2022 Ford Ranger Splash Review: One Last Cannonball Before the Redesign

Auto123 reviews the 2022 Ford Ranger (Lariat Splash version).

In the 60s and 70s, Ford earned itself the nickname Wagon Master because it dominated the wagon market. Nowadays, you could say the American manufacturer is the Pickup Master, dominating sales charts with its F-150 and offering a truck to offer to American consumers in every pickup segment, from the small Maverick for compacts to the large F-450 Super Duty, able to tow up to 24,200 lb!

However, if there's one segment where Ford hasn't managed to beat out the competition, it's the mid-size pickup category; there, its popular Ranger comes in second behind the Toyota Tacoma. In the U.S., Ford lags notably behind Toyota (in 2021 sales of the Tacoma exceeded 252,000 units while those of the Ranger sat at 94,000); in Canada, the race is tighter with 11,201 Rangers sold in Canada in 2021, compared to 14,300 Tacomas.

The figures for 2022 will be distorted somewhat by supply-chain issues, but the fighting is just as fierce. And so, the American manufacturer has just launched an all-new available version of the 2022 Ranger, the Splash. The context, however, is that Ford is also planning a new edition of the Ranger in 2023, which gets redesigned lines that make the truck looks more like the big F-150 than ever. And in fact, this redesign is already available in some parts of the world including South Africa and Australia, where the Ranger name is synonymous with great commercial success.

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