Ford Ranger 2026 review | The most car-like pickup truck on sale

What is the Ford Ranger?

The Ford Ranger is one of the most popular pickups in the UK and Europe. In fact, it has been Europe’s top-selling pickup for the past 10 years, having built a reputation as a tough, no-nonsense workhorse since its debut in the late 1990s.

Since the launch of the third-generation Ranger on the so-called ‘T6’ platform in 2011, the truck has increasingly been sold as an alternative to mainstream family SUVs, offering near-comparable comfort and technology, along with a relatively sophisticated driving experience.

The latest Ranger aims to build on that success, with improved technology and brash, bold styling reminiscent of the American-market Ford F-150. Despite the in-your-face front-end redesign, though, the Mk4 Ranger is based on a development of the same T6 platform used by its predecessor. Eagle-eyed observers will spot similarities in the shape of the vehicle, especially the doors on double cab versions.

Ford is clearly chasing SUV buyers with high-end luxury features and trim levels, but your Ranger can still be specified as a workhorse, with single cab or extended cab body styles, and simpler specifications available. That said, at the time of writing, only double cab versions were available to configure, with the single cab available solely from stock.

Many buyers will likely go for the middle-of-the-road Ford Ranger Wildtrak, which features upgrades such as alloy wheels, comfortable leather seats – with electric adjustment for the driver – and generally all the toys you’d expect of a moderately expensive large SUV. There are other trim levels available depending on the engine and body style chosen, including XL, XLT, Platinum and Stormtrak.

The 203bhp twin-turbocharged 2.0-litre four-cylinder diesel engine and 10-speed automatic gearbox are carried over from the old model, joining 168bhp 2.0 and 237bhp 3.0 V6 turbodiesels. In mid-2025, a plug-in hybrid Ranger was launched for the first time, featuring a 2.3-litre turbocharged engine with 277bhp. The sporty Ranger Raptor tops the range with a 288bhp 3.0-litre twin-turbo petrol V6.

In truth, the combination of engines, cabs, trim levels and powertrains is changing more or less all the time, so if you’re interested in buying a new Ranger, the best option is to speak to your local dealer to find out what is currently on offer.

All Rangers feature an automatic gearbox, except for low-spec models with the 168bhp diesel engine, which get a six-speed manual. XLT trims and upwards all feature the same 10-speed auto that we sampled in the Wildtrak, and every powertrain comes with standard all-wheel drive.

The new Ranger also lends its innards to the latest Volkswagen Amarok pickup as part of a technology-sharing agreement between Volkswagen and Ford. Try lifting the bonnet of an Amarok and play a game of ‘spot the Ford badge’. It will keep you entertained for hours, probably.

How practical is it?

Aside from its sheer bulk on the road, the Ford Ranger is a deeply practical vehicle. Its load bed is just over 1.5 metres long in the double cab model and is basically the same size as the old Ranger’s (to within a few millimetres).

If you plump for the optional load bed liner, it’s smarter and looks tougher than the cover in the old version. However, it must be noted that this is part of a pack that costs £1,600: one of the many, many ways to customise your Ranger. The same option pack also includes a remote-controlled power roller shutter. You don’t get one of those in a Volkswagen Golf, do you?

The depth of the load bed is slightly different in the plug-in hybrid version because the battery lives underneath, raising the floor by a couple of centimetres. There's a small lip up to the floor from the tailgate, but it's gently sloped, so it shouldn't get in the way that much.

Rear-seat space in the double cab model is impressive, and you even get a centre armrest in some models. You’ll find it’s not quite as comfortable back there as the rear seats of a regular SUV such as a Nissan X-Trail or Skoda Kodiaq, though. You can flip the rear seat bases up to reveal a large hidden storage area underneath. This is particularly useful in the plug-in hybrid for stashing the charging cable out of sight.

There are no such compromises up front, however, where the Ranger offers loads of room for drivers and passengers of all shapes and sizes, along with plenty of steering wheel and seat adjustment. The cabin isn’t short of a cubby or two, either. There are big door bins, two gloveboxes and even some hidden extra cupholders tucked away by the doors.

Where the pickup body style limits you is that really long loads are a bit tricky to carry, despite the Ranger being as long as a full-size Range Rover, simply because the nature of a pickup means you can’t fold the rear seats down to get extra carrying capacity. There is an optional extra designed to remedy this: a sliding roof-level frame mounted on runners down the side of the load bed, which allows you to lash super-long items such as ladders to the roof. Sadly, it's only available on certain versions and is a very expensive addition.

There are fewer limits when it comes to towing, thankfully. The Ranger Wildtrak is able to haul a braked trailer of up to 3,500kg in weight.

