From Detroit News.

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/bu...19/4354394002/

 

Could be true. I saw two Rangers on the roads in the past couple of weeks. That brings the total I've seen to around 6 all year.

 

For me i'm looking at the spring or early summer 2020 for a purchase i surely hope the Ranger is a sales winner over the years but i'v only seen 8-10 so far (2019) i'm in the North east part of the country so a densely populated area with plenty of PU's i drive for a living so i get around with a lot of miles weekly maybe in 2020 i'll see more.

 

There's quite a few on the road around here.

 

I Have seen more Rangers on the road, out here, more often in the past couple of months. Seemed to take a while to get going in sales, but seems to moving more Rangers these days.
I am looking to get one in another year or so.

 

I believe they also had some promo's going on that made them more comparable in price, so that probably helped out too. Good to hear they are moving more units.

 

I am not sure how Ford is going to hit any sort of acceptable sales number for the Ranger. The dealers around me, and I am talking big, high volume dealers that normally carry 300-400 F-150s in stock, only have 20-30 Rangers. Almost all are XLs or XLTs. Very, very few Lariats around here.

High volume dealers only stocking 20-30 Rangers tells me that sales are not going so well.

 

Low inventory might also indicate that sales are going well in comparison to production capacity. The Wayne plant has a stated capacity of 5,300 vehicles per week, which is 275,000 trucks per year. F Series trucks sold 909,000 in 2018 and I'm guessing production capacity is more than that, maybe not by a lot. So Ford is able to build 4 times as many F series trucks as Rangers, and the Wayne plant is not at its total capacity yet. (We had this discussion earlier in 2019.)

Ford may or may not be purposely running Ranger production low. First quarter, they sold about 3000 Rangers a month. Second quarter, 7000 a month, and third quarter about 9000 per month. (I would assume they are over 10,000 per month now--and Chevy Colorados sell at the rate of 10-11,000 per month.) Demand is building as price incentives happen and it all looks fine to me for a new vehicle (to the US) coming from a new plant. The 275k capacity may include Bronco production capacity also. Finally, dealers may be ordering fewer Rangers while waiting to see which model combinations they can sell.

Total Lincoln sales for all models of cars and SUV's are under 10,000 per month. Supporting a dealer network on sales numbers like this has to be really tough (our local Lincoln dealers sell a lot of off-lease Ford vehicles on their used car lots).

If Ford had turned on the fire hose and started production at full capacity, they might have had the kind of clusterf*** that they had with the 2020 Explorer/Aviator where Ford was shipping tens of thousands of Explorers from Chicago to Flat Rock (and some to Roush) to fix BIG problems. And having people who spent $70k on an Aviator being afraid to drive them because they would do weird and scary stuff is not a good look. First year problems suck, so ramping up production makes so much sense. Unfortunately, the Explorer is a large selling cash cow for Ford and they could not afford to stop production for a number of months...but they had to pay a big price.

It's all good. Happy New Year to all,
George

 

If this the case, then the Ranger is selling as fast as Ford is making them. Therefore, you would expect that the units on the dealer lots to have fairly recent build dates. This will be especially true of the XLT trim, as the XLT traditionally is the highest volume trim, and Ford has had the biggest rebates on the XLT trim.

One of the dealer that I checked does not have a single Ranger XLT built after early September. A different dealer has 2 out of 10 XLTs that were built in early November. I consider those fairly fresh units. Another 4 units were built in early October. Those are getting a little stale. The other 4 units were built in September or earlier. Those have whiskers, as anything over 90 days old is consider aged inventory. This dealer also has a couple of XL trim Rangers that were built in May.

The one dealer in Houston still has 100+ Rangers in stock, about the same or a bit fewer than it had a couple of months ago. I spot checked his inventory and did not see anything built after the first week of November and there were some June and May built units.

4Q sales figures will be out in a couple of weeks. It will be interesting.

Combined Colorado and Canyon sales were a little over 13,000 units/month in Q3. Roughly 39,000 + change total units.

 

Around here, Hampton Roads are of Virginia which is the worlds largest military / government employment network is rich with new vehicles of all makes as there is plenty of stable income here. Sadly, I see more old Rangers than new. In fact, I still see more old Dodge Dakotas than new Rangers.

The dealers around me are having price wars with one advertising $20,000 off on select 2019 F-150's and new Rangers for under $21K.

Look, Ford took a swing and hit a foul which isn't a total miss but not a good hit either. Let's be honest here, the Ranger really isn't a very appealing truck like the F-150 and SD. It needs to look like a smaller F-150 to get people excited.

 

just bought a loaded XLT. just a few pennies shy of 25% off suggested retail list price. Looks like ford has a push for year end sales. Best time to buy is now.

 

$8k off for incentives on my Ranger XLT. Wanted a Lariat but no incentives at that time on Lariat. I think the only reason a Ranger might not be as "attractive" as a F150 is that the Ranger is a lot smaller truck, and a lot of truck buyers are really into "big" trucks, even if they really do not need the capabilities of say a superduty. I see the vast majority of F250 / F350 towing or carrying nothing but air. Actually F150 the same, not using the vehicle as a truck but rather as a big expensive car with a bed on it. But people are gonna buy what they want and somehow afford no matter what.

I liked my F250. I thought I would have a problem with adjusting to the size, but the Ranger is a sweet little truck, and I have nothing heavy to tow or carry and the 21 mpg is SO MUCH NICER THAN THE 12 MPG ON MY F250. Are Rangers for everyone? Of course not. But there a lot of Superduty owners out there that could be driving a much more economical vehicle that would meet their needs, if not their WANTS.

 

I saw a red one yesterday! Was a base XL model. That brings the total I've seen this year to 7 now I think.

 

As I've said so many times, the Ranger will pull a trailer and that alone will equalize the payload to an F-250 if the right 6x8 trailer is purchased. The nice payload plus the lower entry of the trailer sounds like a win to me.

 

A local dealer only has 16 Rangers on its lot. This same dealer has 160 Explorers and 345 F-150s, so it is a high volume dealer.

Of the 16 Rangers, the newest, NEWEST, Ranger has a June build date. So it does not look like this dealer is placing many new orders.

Gee whiz. This dealer has 20 Raptors. So more Raptors than Rangers.