Ford Ranger Platinum Long Term Report

Ford Ranger Platinum Long-Term Report

MILEAGE AT START: 1,998 km

MILEAGE NOW: 2,958km

PRICE: R1 187 000

SPECIFICATION

GOOD STUFF: Exceptional overall refinement, comfort and luxury.

BAD STUFF: Diesel consumption can rise quickly when the V6 is worked hard.

It is still early days, but the Ford Ranger Platinum has already made a strong first impression as the next in our long-term garage. If you set aside the unruly, petrol-powered, performance-oriented Ranger Raptor, this Platinum is the pinnacle of the range. 

Where the XL and XLT derivatives lean more heavily towards workhorse duties, the Sport adds only some visual attitude, and the Wildtrak blends lifestyle appeal with off-road versatility, the Platinum takes the Ranger into a distinctly more luxurious direction. It is the model Ford has positioned as the fully loaded, ‘premium’ Ranger, with the bells and whistles to match.

That differentiation begins on the outside. The Platinum receives its own silk-chrome grille and badging, 20-inch machined alloy wheels, Matrix LED headlamps, colour-coded exterior detailing and roof rails. Our vehicle also has the electrically powered roller shutter over the load bin, allowing the load area to be opened or secured at the touch of a button either on the interior or from the bin itself. The adjustable sports hoop can be moved to work with the roof rails when carrying longer items, adding a useful layer of versatility to the polished appearance, or, if you’re into this sort of thing, these hoops can be adjusted simply to be different. 

The cabin is where the Platinum most clearly separates itself from the rest of the mainstream Ranger range. It features quilted premium leather upholstery, heated and ventilated front seats with 10-way electric adjustment and memory, a heated steering wheel, soft-touch trim, a Black Maple-style dashboard and door inserts, ambient lighting and Platinum-specific detailing. The leather and stitched surfaces extend across the dashboard, door inlays and armrests. This interior truly makes the Platinum feel closer to that of a premium SUV than a bakkie, and it’s a definitive example of how far this segment has come. The steering is marvellously soft – I feel strange even saying that. 

The technology specification is equally generous. A 12.4-inch digital instrument cluster sits ahead of the driver, while the portrait-format 12-inch central touchscreen provides wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. There is also wireless phone charging, a 360-degree camera, a 10-speaker Bang & Olufsen audio system and Pro Trailer Back-up Assist with Trailer Reverse Guidance. These features sit alongside the Platinum’s comprehensive driver-assistance package, which includes adaptive cruise control with stop and go and lane-centering. Can you see where I’m going here? This is the Ranger with everything thrown at it, but simply throwing features into a car doesn’t necessarily translate into an excellent product. That part is told in the way it drives and so far, this Ranger is striking the right chords. 

The Platinum is beautifully smooth, with exceptional suppression of noise, vibration and harshness, while its on-road comfort is excellent. Even on decent gravel roads, the ride remains remarkably composed and refined. As the opening chapter of our latest long-term test, the Platinum could hardly be more different from our previous Ranger, which was a comparatively basic XLT. In many respects, this vehicle is everything the XLT was not: plush, heavily equipped and designed to make everyday driving feel effortless. It has practical touches too. The movable sports hoop at the rear is easy to operate and can be aligned with the roof rails when carrying longer items such as skis, a kayak or other bulky equipment. It looks like a clever and versatile system, although at this stage that judgement remains theoretical. Over the coming months, we will use it properly and find out whether it is as useful in practice as it appears to be on paper.

That leads us to the central question for this long-term test: can a Ranger be smooth and tough at the same time? The Platinum has already demonstrated that a bakkie can be impressively refined, but refinement alone is not enough. A bakkie must still work hard, carry loads and cope with rough conditions. Those are the qualities we intend to examine as the kilometres accumulate.

So far, life has been relatively easy. The Ranger has completed the daily trudge through Johannesburg traffic and carried a few items for the business, but we have not yet pushed it close to its limits. In this early running, it has nevertheless been a pleasure to live with. Fuel consumption currently sits at a respectable 10.6l/100km, and the Platinum is an excellent highway cruiser. Its driver-assistance systems are easy to understand and use, while the Apple CarPlay gremlins experienced in the previous-generation vehicle appear to have been improved significantly.

The Ranger has also received a handful of subtle aesthetic updates earlier this year, although its underlying character remains the important, unchanged part of the package. For now, the Platinum feels special: it is quiet, comfortable, sophisticated and effortless to drive. Next month, the Platinum will face its first proper long-distance assignment when we load the family and hiking gear for a holiday in the Drakensberg. The journey should give us a much clearer picture of its open-road comfort, fuel consumption, luggage-carrying ability and real-world practicality when travelling with a full complement of passengers. 