One feature we’re quite fond of is something you won’t see on many options lists: underbody wax protection. For £250, Ford will apply a coat of Waxoyl to the chassis and some other components underneath the vehicle. The company recommends it for anyone who spends time off-road, on very salty roads or towing boats in and out of the sea. It’s all well and good having a pickup to tug your sailing boat up the jetty, but if its chassis looks like a colander after 18 months, you’ll regret not paying the extra £250. In the context of modern car options, it’s really not much money.

What's it like to drive?

The first thing you notice when driving the Ranger is that it feels remarkably civilised. If you’re used to pickup trucks of old (and not-so-old in the case of the Nissan Navara or Isuzu D-Max), you might expect the Ranger to buck and bounce down the road, particularly at the rear and especially without a load in the bed. But that simply isn’t the case. Despite its tough leaf-spring rear suspension and old-fashioned body-on-frame construction, the Ranger rides impressively smoothly.

Now, it doesn't feel as plush as a large SUV, but in the main, it’s comfortable and quiet. The body doesn’t even lean too much in corners, and although you do feel the occasional shimmy, it’s mightily impressive.

Interestingly, though, the old Ranger felt just as capable. That’s probably more in praise of the previous version than a criticism of the new one, though – and perhaps to be expected given this Ranger is a development of its predecessor, rather than an all-new model.

Head into town and you might encounter issues with the sheer size of the Ranger, but its bluff, squared-off edges mean it’s easier to place on the road than you might think. The turning circle is tighter than you’d credit, too, ranging from 12.0 to 12.9 meters, depending on the specific model (although a vehicle this long really needs such manoeuvrability to have any chance of turning around in smaller spaces). To provide some context, a Land Rover Defender 130’s turning circle is 12.8 meters.

Being a 2,300kg pickup when fitted with the 202bhp 2.0-litre diesel engine, the Ranger isn’t all that fast. Yet it feels even slower than its 0-62mph time of 10.5 seconds would suggest. There’s a laziness to the way the 10-speed automatic gearbox reacts to the accelerator pedal. It’s much happier when you’re not pressing on too hard, and it constantly juggles gearshifts so you can ride the surge of torque from those twin turbos. Driven like this, the Ranger makes effortless progress, and it really suits a gentle motorway cruise.

We've also tried the plug-in hybrid Ranger that was launched in mid-2025. In a first for the pickup truck market, it pairs a 2.3-litre four-cylinder turbo petrol engine with an electric motor to deliver a combined maximum of 277bhp (101bhp of which comes from the electric motor) and 514lb ft of torque (that latter figure is the greatest of any Ranger, even the high-performance Raptor).

You can choose to run the hybrid system in a variety of ways. Left to its own devices, the system defaults to 'Auto EV' mode, where the vehicle decides for itself what combination of petrol and electric power is best for the circumstances. However, you can make the vehicle run solely on electric power by selecting 'EV Now' mode. Alternatively, you can choose to save your battery charge by selecting 'EV Later', where the vehicle runs using just the petrol motor (handy for situations where you have a long motorway journey with a stint of town driving at the end, where your battery drive will have the greatest benefit). Finally, select 'EV Charge' mode and the petrol engine tops up the battery as well as driving the wheels. This even works when you're stationary, so you can charge it simply by leaving the engine running, although this will be far from the most efficient method of recharging.

Select ‘EV Now' mode, and you will get up to motorway speed, but very, very slowly. We carried out a rather unscientific acceleration test during our time with the Ranger PHEV and, from a standstill with the accelerator pinned to the floor, we counted a shade over 20 seconds before we hit 60mph. In this mode, the level of acceleration on offer is fine for gentle urban driving, but on other sorts of road, you'll need help from the petrol engine.

It's a very different story when the engine does chime in. In all the other modes, the Ranger PHEV builds speed in a really brisk and effortless manner. Give it a proper bootful of throttle and the turn of pace it delivers might surprise you. And all the while, the engine stays impressively quiet and smooth, even when working hard.

Regardless of whether you're running on electric or petrol power, you'll notice that throttle response is a little lazy, but there’s a more marked delay in response when the petrol engine is running because the gearbox has the same hesitancy as we described earlier. It's not too much of an issue in a vehicle like the Ranger, mind.

There are other engine options available in the Ranger aside from the two we've driven. There's a weaker 168bhp version of the 2.0-litre diesel, plus a 237bhp 3.0-litre V6 diesel. The high-performance Raptor gets either a 3.0 twin-turbo petrol with 288bhp, or a 207bhp version of the 2.0 diesel engine.

