Ford Ranger 2.0 EcoBlue Stormtrak 2022 UK review

Ford is seeing off its hard-working pick-up truck with four special editions, including this premium-minded one

What is it?

Even in its 12th and final full year on sale, the P375-generation Ford Ranger remained by far Britain’s favourite pick-up truck.

In a stupendous year for Ford Commercial Vehicles (in which the Transit Custom was the best-selling LCV, outselling even the best-selling car, the Vauxhall Corsa, and followed by its larger Transit sibling), 17,830 new Rangers took 42% of the pick-up market. That’s pretty impressive, even if the Ranger no longer has to worry about the Mitsubishi L200, Nissan Navara or Volkswagen Amarok, as these have all been taken off sale in recent years.

Some of these Rangers would have been in the four special guises that Ford has introduced to celebrate the end of the P375 line: the MS-RT Limited Edition, Raptor Special Edition, Stormtrak and Wolftrak, all of which are still available to order.

In Ford’s words, the Wolftrak is “an intrepid, rugged pick-up designed around the needs of customers who work outdoors and desire commanding off-road performance without compromising comfort and desirability”. Meanwhile the Stormtrak – which we’re testing here – is “a premium truck offering distinctive styling and premium features for customers who value outstanding capability and a generous specification to support their active work and lifestyle needs”.

In our words, the Wolftrak is essentially the basic Ranger XLT with a unique tubular bar for holding in loads and hosting accessories; special grey paint; a matt-black grille; extra underbody cladding; 17in alloy wheels; and plastic side steps. The Stormtrak is essentially the plusher, double-cab Wildtrak with special red paint; red grille inserts, LED headlights; extra underbody cladding; a ‘sports hoop’; a black rear bumper; body stickers; and a liner, divider and Ford’s new Power Roller Shutter for the load bed.

What's it like?

Apart from the reasonable pricing and practical advantages of buying an LCV from Ford in the UK, one of the major reasons for the Ranger’s continued success over the past decade must surely have been the way it drives.

Never has “it drives like a truck” sounded less of an insult. You can convince yourself that the Ranger is a big SUV – an old-school 4×4 one, that is – such is the quality of the ride and handling. It never feels agricultural like, say, the Ssangyong Musso. The Ranger is a Ford and it tries hard to make you remember that.

It’s admittedly less so when you’re driving with the load bed entirely empty, putting the weight distribution off kilter so making it a bit bouncier and more tail happy, but there’s obviously an easy solution to that.

The engine is unsurprisingly gruff and noisy as it’s a commercial diesel lump, but it’s pretty powerful when you’re unladen. Indeed, it’s the same 2.0-litre EcoBlue four-pot as used by the performance-focused Raptor, making 210bhp and 369lb ft of torque. It comes as standard mated to a 10-speed automatic gearbox, which happily slushes through ratios to give you the optimum torque.

You can also manually lock the Ranger into low- or high-ratio four-wheel drive, the latter giving you greater on-road stability or off-road capability in exchange for extra drivetrain noise and reduced fuel economy (which in normal circumstances is about 30mpg).

Although we were unable to test the Stormtrak properly off road, we know from experience that the Ranger is pretty hard to stump, and it certainly had no problem with the mud-slathered lanes that we encountered across the downland and weald of Sussex in the bleak mid-winter.

Such assured brawniness means the Stormtrak can take a payload of up to 1000kg and tow a braked trailer of up to 3500kg. And that payload is easy to secure, thanks to myriad hitching points all around the load bed for your straps and ropes, including the movable ones on the clever rail running along the side walls.

The tough plastic liner provides protection against scratching the handsome red paint, too, although when securing a washing machine I noted that the strip of exposed body between the top of the bed’s back wall and the bottom of the cab’s rear window looked vulnerable.

Inside the double-length cab, you find a similar amount of space as you would in the Ford Focus, with good head and leg room for adults. It looks extra snazzy in Stormtrak spec, thanks to its exclusive seats upholstered in leather from the Raptor and ‘technical fabric’.

The dashboard is where the leap from this Ranger to the next will be most obvious, because it’s really starting to look its age now, with its small embedded touchscreen and analogue instrument dials. However, that doesn’t mean it’s bad to use. The software is up to date, being intuitive and loaded with all of the features you would expect; while the chunky physical controls for the air-con actually look to be in a much less accessible location in the forthcoming Ranger, due to the ‘requirement’ of a portrait-orientated laptop-sized screen.

Technical specs

Model tested: Ford Ranger 2.0 EcoBlue Stormtrak

Price: £34,886 (excluding VAT)

Price as tested: £34,886 (excluding VAT)

Engine: 4 cyls in line, 1996cc, twin-turbocharged, diesel

Transmission: 10-spd automatic

Driveline layout: Front engine, four-wheel drive

Model tested: Ford Ranger 2.0 EcoBlue Stormtrak

Price: £34,886 (excluding VAT)

View all specs and rivals

Price as tested: £34,886 (excluding VAT)

Engine: 4 cyls in line, 1996cc, twin-turbocharged, diesel

Transmission: 10-spd automatic

Driveline layout: Front engine, four-wheel drive

Power: 210bhp at 3500rpm

Torque: 369lb ft at 1750-2000rpm

0-62mph: 9.0sec

Top speed: 112mph

Kerb weight (DIN): 2246kg

Fuel economy: 30.7mpg

CO2: 241g/km

BIK tax band: Flat rate