The Empire strikes back Wildtrak hits new highs

Motoring

For the past couple of years, the South African bakkie landscape has felt a bit like a territory under siege. We have watched from the ramparts as aggressive, value-packed Chinese brands marched into our local territory, offering heavily specced utility vehicles at prices that made Detroit and Tokyo sweat.

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The local market lapped them up, and who could blame them? In an economic climate as unforgiving as ours, a corporate business asset must justify every single cent on the balance sheet.

But if you thought the legacy players were going to lie down and cede the kingdom, think again. The blue oval has just launched a devastating counter-offensive. I’ve been spending some quality time behind the wheel of the blistering new Ford Ranger Wildtrak 2.3 EcoBoost, and I am here to tell you that the Empire has struck right back.

This isn't just another trim level or a superficial sticker exercise. By dropping the high-performance four-cylinder heart of a Mustang into the country’s favorite workhorse and configuration-engineering it specifically for smart utility, Ford has created what I believe is the most compelling B2B motoring package of the decade.

Let’s talk numbers first, because in business, metrics are everything. Nestled under the sculpted hood is the 2.3-litre EcoBoost petrol turbo engine. It punches out a massive 222 kW of power and a bruising 500 Nm of torque. To put that into perspective, this is officially the second fastest fossil-fuel bakkie currently on sale in South Africa.

When you put your boots into it, this truck is absolutely pulsating. The single turbo features a sophisticated twin-scroll system that ensures power delivery is instantaneous, linear, and utterly relentless. It accelerates up hills in double-quick time, making overtaking or moving heavy cargo an absolute breeze for regional logistics operators.

Yet, because it is a modern four-cylinder layout rather than

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a thirsty V6, it rewards a sensible driving style with shocking efficiency.

When driving slowly on the highway, it is possible to extract a highly respectable 8.0 L/100 km. Even when opening it up to let the engine sing during spirited driving, it settled around 12.7 L/100 km. Compare that to the flagship Raptor V6, which easily guzzles closer to 16 or 20 litres under a heavy right foot, and the total cost of ownership argument swings wildly in the Wildtrak's favor.

When I first took delivery of this vehicle and realized it was a 4x2 configuration sending all that immense power straight to the rear tires, I’ll admit I scratched my head. Why build a performance truck without all-wheel traction?

But a week in the real world completely changed my mind. Unless your corporate operations require traversing deep desert sand dunes or climbing grade-five rocky mountain passes, a 4x4 system is often just expensive, heavy dead-weight. By omitting the front differential and transfer case, Ford has shed immense weight, sharpening the handling and boosting fuel economy.

Out on the tarmac and gravel roads, this machine feels incredibly planted. The traction control system is a masterclass in calibration. Despite the immense power on tap, it is remarkably difficult to spin the wheels because it grips beautifully. Should you find yourself in a sticky situation on a slippery construction site or a muddy agricultural track, the onboard electronic rear differential lock is more than capable of pulling you through safely.

Step inside the cabin, and it becomes immediately apparent that Ford has engineered this vehicle with extreme care. It avoids the overly digitized, frustrating traps of modern car design. There are physical buttons exactly where your fingers expect them to be, meaning they have put a lot of thought into the interior layout. The cabin is an incredibly nice place to be, feeling well made, solid, and quiet.

For the modern mobile executive or logistics manager, it functions flawlessly as a mobile office. It features a native, built-in GPS system that does not rely on cellular signal or your phone's data connection. Up on the roof console, a row of pre-wired auxiliary switches sits ready to control aftermarket spot-lights, winches, or specialized equipment without splicing into the main wiring harness.

Furthermore, the clever, folding roof and load-bed rail bars can be adjusted instantly to secure ladders, pipes, or weekend surfboards with equal ease. The load bay is wide and commodious, and the tailgate features electronic assistance.

Down below, the truck rides on 17-inch alloy rims wrapped in chunky Goodyear Wrangler Territory 225/65 tyres. This setup offers a taller, more generous sidewall than standard road bakkies. The result is that speed humps vanish into thin air, and pothole-riddled provincial roads are dispatched with absolute aplomb.

The real kicker here, the metric that will make corporate procurement officers sit up and take notice, is the price. Coming in at just under R800,000, this Wildtrak presents a monumental price advantage over its stablemate, the Raptor.

The Raptor is an incredible engineering showcase, but it is well over a million Rand now, and let’s be honest because a tiny fraction of owners actually use its long-travel desert-racing suspension for its intended purpose. If what your business needs is a fast, robust, highly reliable, and prestigious vehicle to cover vast distances across South Africa's road network, the Raptor is overkill and thirsty.

The Wildtrak gives you most of that performance theatre while saving your company roughly R300,000 up front. Furthermore, because it utilizes a highly tunable turbocharged engine platform, any owner looking for a bit more muscle down the line can easily deploy a mild aftermarket software tune and a free-flow exhaust to push output safely close to 250 kW.

It is rare that a vehicle surprises me this thoroughly. Ford has taken a look at the hyper-competitive market, listened to the needs of operators who want premium performance without the exorbitant running costs of a large-displacement engine, and executed a flawless play.

It behaves like an executive cruiser in the city, an unstoppable freight-train on provincial highways, and an absolute honey on gravel roads. It has forced a premium brand to price themselves fiercely competitively against incoming market rivals, and the commercial consumer is the ultimate winner.

I don’t award high scores lightly these days, but this machine has thoroughly earned a spectacular 9 out of 10 on our rigorous rating scale. If you are looking to upgrade your executive fleet or inject some serious capability into your business operations this year, look no further. The king is back on his throne.