Technology, equipment & infotainment

The days of pickups featuring a steering wheel, pedals and maybe a radio if you were lucky have long gone. Yet even in the modern context of pickups as family cars with all the mod-cons, the Ranger impresses with its levels of equipment. Entry-level UK-market models, for example, come with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay smartphone connectivity, a rear-view camera and rear parking sensors.

Higher-specification models feature an impressive 12-inch touchscreen that looks similar to that found in the Mustang Mach-E and features built-in navigation. The portrait-oriented layout of the screen is useful, because it allows you to display quite a lot of different information at once, and makes it easy to switch between functions. It is a touch laggy, though, so you’ll need to be patient with it.

The fact that there are physical controls for the air-con and the stereo volume is another bonus, and the overall placement and design of the various switches and buttons is an improvement on the previous Ranger. In a vehicle that is often bought with commercial applications in mind, not having physical controls for those functions would have been a huge own-goal.

With the flashy-looking Wildtrak edition, which is the biggest seller, you can enjoy leather seats with eight-way electric adjustment for the driver and funky orange stitching. You also get one-touch electric windows, dual-zone air-conditioning, heated seats and a heated steering wheel. There’s even a 360-degree parking camera, plus all-round parking sensors.

We’ll give Ford top marks for installing proper 4x4 hardware. Unlike many SUVs, the Ranger has some serious off-roading chops. All models are all-wheel drive, with various drive modes to help you figure out tricky surfaces. You can also switch between rear-wheel drive and all-wheel drive in both low and high ranges.

There’s all the safety kit you’d expect as well, including automatic emergency braking, lane-keep assist and adaptive cruise control, even in the most basic Ranger models.

Where we have to mark Ford down a little, however, is that some of the cabin plastics feel a bit utilitarian. That’s fine in Rangers destined for use as workhorses, but in the plusher versions it feels a bit less acceptable.

Ford Ranger running costs

Something as hefty as the Ranger is always going to get through a bit of fuel, and even the entry-level 168bhp 2.0-litre diesel returns an official figure of just 33mpg. Expect 27mpg from the more powerful 202bhp version, or 26mpg from the 3.0-litre V6 diesel. And the Raptor models? Seriously, don't ask.

The PHEV has a combined WLTP fuel economy figure of 91mpg, but don't be fooled. The official tests are always overly flattering to plug-in hybrids, and replicating that figure in the real world will be difficult. It has an electric-only range of 25 miles, so if your regular journeys are shorter than that, and they're low-speed enough that you don't have to get the petrol engine involved, then it's possible that you'll use hardly any fuel at all (assuming you keep the batteries topped up). With the batteries depleted, Ford claims a fuel economy figure of 28mpg.

In terms of the Ranger’s cost as a company car, it is currently quite affordable. That’s because it’s classed as a commercial vehicle and, because all versions apart from the high-performance Raptor can take at least a 1,000kg payload, it’s subject to a one-size-fits-all flat rate of company car tax. However, this changes from 6 April 2025, when most double-cab trucks will be classed as cars for benefit-in-kind (BIK) tax, dramatically increasing annual running costs.

As an outright cash purchase, you’ll find a Ranger looks good value compared with the older and more utilitarian-feeling Toyota Hilux, but it will cost you more than an Isuzu D-Max.

Ford Ranger reliability

In recent years, Ford has put in some rather disappointing performances in the What Car? Reliability Survey. In the latest survey, it claimed joint 24th spot (alongside Volkswagen) out of a total of 30 manufacturers.

That performance will be based on the brand's range of hatchbacks and SUVs, because pickup trucks don't feature in the study. And given that pickup trucks are designed from the off to be simple and hardy, you’d imagine they can tolerate hard use with minimal downtime. To a certain extent that’s true, but the Ranger’s powertrain line-up has attracted criticism for its lack of strength.

All of the EcoBlue diesel engines, for example, use wet belts: rubber timing belts that are submerged in oil rather than traditional metal timing chains. These are gathering a truly ghastly reputation, as the oil degrades the rubber, sending fragments into places it really shouldn’t be found and eventually causing the belt to fail. Some EcoBoost petrol engines use the same wet belt technology, too.

If you’re buying a Ranger brand new, do not skip service intervals. If anything, service the engine more regularly than is strictly needed, whether that’s changing the oil filter (and inspecting it for rubber or metal debris when you do) or completing a wet belt change ahead of schedule. These issues have been known to surface after just a year, in both Fords and the related Volkswagen Amarok. If you are buying a Ranger used, check if the belt has been changed at the correct intervals (if not earlier) with a reputable garage, as these issues can quite easily write off the engine. Timing cover oil leaks are common, too.

The Ranger’s warranty lasts for three years or 60,000 miles, whereas Toyota (provided you service the truck at an official dealer) will give you a factory warranty for up to 10 years and 100,000 miles on a Hilux.