By: Brendan Seery
Wadi Rum, Jordan - When I first took charge of a Ford Ranger Wildtrak double cab in the attractive metallic paint scheme that the company calls Pride Orange, I was somewhat intimidated by the size of the thing… particularly when trying to park it in the anorexic underground parking bays at the Rosebank Mall.
However, standing in the Jordanian desert sun, a similar orange metallic Ranger Wildtrak looks as though someone could be saying: “Honey, I shrunk the bakkie!”
That’s because, standing alongside some of the other models in Ford’s international SUV bouquet, the Ranger looks modest.
Take the F-150 double-cab. It’s a truck in Ford parlance – and from its size you can see why they call it a truck. The F-Series (the 150 is the smallest in the litter – there is also an F250 and a godzilla of a F650) has been the best-selling truck in the US for the past 39 years.
The F-150 almost dwarfs the Ranger: in all dimensions – height, width, cabin space, loadbed capacity, wheel size – it is bigger.
Sitting inside, even in the back row of the double cab – normally a place of torture in some local and older bakkies – you almost need a walkie-talkie to communicate with your fellow backseat passenger, such is the width of the cabin.
No surprise that the top-spec model we get to try on a trip to Jordan with Ford is labelled the King Ranch. It certainly is.
Global SUV range
The other SUVs in the cavalcade which traverse the arid country from the Dead Sea in the north to the port of Aqaba in the south are not on the South African Ford menu. And they probably won’t be either.
Yet, it is interesting to see how Ford, now very much a global company with design and manufacturing centres across the world, has become one of the leaders in the SUV market.
Jim Benintende, head of Ford’s Middle East and Africa operation (but heading back to the States soon), tells us “the global SUV market is booming”.
Global sales of SUVs have shot up 87 percent since 2008; there were 22 million sold worldwide last year, accounting for 25 percent of the industry, while they will account for 20 percent of vehicle sales by 2020.
That’s quite something to ponder, especially given that, in the same period, international concern about global warming has, the media would have us believe, also been increasing exponentially.
Yet, generally, SUV sales increase and the size of the average SUV – especially in non-American markets – continues to get bigger.
Go figure…
It is true that not all of Ford’s SUVs qualify for the truck appellation – and in Jordan they have brought along the Escape (which we know here as the Kuga) and the EcoSport, the best-selling small SUV in South Africa.
Brisk Explorer
The fleet includes Ford’s best-selling SUV, the Explorer, a tough all-wheel-drive vehicle with sophisticated Terrain Response system, as opposed to the traditional selectable 4x4 of the F-150.
Ford has sold 7 million Explorers to date – one every two minutes for the past 25 years. And it’s an impressive vehicle, powered by the twin-turbo 3.5-litre V6 engine, which pushes out 272kW in Explorer Sport trim.
That sort of power gives the Explorer real get up and go – it should hit 100km/h in under seven seconds even at highveld altitude, were you to get your hands on one.
The Explorer also showed itself to be a dab hand at tackling the rock and sand desert (including some soft bits) as we wound our way to Wadi Rum for lunch in a reconstructed Bedouin settlement.
Some of the Ford team drivers, keeping an eye on the convoy, were pushing their Explorers to the sort of speeds one normally sees in an off-road racing event… but with no apparent ill-effects.
F150’s agile for its size
By comparison, I expected the F150 to be big and cumbersome, reflecting the way it looks.
But, startlingly for such a big beast, it held its line well on the sand in 4WD high range and showed agility on the tar.
The really interesting thing about the F-150, powered by a 2.7-litre Ecoboost twin-turbo engine, was how much the powerplant sounded like a brawny V8 under hard acceleration. A few of us double-checked with the Ford people to confirm there was no V8 under the vast bonnet.
As you’d expect in a huge American car, the ride comfort of the F-150 was excellent, with the car absorbing potholes (we are not the only ones with them) on tar roads and humps and bumps in the desert with equal ease.
The Ford Expedition, more or less a station-wagon version of the F-150 – but powered by a 3.5-litre twin-turbo V6 tuned to deliver 283kW was very similar in overall feel to the F-150 – large but comfortable and surprisingly nimble for its size.
Has this SUV got the Edge?
Best-looking of all the vehicles in the trans-Jordan fleet was Ford’s new Edge SUV. Smaller than the others, but with sleek lines, it is more of an urban-focused vehicle, with the same Terrain Response AWD system as the Explorer and the 2.7-litre Ecoboost engine. It was also my favourite of all those I drove: with sporty handling but without compromising comfort levels – and also well-equipped with Ford’s new suite of electronic safety and comfort gadgets.
Perhaps it was the fact I was driving along a beautiful winding road, perched above the Dead Sea that I was in such a receptive mood, but I enjoyed the smoothness of the Edge and the lovely howl from its V6 when it was extended.
Pity: it doesn’t look as though that car will be heading our way.
In that company, though, the Ranger Wildtrak (there were two in the convoy) was far from outclassed. The facelifted version’s interior is even more car-like than before, and it has a very similar feel to the other Ford offerings.
It was off-road that the Wildtrak showed its mettle and this was a feather in the cap of our local assembly plant at Silverton, outside Pretoria.
In thick sand, and with a dozy driver at the wheel (who did not notice, or did not know, the four-wheel-drive was not engaged), the Wildtrak made it through. And in a punishing charge through the dunes, the Ranger always felt composed… with not a single rattle.
The Jordan experience made me think. Much as the Ford SUVs were capable, most of them (except the Edge) are not my cup of tea.
They are just too big. And too thirsty – the V6s seldom saw less than 15 litres per 100km on tar and in sand. The Kuga that we recently had on test and which acquitted itself well on a tricky off-road course, is what I would consider the perfect family SUV: economical, plenty of space, well-equipped and, in the AWD version at least, you can go pretty far off road.
What stood out for me – seeing the way that the South African Ford people are really part of a big, global Ford family – is the realisation that South Africa is part of a broader international community.
Companies like Ford have voted with their money, too, by investing in this country.
And that’s not bad thing…
Saturday Star