Joined
·
556 Posts

For more on this story, Ford Weighing Return to Small Pickup Truck Market and much, much more please visit AutoGuide.com.The small pickup truck market may be getting another new competitor from Detroit.
Ford is considering bringing a small pickup truck back to the market according to Doug Scott, Ford ‘s truck marketing manager. ”We’re looking at it,” Scott told USA Today. “We think we could sell a compact truck that’s more like the size of the old Ranger, that gets six or eight more miles per gallon (than a full-size truck), is $5,000 or $6,000 less, and that we could build in the U.S. to avoid the tariff on imported trucks,” he said.
This new Ford pickup wouldn’t be a direct competitor to the Toyota Tacoma or the newly introduced Chevy Colorado and GMC Canyon. Instead, it would be a true compact pickup truck which would use a unibody frame and be smaller than the current Ranger which is on sale in global markets.
For a small truck to work, it must be considerably smaller than a half-ton in Scott’s view, which is why the current Ford Ranger sold in other markets would not work in the U.S.
Update: We asked Ford Truck Communications Manager Mike Levine in an E-mail if Ford was considering a return to the small pickup truck market. He answered, “No. We are continuing to invest in and expand our F-Series lineup for the North American market and are confident that our new F-Series addresses the needs of the U.S. pickup buyer. Additionally, our Transit Connect lineup addresses the needs of buyers looking for utility in a compact size.”