2024 Ford Ranger Review: Substance Lacking Style

The verdict: The new 2024 Ford Ranger is a tough little truck that doubles down on useful features, particularly for towing, storage and working out of the bed. Less impressive is the interior, though, which leaves a bit to be desired.

Versus the competition: The Ranger starts at a slightly higher price than all but the Jeep Gladiator and GMC Canyon out of its mid-size, body-on-frame competition, and others in its class have nicer, more intuitively laid-out interiors. However, the Ranger has the most innovative trailer backup system I’ve used to date. If the mere mention of backing a trailer around a corner makes you start to sweat, this may be the pickup for you.

Few things strike as much fear into the hearts of weekend warriors everywhere as backing up a trailer when you don’t tow on a routine basis. Fortunately, Ford has our back with the 2024 Ranger, which boasts a host of functional upgrades that includes the most versatile trailer backup system I’ve used in a truck to date. Not everything is sunshine and undented RVs, however — I found the Ranger’s interior a step behind in quality compared to its peers and its infotainment system distracting to use while driving.

Is it worth it for up to 7,500 pounds of tow capacity that the truck can guide around a corner for you, though? Maybe, provided you’ve got the kinds of big toys to tow a few times a year.

Related: 2024 Ford Ranger, Ranger Raptor Up Close: All in the Family

Just the Right Size

The new Ranger is only available as a four-door crew cab (in Ford speak: Super Crew) with a 5-foot-long bed for now, and it’s a pretty versatile package. Ranger Chief Program Engineer Juan De Pena confirmed at the media drive I attended (per Cars.com’s ethics policy, we pay for all travel and lodging at such manufacturer-sponsored events) that this was in response to most customers choosing that combo already, although Ford made some tweaks to make it a more usable package.

The pickup’s new fully boxed steel frame has a 2-inch-wider track and a 2-inch-longer wheelbase, and the rear dampers are mounted outboard of the frame for improved stability even when the bed is empty. That wider track also means you can now fit a full 4-foot-wide sheet of plywood between the wheel arches in the bed, and larger engines can fit in the engine bay with better airflow. Move over, Pontiac — the new Ranger gets to claim “wider is better” now.

These few extra inches aren’t too much to kill the Ranger’s main appeal, keeping it in that sweet spot where it’s just big enough to tow a car, boat or small RV, but still small enough to live with in city traffic. Turning around on a tight mountain road is just a one-point turn in the Ranger, but it would have been a multiple-point turn in a full-size truck like Ford’s F-150. It also handles curvy mountain roads with confidence, although the Ranger’s bouncy ride over bumps when unladen will give away that you’re still in a body-on-frame truck. It isn’t too jarring, but I’m curious how it would ride with more weight in the bed or with a heavier trailer attached.

It’s most at home on the freeway, where the Ranger is downright comfortable gliding along at highway speeds. I wish there was a bit more feedback in the pedals, as stopping for heavy traffic takes more pressure than expected given how soft the pedal is at first press. Its steering feel is also light but communicates what’s happening on-road well enough. While we didn’t get to off-road the standard Ranger (Ranger Raptor review coming soon!), this lighter steering feel seems like it would keep your fatigue down when crawling on rocks or mud.

Our test pickup had the standard turbo 2.3-liter EcoBoost four-cylinder mated to a 10-speed automatic transmission. This engine sits farther back in the engine bay with quite a lot of space around it, which is good news if you want to work on it yourself. This base engine’s 270 horsepower and 310 pounds-feet of torque are properly peppy when you mash the throttle, and shifts are smooth and hardly noticeable unless you floor it. While it’s noticeably slower when merging onto the freeway, going uphill with a small camper trailer attached, it still has enough power to get out of its own way. A more powerful 315-hp, 2.7-liter EcoBoost V-6 that generates 400 pounds-feet of torque will also be available for the non-Raptor Ranger starting in the summer, but we didn’t get to test it.

More Practical Than Ever

As someone who put a license plate on her racecar to avoid towing it in the city, I would like to nominate myself for president of the Trailer Haters Club. I will tow my toys, but I do it out of necessity, not because I particularly enjoy it — and I know I’m not the only person like this. As such, there’s one option on the new Ranger that really speaks to me: Pro Trailer Backup Assist.

With the push of a button atop an easy-to-reach dial on the center console, the Pro Trailer Backup Assist system takes over, allowing you to control the direction of your trailer by turning that dial. A rear-facing camera view and 360-degree overhead view appear on the center infotainment screen. All you have to do is put the Ranger in Reverse and turn the dial to steer your trailer backwards. The truck takes over the steering wheel, which will wobble back and forth as it keeps your trailer traveling smoothly. The line on the 360-degree view shows the direction it will steer your trailer, which you can adjust as you’re in motion. You can still use the brakes to slow down as you move where you want, and the system isn’t hard to reactivate if you need to pull forward and straighten up.

