The Unibody Ford trucks were early 60’s and only in 2wd, they went back to the separate cargo box for 1964 due to the concerns about the body flex.
To be clear, I don’t consider the VW “pickup” from the 70s/80s or the Jeep Comanchee to be true pickup trucks either. They are also unibody vehicles, so that pretty much rules them out as true pickups in my book.
If you look at what qualifies as a pick up, anything that has an open bed as far as some are concerned would qualify. Whether it has a frame is not what establishes a truck as far as the official definitions are concerned .
We went through this with the SUV definition too. We all can call it what we want, but I prefer to use the govt. and manufacturers definition as that is what determines the regs that pertain to it.
So, the Ridgeline is a pick up truck, frame or no. Frames in and if themselves are not the factor. They do add flexibility in manufacturing which trucks are noted for in their varied uses. It’s possible to build very sturdy vehicles with out ladder frames. Frame members are welded into the structure to give the added support needed and sometimes, result in much stronger vehicles for specific tasks.
Do not need it or want it.
Now if they would come out with a small pu like the old Mazda B series with a fuel efficient engine at an affordable price that would be a different story.
Saw this nice looking ‘pickup’ this morning:
I used to have an early Mazda Pick up (82 B2000) shared by Ford and Mazda. It was serviceable in it’s day, but underpowered, poor handling, low load capacity poor seating, poor ride make me thankful for today’s trucks. The o,der we are, the better we were. The reason you don’t see many of these little pick ups is…THEY DON’T SELL. The smaller ones are too stiff and clumsy to handle decent loads in a small package. And, surprisingly, they were not " that" economical. You had to be a masochist to ride any distance in these cramped cabs with bolt upright bench seats.
My uncle used to use a succession of Ford Rangers for his furniture company, he’d hitch up a U-Haul trailer and head from Tillamook, Oregon to British Columbia with a trailer full of furniture for customers. He probably did have more weight than he really should have but he did get 300,000 miles out of those trucks. There is still demand for a smaller truck just not always as much as the bean-counters would like
If the Ranger was a big seller, they would not have discontinued it. The market was not there. It essentially was the only truck to remain faithful to it’s basic roots of remaining compact and offering a low power 4 cylinder. It differentiated it’s self from compact offerings from Chevy, Toyota, Nissan and Chrysler. Ford sales of the F150 grew directly out of the desire for a larger truck while the bean counters simply voted in favor of profit. Just look at the sales numbers of the Ranger. My contention has been that the failure of small trucks ( and growth of compacts and minivans to some extent ) has more to do with the growth of the butts of Americans and the need for safer handling of larger trucks then the need for more cargo carrying.
@OlyDoug That your uncle used them in his business was born more out of a fiancial decision as the Ranger remained viable as a fleet truck. I’m sure the drivers would much favor driving F150s…by a wide margin.
All the Feds are screaming improved fuel economy so Honda decides to make a full size pickup. At least it will be profitable.
@texases that El Camino much more closely meets my definition of pickup truck than the Ridgeline
At least the El Camino is body on frame and is rear wheel drive
I wonder what the owners of Ford Rangers will do when it is time to replace the Ranger. Will the Ranger be replaced with an F-150 or will the Ranger be replaced with a Nissan Frontier or Toyota Tacoma?
I faced a similar problem when we sold our Uplander to our son and needed a replacement minivan. I went to the Chevrolet dealer and found out that GM no longer made minivans. The Chevrolet dealer said that a Traverse would meet my needs. The Traverse does not meet my needs as I need the sliding doors and the volume of a minivan. Hence, I went to the Toyota dealer to get what I needed.
The bean counter reasoning is much like the reasoning of the administration at the university where I was employed. The provost raided the summer budget to boost faculty salaries for the coming year. As a result, full classes were dropped for the summer. We were told that the students would just take another class in another discipline. What happened was that the students went to another institution for summer courses. The result was that in subsequent summers, we had fewer students and even fewer courses. Now, the summer program which had been one of the biggest programs is practically dead and buildings that could be used and have to be maintained are empty. This is bean counter thinking.
I really think that if Ford and GM built a competitive small truck it would be profitable. Why else would we still have the Frontier and the Tacoma?
But I feel that the Chevy Colorado wasn’t a very good truck. The Ranger wasn’t too bad, but was really showing its age, and not even selling that well, apparently.
@dagosa The ranger’s were my uncle’s personal trucks that he used when needed to deliver furniture. He lived next door to the shop and really didn’t need /want a full size truck. For bigger loads he rented one of the larger U-Haul trucks every few weeks (the ranger was fairly popular with parts stores and other fleets because it was cheap and durable). He did all the deliveries (this was from the early 80’s on into the late 90’s) After selling the business he switched to a Jeep Cherokee and later a couple of Liberty’s
It is really tough to make a small truck carry any substantial weight and still ride decently. The 4wd market is a huge market too and though they have the potential to be excellent off road, they become rollover queens with their narrow tracks and high center of gravity. Poor testing results of the Tacoma forced them to widen their track more then anything. The Ranger has always been a poor off roader with an under carriage poorly designed for it without expensive modifications. Add weak, archaic power plants and you get convenience buyers of fleet trucks as their main selling focus. It’s the Ford Tempo of trucks !