MILEAGE AT START: 1,998km

MILEAGE NOW: 4,917km

PRICE: R1 187 000

SPECIFICATION

GOOD STUFF: Practical family car ability. Smooth on the open road.

BAD STUFF: Diesel price vs consumption isn’t so obvious any more.

Into our second month with the Ford Ranger Platinum, the double cab lifestyle bakkie has been called upon to see how much of that ‘lifestyle’ it can handle in the form of our family’s annual road trip to the Drakensberg. As with changing families that go through seasons of life, cars like the Ranger need to be able to adapt to the application.

The N3 was strangely quiet as we made our way southeast towards the ‘Berg. The route was as simple as ever. The N3 highway until the Winterton/Colenso offramp, some 390km from Jozi, and then a very short stretch into Winterton before heading onto the R74 towards Cathkin Park. The highway stretch only made our previous comments regarding the Ranger’s refinement more solidified. I opted to use adaptive cruise control most of the way, nudging the speed limits with casual calm the whole way.

It was time to enjoy some of the premium features of this range-topping Platinum. The heated seats and steering came to work without complaint, and we found a new way to pass time as a family, listening to an audiobook on the Audible app, fully controlled via the Apple CarPlay system. Michael Morpurgo isn’t too bad a storyteller.

The highway was easy as ever. No cops, no stops, no traffic and no roadworks either. The only stops were the myriad toll gates along the route, but these were nothing more than short inconveniences, really. The Ranger Platinum is silent at highway speeds, and in terms of overall consumption, we exited the N3 sitting at 9.7l/100km. That is with a family of five with an entire load bin packed to the hilt…air fryer included, of course.

Then things changed. The road from here towards Winterton is appalling. It was bad last year, but this is the worst I’ve seen it. Large craters have replaced sections of actual road, while there are clear signs that motorists have become sufficiently gatvol and attempted patchwork repairs themselves. Unfortunately, some of the DIY fixes aren’t much better. In other places, the municipality appears to have started repairs, but it’s very much a work in progress.

Suddenly, the Ranger isn’t quite such a relaxing place to be. I’m grateful we’re in a double cab bakkie, sure, but I’m slightly less grateful that it isn’t a Raptor. The axles take a beating, and there’s a very clear reminder here of just how absorbent that Fox suspension is on Ford’s desert-running hero. Nonetheless, we’re doing considerably better than the MPV behind us, whose average speed has almost ground to a halt.

Eventually, we made it through and settled into a week of quality family time at the resort. This is where the Ranger gets another chance to prove why the double cab has effectively become South Africa’s alternative family SUV. Its ability to swallow enormous amounts of stuff is fantastic, and the electronic load-bin lid is particularly useful. It offers genuine peace of mind because everything back there is properly covered and secured.

If this is the sort of lifestyle you’re living, the additional money you spend on the Platinum starts to make sense. It also boasts Ford’s factory-fitted sports hoop with integrated loops for carrying longer items such as canoes. I’ve noticed a few people driving around with these loops permanently deployed and the sports bars sitting right at the rear because, apparently, it looks cool. I don’t know about that. But if you actually need the system for its intended purpose, it’s very easy to use. Golf bags, clothing, electronics, heaters and all manner of family paraphernalia barely troubled the available space in the back of the Ranger. There are compromises, though. If you need additional height, the electronic lid naturally limits you, while its motor housing also consumes a small amount of space at the front of the load bin.

Our journey home was far more typical of an N3 drive between KZN and Johannesburg. The trucks were back, the cops were out in force, and the whole affair was considerably more labourious. Once again, though, it was no sweat for the Platinum. Fuel consumption had climbed to 10.6l/100km by the time we hit Johannesburg and its Friday afternoon traffic, but all things considered, that’s not bad for a 184kW, 600Nm V6 turbodiesel hauling five people around the country. But here’s where things get interesting…

Cost the journey against the Ranger’s 80-litre tank and the distance between fuel stops, and running the Platinum wasn’t dramatically cheaper than doing a similar trip in the Ranger Raptor. The diesel should have the obvious advantage, but the current price relationship between diesel and petrol has eroded some of that benefit. And that’s a shame, because fuel economy has traditionally been one of the strongest arguments for choosing the diesel. At 10.6l/100km, the Platinum itself isn’t really doing anything wrong, as much as the sums surrounding it have simply changed.

Still, this trip proved something arguably more important about the Platinum. For something that remains, fundamentally, a bakkie, it slips remarkably easily into the role of premium family holiday car. It swallowed everything we threw at it, covered hundreds of highway kilometres in near silence, dealt with some truly shocking roads and required very little compromise from the five people inside it. The ‘lifestyle’ part of the Ranger Platinum equation, then, genuinely works. In fact, the Platinum adapted to our family holiday rather better than some of us adapted to hiking the Drakensberg mountains in the middle of winter.