I drove the 2024 Ford Ranger pick-up - here's why the basement-spec XL model made my hair stand on end

Year to date, pick-up registrations are up 9.6 per cent year on year and that performance is strengthening, with a 16 per cent growth in April. The top-selling model? The Ford Ranger, by a country mile. Not only the best-selling pick-up with one third more sales than its nearest competitor the Toyota Hilux, but the third top-selling commercial vehicle in the UK overall, 6,500 sales year to date placing it behind only the Ford Transit Custom and Ford Transit in the registration tables.

Interior and practicality

Uncommonly, the test vehicle that landed on my drive for a week wasn’t a blinged-up, high-specification model, but a black-bumpered, white-painted base model sat on giant steel wheels with a cloth and plastic interior.

It made my hair stand on end, literally. Friction between the plastic-topped armrest and my hirsute forearm created a static reaction anytime I wore shirt sleeves in the cabin. Lucky then that this, on the face of it, no-frills XL trim truck still had air-conditioning. Actually, for all that it lacked chrome, leather, shiny extra vents and graphics, there were quite a lot of what would once have been considered mod-cons. The air con was a £600 option, but the bottom of the trim tree XL demonstrator was otherwise standard inside, the only other options being practical external things like underbody wax coating and the protection pack that adds the locking rear axle.

Despite that, there’s a massive, portrait-orientated 10-inch touch-screen with Ford’s Sync 4 system installed, Apple Car Play and Android Auto is supported, there’s a digital instrument cluster plus reversing camera and sensors. It’s low-spec, but not in the ways that actually matter.

There’s a slightly weird design of interior door handle, with the lever hidden in the deep door arm rest - a practical touch, rather than an affectation. Try opening a regular door handle in a set of work gloves and the Ford design suddenly makes a great deal of sense. In fact, the whole interior makes a great deal of sense if you factor in that, fundamentally, a large proportion of Ford Rangers sold will be subject to some pretty heavy use.

What won’t stand up to much abuse, is the mechanism for releasing the rear armrest from the back seats. Somehow it manages to be both flimsy and sticky. Resulting in there being a real knack to getting it down in the first place, but also a need to fiddle about with the spring to ensure it stays in place when it’s returned.

The flat-bed is a five-foot box, with steep walls suiting a variety of cargo. You’ll want a roof if you plan on keeping anything dry, but our demonstrator came without. We also had a painted metal floor without any kind of load bed liner (a £330 option). A roof from Ford starts around £500 for a tonneau cover and there are a range of full box hard-top options starting around £2,250. Shop around for an aftermarket version and you should find a range of options around the £1,500 mark. Optioning on a towbar will cost you £400 excluding VAT.

Driving the Ford Ranger Pick-up

Under the bonnet our test vehicle was powered by the 2.0-litre diesel engine paired with a six-speed manual gearbox. Our truck was the 168bhp entry model, but Ford expects the 202-bhp version of the same four-cylinder engine to be the best seller.

On the roads, the diesel engine pulls smoothly, but the soundtrack is relatively industrial and undermines refinement overall. Under acceleration there’s some subtle, but still noticeable vibration returned via the clutch and accelerator pedals. Being a big slab of a thing, there’s a little wind noise under motorway conditions too.

The ride is quite soft and this translates to a comfortable low-speed drive, with some bounciness apparent at higher velocity. The truck handles well for a pick-up, there’s body-lean at speed, but it’s controlled on the whole. I had the three of the four seasons during the loan and, in the wet, I was looking out for the skittishness you can sometimes get from a rear-wheel drive pick-up with an empty bed, especially because this version of the Ranger doesn’t have permenant all-wheel drive. The skittishness was, however, absent with the Ranger, at least as hard as I was willing to push it on public roads.

Using the dial on the centre console - another easy turn in gloves - you can toggle between rear-wheel drive and either high range or low-range four-wheel drive modes. Most of the time you’ll leave it, as I did, in rear-wheel drive configuration, saving the four-wheel drive modes for periods of low traction. I wasn’t able to test out the low-range gearbox with any rigour during my demo, but I took in a selection of gravelly and lightly cut up surfaces in 4x4 H.

On all-season tyres, there’s really little to report here. The Ranger handled our soft-ball trial with no fuss and no slippage.

I must confess some user error at this point, however - I forgot to change it back to rear-wheel drive on the way home. No real issues manifested until it was time to reverse park, at which point there was an almighty shudder at full lock and the front wheels left great, big, rubbery tyre marks on my mono-block driveway as they strove for traction on an imaginary low-traction surface. Save the four-wheel drive modes for when they’re needed and you’ll be just fine.

Verdict and pricing

The Ranger tops pick-up sales in the UK for a reason. It’s an accomplished vehicle and the comprehensive range of trims - starting at XL and culminating in range-topping Raptor form, with a plug-in Hybrid coming in 2025 - means there’s something for everyone. At £35,760 before options this double-cab, basement spec XL model is cheaper than equivalent competition like the Toyota Hilux Invincible, albeit it’s lacking touches like alloy wheels and grille accents. Higher specification models get the benefit of permanent all-wheel drive and are expected to dominate Ranger sales overall, but, as a workhorse, XL and XLT models don’t sacrifice anything that matters.