The Colorado has been plaqued by a poor motor for years leaving the field wide open for Toyota and Nissan who arguably offer the most capable power plants and best chassis in the small truck market. Money is made on the big trucks and American brands are happy to dominate that market and have made little attempt at anything but token efforts in small trucks. They could if they wanted…but why bother ? The low end 150s and Chevy full size work for them with minimal effort.
The 2014 Colorado is due for a major upgrade and GM threatens new power plants and a possible small diesel. Hopefully, they don’t mess it up. Small trucks will improve over all only if the Ford and Chevy get serious and start competing for real. The Tacoma is the biggest selling compact by default and really they have not improved their line up of motors either over the past ten years because of the weak competition. They are over priced and have weaknesses of their own and are really getting worse, not better for what you pay and never lead the field in innovations. If the Colorado offers a 4 cylinder diesel with 30 plus mpg for a competitive price…and is reliable, they could force everyone to follow suit.
Triedaq: “I wonder what the owners of Ford Rangers will do when it is time to replace the Ranger.”
The only current comparable vehicle is the most basic four cylinder Toyota Tacoma. The Chevy Colorado also comes close, but I think the Tacoma is the only smallish midsize truck around, and only in the most basic model. All of the fancier models of the Tacoma appear to be larger (higher off the ground with larger wheels).
I know at least, half a dozen people personally who have owned Rangers . None of them even considered Toyotas when purchasing the Ranger and only considered the larger Ford f 150. Further more, except for my Bro, who now owns an f 150 and an Accord, had ever owned anything but Ford or GM products. The Ranger was cheap, but not so cheap it was still not worth looking at a slightly older Tacoma with those I knew. They never considered one before and IMHO, will not consider one now. My bro. the ultimate cheap skate, complained more about his Rangers then any other truck owner I ever knew, but he still kept buying them ( 4 in all) cause they were cheap. And he never complained about much about the cars he owned otherwise.
To buy a Ranger over the other trucks available, as I saw it, was the ultimate expression of buying an American brand over ANY foreign brand truck. So @whitey while I agree that the Tacoma is a viable option…it will not be in eyes of the vast majority of Ranger owners. I would go so far as to say, neither is a Colorado as the GM v Ford competition . is acute too.
Look at @OlyDoug 's Uncle as an example. Going from a Ranger to Jeep Cherokees and the Libertys over time, when there were many competitive and better regarded options, is a statement of American brand loyalty. I DONOT state that as criticism by any means as in business, it is an important consideration and if you have success, you stay with the brand, but just as a matter to superficially, back my contention. Previous Ranger owners will be very reluctant to buy anything but Fords and not even GMs. The two Colorado owners I know now, have never bought any thing as long as I have known them (30 plus years) but American brand GM vehicles…for what ever reason.
Some buyers really like certain brands, My dad won’t even consider another Chrysler product due to our experience with the minivan but he has become a big fan of Honda’s. My uncle was just going to look at the first jeep but when one of the rear hubs seized up on the Ranger on the way to the dealership he decided it was time. If Jeep had continued the Cherokee he would have bought another so he went with the Liberty, he might have traded up for the third liberty but the redesign happened and that look didn’t appeal to him.
I guess I forgot about Nissan’s midsize truck, the Frontier.
@dagosa, to keep buying Rangers when you frequently complain about them takes a special level of obstinance.
@whitey
It takes a special level of frugality in car buying. They were cheap to buy, cheap to own and maintain. This is a man who managed to find an inexpensive one year old Honda Accord standard transmission WITHOUT air conditioning for his wife with now over 200k miles that they still drive today. He just refuses to put much money into cars and trucks, regardless of the inconvenience.
The Ranger in the last year they sold them still out sold compact trucks from Chevy and Nissan along with other assorted offerings. They still were not that far behind many others ! I bet most of the owners were buyers like my bro. The economics of owning one are irrefutable.
http://news.pickuptrucks.com/2011/09/august-2011-top-10-pickup-truck-sales.html
Among all pickups, the Ridgeline was less than 1% of June 2013 sales. But it is a midsized pickup, and even the undisputed king of that market, Tacoma, had a paltry 7% of the total market. When viewed as a midsized truck, the Ridgeline has 7.4% of the market. Worse than Tacoma (66%) and Frontier (25.5%), but much better than Colorado and Canyon, with only 1% of the market together. And don’t forget that Ford and Ram have no representation in the midsize pickup market.