I guess, that are hanging on
a rack in the back of the store.
I bought this insert that was like a whistle tip, only it was something that you just inserted
into the tailpipe without, there's no welding or screwing it in or anything.
It was just, you place it in there.
So one weekend, when we were headed out to a job on, you know, like a long job, or whatever
we were doing in this little pickup truck that my friend had.
And he was very, very conscientious of any, like, new sound or any problem with this truck.
You know, he was very, he always had the windows down, I was like, carefully listening
into the engine for ticks and, you know, any noises, right?
So we had the windows down, and I had, well, he was inside, I had inserted this whistle
tip into the back end of his pickup truck.
And so it didn't quite work the way I thought it was more of a pulsing sound.
So there was like a, like a whistling that was like, and it was pulsing as the engine
was, was pulsing.
And it drove him insane trying to figure out what the heck that was.
And we, I pretended as if I didn't even hear it.
And so we drove all the way to the job, and you know, he's still just going nuts, like
what in the hell could that be?
And you know, as he would speed up, or as he was a rev, it would rev the engine, it would
speed up as well, drove him crazy.
And it was, it was probably the best, you know, two or three dollars I ever spent that
whole decade, maybe it was so much fun.
And I got away with putting that in another friend's car at some point, but I started it on
his car.
And you know, once he knew the gag, it was over, you know, it was, it was no good anymore.
But oh, man, that was fun.
Fun times.
And if you can find one of those little inserts to put in that, that's, there's something
that's harmless to do to someone's vehicle like that, I recommended it.
It's so much fun.
You'll have a good laugh out of it.
Of course, I got, I think I got punched in the arm several times, you know, over the
thing.
You know, no, no hard feelings, no harm done to the truck or anything like that.
But man, it was fun and it does remind me every time that I think about it of the whistle
tip story that, you know, much later came online.
So check that out if you get a chance.
And okay, that's probably far too much, far too much history that you didn't want to know
really about me and, you know, other stuff that I was up to back in the 1980s.
As always, if you want to contact us and maybe tell me about some of the, the pranks that
you've pulled on friends with your cars, do so.
You could do that at, on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, at all those places we are
carstuffs HSW.
And if you want to go to the website, I understand that as well, go to carstuffsshow.com.
And that's where you can find just about anything, well, actually everything that we've ever
done in carstuff here, going back to around 2008 and some of those early shows were a
little bit rough.
So be kind when you listen to those, don't tell, don't write in and say how awful they
were.
But we got better along the years and I'm hoping that you're enjoying listening.
And I really do appreciate all of you that have come back to listen to carstuff again if
you were a fan before.
And of course, anyone who's a new fan, welcome to the family because that's what it feels
like here.
We've got just a pretty tight-knit community.
There's a lot of people.
But once we start doing listener mail and start, you start understanding the people that
are listening and the things they're saying, you're going to hear names reoccur and you'll
get to know like you, it'll be almost like you would know these people.
That's the way it ends up.
And I promise you, it's a lot of fun.
So that's about all I have for today.
And again, thanks for listening.
And I appreciate it.
Carstuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
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About this episode
The return of the Ford Ranger to the North American market in 2019 is the focal point of this episode, highlighting its rich history and evolution since its debut in 1983. Host Scott Benjamin shares personal anecdotes and discusses the Ranger's transition from a compact to a mid-size truck, its competitive pricing, and specifications. The episode also touches on the Ranger's competitors, fuel economy, and the potential for a Raptor version in the future. Listeners can expect a blend of nostalgia and excitement for the Ranger's comeback.
The Ford Ranger has been out of production (in the U.S., anyway) since 2011, and ever since it went away, Ford owners have wanted it to return. In 2019, they got their wish. But will the return of the Ford Ranger satisfy the needs of small pickup truck owners?