Ford's Chief Engineer for the F-150, Jackie DiMarco, held an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session on the popular social news website Reddit yesterday, answering questions about the automaker's upcoming full-sized pickup (mostly about its V-6 Ecoboost engine), her first car (a 1976 Buick LeSabre), and where to find best shawarma in Dearborn (LaPita). All in all, she was amicable, fairly active, and predictibly stuck to her talking points.
Yet Redditors weren't exactly interested in the Blue Oval's upcoming half-ton. A large number of the questions asked in the 1300-plus comment thread focused on diesel engines, manual transmissions, the now-defunct Ford Ranger, or most commonly, all three. Sadly, DiMarco's comments suggest Ford has zero plans to revive the once-popular compact truck.
"We're investing in F-Series because the small truck segment has steadily shrunk from almost 8 percent of total industry sales in 1994 to 1.9 percent of industry sales in 2012" DiMacro wrote yesterday. That single statement is a painful reminder why Ford finally killed the Ranger in 2011?and continues to tease prospective buyers on their website, asking them if they have "considered a Ford F-150 or a Ford Escape."
In response, some redactors pointed to the popularity of the Toyota Tacoma, arguing that the compact pickup segment is still alive and well. According to sales figures of the truck, it seems true. Tacoma sales jumped nearly 28 percent in 2012, accounting for 58 percent of all Toyota trucks sold last year. The Nissan Frontier, the other compact truck sold in the U.S., saw a 7 percent sales boost. That truck makes up 72 percent of all Nissan pickups sold in the U.S.
And yet, after looking at the F-150 deliveries from last year, it becomes painfully clear why Ford doesn't have much interest in reviving the Ranger. In 2012, Ford sold more than 645,000 F-Series trucks, 10 percent more than the previous year. Those crazy numbers solidified the F-150's status as not only the company's best-selling truck, but its best selling vehicle. In comparison, Ranger sales steadily dropped in the last decade of the car's lifetime?from 330,000 in 2000, to dipping as low as 55,000 in 2010, and then briefly spiking to 70,000 in the truck's final year. Yet the Ranger's absence from the market hasn't been reflected in compact truck sales. Between 2011?the last year it was in dealerships?and 2012 industry-wide sales have remained level at 264,000 vehicles?with Toyota and Nissan picking up the slack.
Add on the fact that Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards (CAFE) are disproportionally tight on compact trucks, and it's understandable why Ford ceded the relatively small compact truck market to its competitors. Why spend hundreds of millions in research and development to compete with the wildly successfully Tacoma, when you already have a wildly successful truck of your own?
GM has seen the same trend with their mid-size Colorado/Canyon. They too, are experiencing a drop in small pickup sales: The 2012 Colorado/Canyon, which is still currently in dealerships, accounted for just 11 percent of all truck sales. For its parts, GM acknowledged this reality when it revealed plans earlier this month to launch two mid-size pickups. Both of which will fit into what the industry is calling the "lifestyle pickup," meaning a truck that's smaller than a full-size, but larger than a Tacoma.
Unfortunately, it seems that reviving the Ranger?or to a larger extent, compact pickup?would be the automotive equivalent of fanservice?popular with a small, cult following, but distracting or irrelevant to the rest of the world.
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