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A heavier-duty Ranger for Australian farms
After four years of customer research and 500,000 test kilometres, Ford says the Ranger Super Duty brings farmer-driven customisation into the factory, with more towing, payload, and durability built in.
“It’s not a GVM upgrade. The whole chassis is new – we only carried over about five per cent,” he says. “It’s the next level Ranger.” Engineered to a 4.5 tonne GVM and 4.5 tonne braked towing capacity, with an eight-tonne gross combination mass, the vehicle sits at the top end of Australia’s standard passenger car-licence GVM threshold in most states. Ford strengthened the suspension, driveline, hubs, brakes, wheels, and chassis together rather than treating the vehicle as a bolt-on upgrade. Key chan- ges include eight-stud wheels, a larger 10-inch rear differential, and suspension control arms that Welch says are roughly twice the thickness of a Raptor’s. The Super Duty name, used for the first time out- side Ford’s F-Series, was earned through additonal durability and reliability testing. Ford over doubled its usual Ranger test equivalent distance. Ford added additional tests, including repeated runs on Silver Creek test track where a robotic driver was used to expose, identify, and re-test components to remove failure points. “Only once we had proved and demonstrated that this concept could meet a tougher durability
For many farmers and rural operators, a ute rarely stays standard for long. Trays, toolboxes, water tanks, slip-on fire-fighting units, canopies, special- ist bodies, suspension upgrades, and towing gear all add cost, weight, and waiting time. Ford says the Ranger Super Duty grew out of watching customers push standard Rangers in agriculture, forestry, mining, emergency services, and other heavy work. Conversion Development Manager Jeremy Welch spent 18 months on ride-alongs, talking to 40–50 operators under non-disclosure agreements about how their vehicles were used in the paddock and on the road. “The feedback was clear,” Welch says. “They didn’t want a giant American pickup. They wanted Ranger manoeuvrability, but with more payload, more towing, more off road ability and a way to manage weight properly.” Built around heftiness Welch says one of the biggest misconceptions is that Ranger Super Duty is just a Ranger with a gross vehicle mass (GVM) upgrade.
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