Over in the United States, the mid-size segment has a pickup truck for everyone. If you’re after an all-rounder, then the Ranger is pretty much up your alley. Unibody? The Honda Ridgeline. Off-road capability and coolness, however, are the specialties of the Gladiator.
The question is, what was Ford thinking when the engineers chose a four-cylinder turbo over a six-cylinder and natural aspiration? For starters, the 2.3-liter EcoBoost with the 10-speed automatic transmission is a match made in heaven. Secondly, a turbocharged engine delivers the goods a little differently from the Pentastar and i-VTEC V6 mills.
Now let’s talk price points. The Ranger is the most affordable of the three at $24,410 excluding destination charge. Honda’s pickup is the most expensive at $33,900 from the get-go while Jeep asks $33,545 for the mid-sized workhorse with Wrangler styling.
The Fast Lane Truck got hold of the Ranger, Ridgeline, and Gladiator, and in terms of drag racing, the Blue Oval has the upper hand. When it comes to the Honda versus the Jeep, it’s the Japanese truck that has the legs in this scenario. As for zero-to-60-mph times, the Ranger leads the charts with 7.67 seconds as opposed to 8.21 and 10.25 seconds.
Real-world fuel economy is another metric The Fast Lane Truck is interested in, and guess what? The Ridgeline came up on top with 27.5 miles to the gallon, the Ranger achieved 26.7, and the Gladiator is trailing behind with 20.6 mpg for obvious reasons.
Even though the Honda and Jeep feature 3.5 and 3.6 liters of displacement as well as two additional cylinders, Ford can do better as far as torque is concerned. The Ranger is rated at 310 pound-feet at the crankshaft as opposed to 262 for the Ridgeline and 265 for the Gladiator.
Better still, the 10-speed automatic transmission makes the most out of the available torque, and that also applies to the 2.0-liter EcoBlue bi-turbo diesel we’ve tested last year in the European specification of the Ranger Raptor.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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