Fleet van have just awarded the all new Ford Ranger the title of Commercial Vehicle of the year.It was also awarded the pick-up of the year award. Ford Mo.Co. won the title of green manufacturer of the year, something about which we have written on here before.
Ford this year have already won the engine of the year award for the Ecoboost one litre petrol engine. It is getting rave reviews in tests with diesel economy and fantastic CO and CO2 figures with superb benefit in kind tax figures. We expect to see this engine in the new Fiesta van, but don’t expect to see the Fiesta van until summer, about six months after the Fiesta launch. But when it comes to EcoVans and Eco Cars, Ford has really been a front runner this year and expect to keep up the charge in 2013.
We have had a glance of the new Ranger and to be honest we cant disagree with anything said by Fleet Van. Ford have invested in a drive train that can be switch between 2 and 4 wheel drive whilst moving and controlled from the steering wheel. Side to side, the Ranger will benefit from technology developed for the Focus, torque vectoring. In essence, this used to be accomplished using a limited slip differential, nowadays Ford use the ABS to measure wheel speeds, this way they work out if a drive wheel is spinning and loosing traction, by braking this wheel the torque is diverted to the wheel on the other side of the diff. In full time 4wd configuration, all four wheels have the same monitoring applied and this achieves, in the blinking of an eye, power going to the wheel with most grip at all times.
The new Ranger achieves a first ever for a pick up, being granted NCap 5 safety standard, a safety standard that applies to the foot passengers as well as the vehicle passengers. It has driver,passenger,side and curain airbags as standard, along with ABS and ESP.
Launch date is early 2013.
