Say you’re looking for a small pickup truck, minus the pickup bed. It might seem pointless—does a bedless pickup become just a truck? A two-seat oddity?—but if it strikes you as such, you probably don’t live in the commercial realm, where upfitters bolt any number of useful, typically specialized configurations to the chassis behind the truck’s cab. To open up its midsize Ranger pickup to such possibilities, Ford is releasing a new chassis-cab version, sans cargo bed, but only in Europe.
The bedless Ranger is a blank canvas for…whatever a builder would like to do to it. Go ahead, bolt on a flatbed, or an enclosed cargo box, or even a boom. (Ford has helpfully illustrated a few of those options here.) Ford Europe says its Ranger chassis cab, which is based on the global Ranger that differs slightly from the model sold here, comes standard with a diesel engine and four-wheel drive. It also offers all-terrain tires and a locking rear differential, making it an ideal starting point for some kind of awesome adventure camping vehicle. Or just the world’s coolest cherry picker.
Sadly, the Ranger isn’t offered as a chassis cab in America. It was, but Ford says it is dropping the option for 2021 due to customer disinterest. Ford’s larger F-150 offers such a variant and the Ranger’s key competitor, the Chevrolet Colorado, was also recently available with a bed-delete option (since dropped, it appears, as well).
Ford does have this Ranger-sized space additionally covered in America by way of the $32,900 Transit van chassis cab model, a two-seat Transit missing its butt. The Transit chassis cab is priced near the low end of the range, and is also available in “cutaway” form, meaning the backside of the cab is literally open and ready to be mated to unique rear bodywork such as a bus body or camper setup. (The chassis cab model has an enclosed, two-seat cab.) Four-wheel drive isn’t available on the Transit, but a 3.5-liter gas V-6 engine is included, along with a 1o-speed automatic transmission and a 9,070-lb GVWR—notably higher than the overseas Ranger chassis cab’s 7,210-pound rating.
