With the Ford Ranger selling like hotcakes last month, the Blue Oval believes there is adequate justification to extend the compact truck's production run for yet another year. Thanks to August sales of 7746 units and, according to a report from PickupTrucks.com, Ranger production stands a good chance of continuing through 2012 at Ford's Twin Cities plant. For the first seven months of the year, Rangers were selling at a rate of around 4900 trucks per month, leading to a total of 41,864 units sold so far this year.
With the Cash for Clunkers-led sales success clearing out Ranger inventory, Ford decided to increase production over the next three months. The Twin Cities assembly plant will be on a schedule of five 10-hour days in September, with overtime planned for October and November when the 2010 model takes to the lines.
The current-generation Ranger, which has changed little over the better part of the last decade, is proving to be difficult to kill off. Ford originally intended for Ranger production to end this year, but the timing shifted to the end of 2011, and now to 2012. There remains no official word on the successor to the U.S.-spec Ranger.
Sources: PickupTrucks.com, Truckblog