A one-off Heritage Ford Ranger

 

 

 

At an intimate function at the Automobilia Art  store in the newly-refurbished Fourways Mall in Johannesburg this week, a very special one-off Ford Ranger Wildtrak was unveiled to select members of the public and media.

The so-called BuiltFordTough Heritage Ford Ranger Wildtrak was built and specially painted  at Ford Motor Company Southern Africa’s plant at Silverton, near Pretoria, to commemorate Heritage Month in September, and the Ranger’s place in South African history as one of the most successful vehicles ever produced in South Africa.

The choice of a Ford Ranger Wildtrak was appropriate, as it is ranked in the top-10 most searched models in South Africa, according as revealed in our  2019 AutoTrader Car industry Report.

Painted by the Ford paint shop team in Silverton

The one-off vehicle was painted by a team from the Ford paint shop in Silverton, to celebrate the unique cultural diversity of South African history. The paint shop team used a combination of paint brushes, spray guns and some 35 litres of automotive paint. It took a team of five artists, three sprayers and one assembler a total of 650 hours to produce this piece of mobile art, which will be on display at Automobilia Art in the Fourways Mall for the next three weeks.

National flag a strong theme

The national flag is a strong  theme of the Heritage Ranger, which also features Ndebele tribal art, and a map of South Africa depicting the two main Ford plants in Port Elizabeth and Silverton. Other images depict San rock art, and environmental themes such as South Africa’s national flower, the protea. The famous pooitjie braai implement is also honoured!

The final process was the protection of  the artwork with three layers of clear coat. The paint was also baked at the Ford plant between applications.

The original Fords produced in South Africa were black.

The Heritage Ranger celebrates almost  a century of car production by Ford in South Africa. The first Fords to be assembled in South Africa were the famous Model Ts, and these were competed in February 1924 at a converted wool shed in Port Elizabeth.

Henry Ford, the famous car maker who invented the motor car assembly line, had decreed at a certain stage in Ford Model T production that “you can have the Model T in any colour you like, as long as it was black.” The reason for that was that black paint was cheap, and Ford was producing Model Ts so quickly in Michigan, USA in those days, that black was the only paint colour that could dry fast enough.

However, very early Model Ts and the ones produced in the final years of Model T production were in fact produced in a variety of colours.

1924 and 2019 Ford Production numbers

In that first year of South African  car assembly, Ford South Africa produced Model Ts at the rate of 10 cars a day, and total production numbers for 1924 were 1 446 cars. In 1926 Ford’s new South African plant produced the first pick-up version of the Model T.

Fast forward to 2019 and Ford’s South African operation produces 720 vehicles each day – at the rate of about one vehicle every 94 seconds, or 33 an hour. More than half a million of the current-generation Ford Rangers have been built in Silverton since 2010.

 

Ford’s engine plant in Port Elizabeth

 

In addition, Ford’s engine plant in Port Elizabeth now has the capacity to produce 250 000  fully-assembled engines each year for supply to Ford assembly plants all over the world. The Ford engine plant also produces some 280 000 machined engine component kits. The all-new Bi Turbo and Single Turbo Ranger diesel engines are produced in Port Elizabeth, as well as the 3,2-litre diesel.

The latest versions of the Ford Ranger with the new Bi Turbo and Single Turbo engines, as well as a 10-speed automatic gearbox, were introduced here a few months ago. You can read our First Drive Impression: Ford unveils revised Ranger – now with Bi-Turbo technology.

 

Ford’s  Ranger ranks amongst the best in “attention economy”

 

Referring to the data in the 2019 AutoTrader Car Industry Report, Conrad Groenewald. Director of Marketing Sales and Service at Ford Motor Company Southern Africa noted the Ranger’s high profile in on-line searches for car brands and models.

“The data showed that Ford ranked sixth in the top 10 most searched brands, with the Ranger ranking fifth in the top 10 most searched models, and the range-topping Wildtrak ranking seventh in the top 10 most searched variants,” says Groenwald.

. “The Ranger ranked second in the top five most searched double cabs, and third in the top five most searched single cabs. Rangers made up almost 13 percent, or the third-highest percentage split of sales, of all vehicles listed on AutoTrader over the past year.”

You can search here for just under 3 000 Ford Rangers for sale in our new and used cars for sale listings.

“We know South Africans love their ‘bakkies’, and this just proves how much they love our Ranger,” adds Groenewald. “Even though the local used car market dwarfs the new car market, and two-thirds of our business is now focussed on the export market, understanding the attention economy of local buyers can play a significant role when building new car strategies – not just for us as OEMs, but small or large dealerships, and groups selling either used or new cars.”

 

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