The new Ford Ranger has been experiencing issues overseas related to its next-generation software and, less frequently, unexpected mechanical issues.
Two high-profile cases emerged in 2023 in which one Australian owner’s new Wildtrak died three times over the course of five months for no apparent reason, with one of these incidents seeing the bakkie slam on its own brakes while going 80km/h, reported A Current Affair.
Another Ranger XLT owner had less severe, but still unwelcome complications.
Weeks after taking ownership he got into his new Ranger one day and it was completely dead, not wanting to switch on the electronics or motor at all. Subsequently, it spent one-a-half months at the repair shop before the owner was notified that it was ready for pickup.
The day after getting it back the Ford displayed the same troubles again, and it was taken to the mechanics once more where it spent the majority of the next few months.
Following these incidents, the Australian arm of Ford admitted in January that it had to fully replace nine Rangers in the six months since it went on sale down under, including those of the two aforementioned customers, wrote The Drive.
Thus far, it seemed that these problems were only present in the Australian Rangers, which are mainly sourced from Thailand.
However, South African customers have now also started complaining about the same difficulties in their Rangers, which are produced on local soil at Ford’s plant in Pretoria.
The most recent example shows a disgruntled owner posting a video on TikTok of his Ranger exhibiting near-identical difficulties to what was seen across the pond.
The bakkie was completely unresponsive and the central infotainment screen black except for a big “Caution” sign.
Fortunately, judging from the comments and replies from the owner below the video, the Ford was uncooperative for only about half an hour before it woke up again, but there was no obvious reason for it to have been problematic in the first place.
TopAuto reached out to Ford South Africa for confirmation on whether it is aware of these issues, what may be the cause of them, and if it has assisted any local owners who have experienced them, but the subsidiary did not respond.
It’s also unclear whether the new Everest as well as the second-generation VW Amarok, which shares a platform and many other equipment with the Ranger, are affected by this.
Nothing new
New vehicles, especially ones that saw this drastic of an upgrade from one generation to the next, tend to experience teething issues when they’re first delivered to the masses, resulting in a small portion of early adopters drawing the short end of the stick.
It’s not easy to build new hardware and software flawlessly, and finding all the faults in them before shipping the vehicle to consumers is even trickier.
Each owner has unique needs and circumstances, too, and subjects the car to conditions that can’t be recreated in a lab by a handful of employees doing stress tests, and one of them is bound to run into a problem that was previously untriggered.
Take, for example, cars from equally-ubiquitous automakers such as BMW, Toyota, and VW.
In 2022, dozens of units of the new BMW iX were recalled around the globe around a year after the SUV’s launch because a battery defect was discovered which could lead to a fire.
Toyota, too, recalled its first electric SUV in the United States due to wheel hub bolts that can “loosen to the point where the wheel can detach from the vehicle,” according to the recall report.
VW’s ID. electric cars have also seen their fair share of software issues, with 21,000 ID.4 crossovers being recalled as recently as February due to problems with the controller modules, reported Ars Technica.
These were all never-before-sold products that took extensive research and development to get to this point, and they all turned out to be imperfect when customers finally got their hands on them.
It doesn’t mean they’re going to have these problems forever, just that they’re not the best version of themselves just yet.
It’s safe to say the Ranger in a year or two will likely no longer have the qualms that it has today, but potential owners should be aware of them nonetheless to put pressure on automakers to get them sorted out sooner rather than later and at minimal cost to the customer.
Keyword: New Ford Ranger experiencing problems overseas – and now in South Africa