This Ford Ranger is One High Plains Drifter

In the Beginning

The truck you see here made its first cover in 2010, an Under Construction feature in Mini Truckin’ magazine. That’s it’s no longer under construction is a testament to the dedication of its owner Pascal Barone IV and a small army of helpers. Barone’s first car was a truck, a Ranger he got in high school, that was subsequently totaled by a drunk driver. He liked that first Ford enough to buy another one, again a Ranger. His second Ranger acted as a gateway to the minitruck hobby, since it had a bunch of botched work done to it—it was fixing the faults that got him hooked.

Concept

Turning one’s second vehicle into a show piece takes more than just money or hard work, or at least it should. What Barone had was vision. As he told Slamd’ Mag, “My advantage was that since I wasn’t heavily involved in the scene yet, I didn’t take very much influence from the trends or theme builds at the time. Instead, I just took a bunch of stuff that I thought was cool and just sought out to make them all work in harmony.” An outsider can often see aspects of a scene that people inside of it can’t, and that was true in Barone’s case. “Two main areas that I wanted to focus on that I felt our scene had come up short with were the engine bay and the interior,” he said.

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Chassis

Before we dive into the details of the interior, let’s take a look at the bones of the Ranger. Barone enlisted The Little Shop in Tennessee for help with the majority of the work done to the truck, including the entirety of chassis and suspension modifications. They built a completely custom frame for the Ranger, and for the suspension used tubular control arms up front and a custom four-link setup in the rear. Of course, the truck sits on bags—Little Shop went with an Air Ride system with AccuAir management.

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Rolling Stock

The Ranger rolls on completely custom three-piece ten-spoke wheels, in staggered 22- and 24-inch sizes front/rear. The center sections are finished to match the exterior paint and shod with Pirelli rubber, and braking is provided by 13-inch Wilwoods.

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Body and Paint

The Little Shop again stepped in, this time to take care of everything exterior. The body was shaved of nearly everything save the side mirrors. The shop modified the cowl and fabricated a custom grille center bar, which apart from the rims, is about the only shiny piece on the pickup. Not as noticeable but key to the look of the truck are the bumpers, which Little Shop made by cutting and reshaping bumpers from two different Rangers. The finished product was sprayed in PPG Sparkling Silver Metallic featuring both gloss and flat accents.

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Interior

Entering the interior is like stepping into a different world. Recovery Room Hot Rod Interiors is responsible for the mastery here, and it does indeed incorporate Rolls Royce inspiration—the carpet is made after Rolls patterns. The modified seats are out of a VW Passat, and they and most of the rest of the interior were bathed in a richly-colored hide. The gauges were all custom-designed and the gauge cluster isn’t actually wood but in fact an airbrushed job by Brad Starks of Brad Starks Rod and Customs.

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Interior - Continued

There are other touches inside as well. Speaker grille fabric from a vintage guitar amp was used to cover the speaker grilles (the stereo, as well as the shifter,  are hidden). The steering wheel is from a 1940 Ford and hood hinges from an old Ford ware used as storage compartment hold-downs. If the door handles are hard to pin down, that’s because they are new items, provided by Clayton Machine Works.

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Engine, Etc.

The Ranger gets down the road alright too, thanks to 302 ci Ford small-block V8 power, utilizing a March Performance front runner system. Though the pictures don’t fully showcase the amount of custom work done to the engine bay, plenty of detail work was lavished on it, in line with Barone’s concept. Custom valve covers were made with raised portions to conceal the plug wires, and the whole compartment was smoothed and painted, with custom matching fluid caps and other bits fabricated to complete the look. All that effort took years but it paid off, not only in a one-of-a-kind Ranger, but with the honor of being a cover truck again, this time for issue number 01 of Slam’d Mag. Slammed or not, we’d be happy just sitting in that interior.

Click here to see a video featuring Pascal Barone's masterpiece.

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