Ford has launched what it believes will be a game changer in the of road working vehicle market with the new Ranger Super Duty making its debut to the transport media last week.
The Ranger SuperDuty boasts an impressive 4.5tonne GVM and a totally re designed frame chassis and Ford says it should appeal to land managers, forestry crews and rural firefighters.
The company says the SuperDuty’s payload isn’t “just a number on a spreadsheet” adding that it is in their opinion the line between having the right gear and making impossible compromises.
Ford’s launch of the SuperDuty with a GVM around the same as that offered by light truck makers such as Isuzu, Hino and Fuso already has those established truck makers talking and perhaps a bit perturbed by a ‘Ute’ muscling in on the bottom of their market. One making eve sought to be critical of the notion of the 4.5 tonne GVM on the Ranger, but in the end buyer choice will prove to be the arbiter.
Ford says its engineers set out to developed the Ranger Super Duty to help solve the problem many off road operators have with load and tow capacity on conventional 4WD pick ups.
Ford added that unlike many other pick ups the Ranger SuperDuty offers the capacity to carry a custom configuration carrying a 1,000-litre water tank which it says is a “benchmark for extreme weight management”.
Ford spokes people were adamant the mission to develop Super Duty began not in the design studio but out in the field.
“We listened to the stories of the people who depend on their trucks in remote terrain,” said Jeremy Welch, the strategic projects manager at Ford Australia.
“We heard about the impossible choices they were forced to make because they needed to carry heavy, specialised equipment, but were often limited by payload. It was a problem we knew we had to solve,” Welch added.
Drew O’Shannassay, the program manager for the Ranger SuperDuty said that customer feedback became a clear and ambitious target setting the goal to carry 1,000 litres of water with enough payload capacity left over for pumps, hoses and all the gear a crew needs on the front line.
Ford has clearly invested many millions of dollars in developing what is really a sub model of its best selling Ranger, which last year topped the sales charts as the selling model in the country, outpointing market leader Toyota’s popular Hilux.
It almost went without saying that one of the main targets of the new SuperDuty is Toyota’s aged and some would say rudimentary 79 Series LandCruiser, which some have described as a cynical money making exercise with the cab, dating back to the 80s and beyond and the overall refinement and creature comforts being below the mark.
While it might have gone unsaid we asked Ford Australia boss, Andrew Birkic what was the main target for the new SuperDuty and he replied “I would have thought you would have known that’! We replied that we wanted to hear it from him.
“Yes it’s the LandCruiser 79, and we reckon we have a truck that will take the fight up to that product,” Birkic said.
Initial assessment of the SuperDuty is that it will with a short but quite telling test on a propery North of Melbourne showing its capabilities off road in a series of tests that highlighted its ability and prowess in clambering over loose surfaces, fording creek crossings and plumbing the extent of grip on earth’s surface with a series of the most severe, whoop di dos that demonstrated wheel articulation traction and climbing and descending caspability.
It passed all these tests with flying colours we have to say, impressing with its off road capabilities combined with the Ranger’s already impressive ride, handling and dynamics in on road situations.
The other exercise Ford allowed us to attempt was towing and in the car we drove there was a heavy dual axle equipment trailer with a medium sized excavator loaded on it. The performance was impressive to say the least, with the three litre turbo diesel and ten speed auto handling the task without fuss and with great climbing power. Away from the mark you know you are towing a load but the SuperDuty made short work of it. The towing exercise was on a loop out of the property where the 4WD event occurred and took in secondary country roads, motorway and urban town driving around the Victorian provincial centre of Seymour.
The key to the Tranger Super Duty starts at the new chassis.
Thios has been totally designed and engineered in Australia by Ford’s team of engineers. In fact Australia is the design hub for Ranger globally with pour models being manufactured in Thailand and US and most Northern Hemisphere trucks built in America.
Ford says that to handle such loads, its team engineered a new backbone for the Ranger.
While the chassis shares its dimensions with the standard model, the steel itself is thicker and heavily reinforced, while very body and suspension mount has been made larger and stronger. The team fortified the axles, fitted eight-bolt wheel hubs, and installed the toughest rear differential ever used on a Ranger.
“You don’t just show up to a powerlifting competition without doing the work,” and this Ranger has done the work,” said O’Shannassy.
He says that for teams operating in remote areas, overloading isn’t just a compliance issue, it’s a safety risk.
So Ford says that to remove the guesswork, its engineers have integrated an onboard scale system, using sensors that measure the suspension’s compression. The Ford onboard scales provides a live estimate of the payload on the car’s standard Ford SYNC Infotainment screen.
O’Shannassy explained that it isn’t a simple scale and that wouldn’t have been enough.
“It’s a complete payload management system because we know crews will add bull bars, winches and passengers, so the system allows operators to account for all of it to get your remaining payload, which means there’s less guesswork and more confidence.
Ford says it spent months of digital and physical testing at its You Yangs Proving Ground, near Geelong, including weeks on the infamous “Corrugation Lane” to simulate years of abuse.
First impressions are strong and we will report further on the specs and performance of the Super Duty models including full road tests in coming months.
