You already know that Ford's newly Raptorised Ranger bakkies are equipped with powerful bi-turbo 2.0 litre diesel powerplants. These will endow them with 157kW and 500Nm which is more than enough shunt and grunt to move the enamoured masses. That's great and all but you have to wait till next year before you can actually buy one. There is some great news in the interim however and that's the fact that the powerplant at their hearts will be built at Struandale, PE in the Eastern Cape while the double-cabs themselves are beinig built in Silverton, Pretoria. This after a 3 billion Rand investment into the expansion of Ford SA’s production capabilities as announced last November.
But wait there's more
Perhaps the bigger news is the fact that this new doubley-blown 4-pot motor will be built for eight different derivatives and for use across other models in the Ford stable, including front wheel driven vehicles like their Transit vans. It's also worth noting that it isn't meant to replace the 3.2l turbodiesel already doing service in other Ford products. Overall assembly capacity now grows from 115,000 engines to 130,000 per annum and the current Duratorq TDCi, itself tuned to 22 variants for export to European markets (with 56 variants in total), used in Everests and Rangers, grows in assembly capacity from 254,000 machines component sets to 280,000. These are all great indicators of a healthy engineering automotive industry – well done Ford and the folks in Port Elizabeth. Production of the new engine officially begins in the last quarter of 2018.
According to Ford themselves “The Ford Ranger Raptor is not about the engine.” Well in Mzansi, we're poised to disagree.
