2022 Ford Ranger caught tow testing

The all-new 2022 Ford Ranger is heading your way via some of Australia’s roughest tracks to prove its toughness and off-road towing credentials.

Due to be revealed in production form during the second half of this year before going on sale globally in early 2022, the new Ford Ranger has been spotted in prototype form returning from engineering shakedowns in the Aussie outback.

The importance of the new Ford Ranger cannot be understated given it will replace Australia’s favourite 4x4 ute, Ford Australia’s top-selling model and carsales’ Best Dual-Cab 4x4 Ute for 2021.

First released in 2011, the existing Ford Ranger is the only ute designed and engineered in Australia and the new model could be the final locally-developed Ranger if its replacement due around 2030 does indeed migrate to the same ladder platform as the Ford F-150.

Until then, the new Ford Ranger, which will be followed by a new Ford Everest, will be the blue oval brand’s best chance yet of overcoming the dominance of overall ute sales by the Toyota HiLux – Australia’s best-selling vehicle for the past five years.

While this heavily disguised trio of 4WD crew-cab pick-ups only give hints of the Ranger’s upcoming front and rear styling treatments, they do confirm it will give nothing away to current rivals in terms of size and on-road presence.

Beneath the camouflage of these three pre-production Rangers (two in these still images and a third towing a Melbourne-built Vista RV off-road camper seen only in the video) it's possible to see flattened front guards in place of the current model’s rounded wheel-arches.

As we also saw on the 2022 Rangers spied testing in the US earlier this year, a bold new front-end design will be punctuated by three vertically stacked LED daytime running lights outboard of each headlight.

The ‘face’ of the new Ford Ranger – so important in a segment where the overall shape of most utes remains very similar – is yet to be fully uncovered, but it’s thought to include a bold full-width grille and more powerful HID low-beam and high-beam headlights at the lower end of the range, and bi-LED at the upper end.

The three Rangers captured here have their exterior differences but it is difficult to draw conclusions about whether they represent different models given body add-ons can be superfluous to prototype and early-build engineering validation.

For starters though, none appear to have the extended wheel-arches of the existing Raptor and Wildtrak X models, nor is the distinctive rear window aero surround of the outgoing Wildtrak visible.

Other than that, you have one vehicle with side steps but no roof rails or rear sports bar; a second with the roof rails only and a third with all three of those – none of which combinations correlate to current specifications.

Two of these are left-hand drive vehicles, however, reiterating the fact that despite closing down local manufacturing and assembly in 2016, Ford Australia continues to engineer the Ranger for about 180 global markets including the US, South Africa and Thailand where it will again be built.

This time round, however, the 2022 Ford Ranger will form the basis of the 2023 Volkswagen Amarok following the new Mazda BT-50’s move to be twinned with the latest Isuzu D-MAX.

Speaking of the second-generation Amarok, there is speculation the 2022 Ranger will be fitted with full-time 4WD and therefore a centre differential so that VW won’t be forced into a retrograde step when replacing its current light commercial pick-up.

A further factor in the favour of a permanent 4x4 system is the likelihood that a punchy 3.0-litre turbo-diesel V6 sourced from the larger Ford F-150 pick-up will be the powerplant for at least Raptor and Wildtrak versions of the new Ranger.

With close to 600Nm of torque on tap, the current rear-drive set-up might struggle for traction, making 4WD more of a necessity than a luxury.

With the Ranger/Everest’s trusty 3.2-litre five-cylinder Puma engine set to be discontinued, other engine choices seem likely to be a single-turbo 2.0-litre diesel and the Raptor’s current twin-turbo 2.0-litre Panther engine, the latter mated to a 10-speed auto.

As well as performance and efficiency, also expect an uptick in safety, technology and refinement – even if the outgoing T6 Ranger is already one of the most refined and high-tech utes available.

All of these questions will be answered when Ford begins its drop-feed presentation of the new Ranger in coming months.

Watch this space.