Tester
They’ll now be designed in the US, and made outside Australia.
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IIRC, Toyota is the last auto company assembling cars and trucks in Australia. Everything will be built elsewhere and imported into Australia. It is a cute little Ford, though.
Is that the new Ranger? I think I read that Ford was intending to build Rangers in Australia for USA delivery in 2020 timeframe? As I recall the specs weren’t like the old Ranger, more complicated everything than the old Ranger.
They call them “utes”, and basically modern iterations of the El Camino /Ranchero. Probably all the truck most most people need. But not the the truck the U.S. customer wants. No 4WD, and no ground clearance. But on the other hand the do make some pretty hot, high performance utes. The Falcon-based ute can have a turbocharged 4.0L I6. I’ve always wanted an Aussie-spec Falcon XR6 sedan.
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The Falcon Ute, competitor to the Holden that a company in the us will build from crashed Pontiac GTO’s that share the same platform. Didn’t have much chance of coming to the USA when they were made new. Even if there was a certain level of demand for the VXR trim.
The US versions are built proportionate to the cup holders we need.
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Since they are not building Fords in Australia perhaps it would be more accurate to say Aussies prefer small Utes and Yanks prefer full sized pick up trucks and SUVs. The ability to assemble a quality product might be difficult to compare in markets that don’t share the same vehicles.
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Not anymore. Toyota closed their Camry plant 2 weeks before Holden. There are no automobiles assembled in Australia anymore.
I just sold my Dakota on Friday. I am going to look at the new Ranger if I can find one.
And they just kept growing; The Australian car sales figures in 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 totalled 1.155m, 1.178m, 1.189m and 1.153m, according to offical Australian car sales figures. All up, the new car sales figures in Australia add up to more than 7.6 million new cars in just seven years.
It kind of reminds me of the Maloo that Holden came out with years ago. Pretty neat trucks. The Maloo has 409 Horsepower so I’d get kind of wound up over that.
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I see trucks like this when we go to Mexico. Some from the late 1990s, which means that in about 5 more years a U.S. citizen such as myself could legally buy one and drive it here. The closest that was sold here was the Subaru Baja, and those are rare and expensive on the used market.
Our moderately sized dealer has close to 30 Rangers in stock at the moment. Three Lariat trucks for every XLT they have at the moment. But they are building more basic trucks now.
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