I drove a $45,000 Ford Ranger pickup truck to see if it's ready to take on the Chevy Colorado and Toyota Tacoma — here's the verdict (F)

Matthew DeBord

April 23, 2019 3:30 PM

Matthew DeBord/BI

Our 2019 Supercrew Lariat 4x4 Ranger was nicely equipped and stickered at almost $45,000. The base-price pickup is a little more than $24,000.

The 2019 Ford Ranger is the Blue Oval's return to the mid-size pickup-truck market in the US.
The Ford Ranger will go up against the popular Chevy Colorado and Toyota Tacoma.
Ford has done a great job bringing the Ranger back to the US the Ranger is every bit a Ford pickup and should make owners very happy.
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The Ford Ranger is back.

After a hiatus, Ford has returned to the US midsize pickup-truck market, ready to do battle with the Chevy Colorado and the stalwart Toyota Tacoma (not to mention the versatile Honda Ridgeline).

At Business Insider, we've been avidly anticipating the Ranger, which is actually a built-in-America version of a global pickup that Ford has been selling outside the US. The Blue Oval is already super-strong in full-size trucks can you say "F-150?" and back in the day, the Ranger was a popular starter pickup.

In 2019, the entire pickup-truck market is driving US sales, and the mid-size offerings are much-improved over the little pickups that used to cover this segment. They're really more like shrunken-down full-sizers, and where Chevy (as well as GMC, with the Canyon) and Ford are concerned, the idea is to offer a sold hauler that's simply more compact than a big boy.

The market is, in fact, quite large: folks who enjoy what pickups can do, such as haul around mountain bikes and go on Home Depot runs, but who don't want an F-150 or a Silverado in the driveway.

We've sampled pretty much everything the market currently has to offer on this front, so the key question is, what does Ford bring to the party with the new Ranger?

Read on to find out:

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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