Given that most other trailer backup assist systems — if offered at all — are only available in larger trucks and help keep trailers straight in Reverse, Ford’s system for the new Ranger feels revolutionary. Providing an easy way to place a trailer exactly where I want it, even if it’s around a corner, takes care of my least favorite task that I put up with in order to play with racecars. It’s incredible.

As for payload, the new Ranger can haul up to 1,805 pounds when properly equipped. Four-wheel-drive functions are located atop the same tow-control dial if your truck is equipped with it (rear-wheel drive is standard on most trims), and there’s a separate physical controller for trailer brakes. The Ranger’s blind spot monitor can also be set up to monitor the space beside your trailer, as well, which is also useful when towing on busy roads.

This isn’t the only practical option offered for 2024, either. The Ranger also has a nice step in front of the bumper for accessing the bed more easily. All 5-foot-4 of me found this step easy to use, and I appreciated that this wasn’t a fold-out corner step that might be easy to rip off on a trail.

Ford set up the Ranger’s bed to be a convenient workspace, complete with a tailgate ruler, two holes for C-clamps, a bottle opener on the tailgate edge, a 12-volt outlet and a 400-watt household power outlet in the bed, as well as attachment points for accessories galore atop the bed sides. Inside, there’s under-seat storage below the second row of seats and a new second glove box above the main one that could easily hold a couple of giant burritos. The rear seats can also fold flat should you need to haul something flat inside.

Legroom in the rear isn’t too bad by mid-size pickup truck standards, either. Your tallest friends may complain about a lack of legroom, but I found it to be adequate — and likely livable if you plan on using the Ranger to haul around a small family.

Weaker on the Inside

While Ford knocked the practicality of the new Ranger out of the park, other aspects inside leave a bit to be desired. The truck I spent the most time driving was a Lariat — the Ranger’s top trim that includes more luxe finishes and features. Some of its finishes felt more like they came from a work truck than a nice one, however.

The leather on the steering wheel was somewhat rough to the touch; a couple of trim pieces weren’t aligned very well; and the plastic on the center console felt rough and easy to scratch. Given that the Lariat tends to be used as a nicer daily driver, it was surprising not to see a smoother, more durable-feeling panel around the cupholders, which tend to get banged around by all manner of keys, cups and other small items like tools or toys. Lariat versions of other Ford trucks I’ve tested felt nicer than this one, and this Ranger was still a $47,370 truck as tested (including options and destination fees). Higher trims of competitors are simply nicer places to sit.

The new Ranger’s worst sin, however, is its vertically oriented center touchscreen, which has a user interface that was distracting to use. A 10.1-inch screen is standard, but our main test truck featured the slightly larger 12-inch screen — and I still found it distracting to use. The lower part of its screen is taken up by climate controls, many of which are identical to physical ones below. I would rather have all climate controls as physical ones and leave that part of the touchscreen configurable for other functions.

The heated steering wheel control is hidden under the same onscreen button as the heated seats, so adjusting either function requires at least two clicks and a look away from the road to operate. I much prefer interiors like the Nissan Frontier’s that keep these cold-weather controls as physical buttons or switches because you don’t have to worry about wearing screen-friendly gloves or mittens to use them.

Too many of the tall touchscreen’s controls are on buttons that are too small to see without glancing down from the road. Onscreen buttons for the main functions of the touchscreen — things like the stereo and navigation that you tend to flip back and forth between — are tiny circles. Confusingly, there are two orange buttons for the stereo: one for radio and one for Bluetooth connection. Maybe you’ll develop muscle memory to hit the right one over time, but the circular buttons were so small and hard to hit out of the corner of my eye, it was a significant distraction when I wanted to swap between the radio and navigation.

I wished I could replace the redundant climate controls with controls for the radio at the bottom of the screen so I wouldn’t have to look away from the road as much. There are still basic functions on the steering wheel for the radio and other controls, but more granular information (such as station-by-station tuning or an overview of where a route is going) is on the touchscreen, not in the condensed views on the gauge cluster.

And call me old, but where’s the large-print edition for the 12-inch touchscreen? Here’s hoping that Ford uses the Ranger’s new over-the-air updates to offer a more user-friendly interface — because this ain’t it. At least there’s wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto if you’re too frustrated with the Ranger’s native UI.

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• Shop for a New Ford Ranger

A Lot of Compromises, But One Killer App

Competition is so tough among mid-size pickup trucks that if it sounds like I’m nitpicking when it comes to touchscreen functions and console materials, well, I am. There really isn’t a bad mid-sizer out there at the moment, and the 2024 Ford Ranger is no exception. While I found the interior and infotainment system to be a downgrade compared to other trucks in the class, none of them features towing assists anywhere near as helpful as Ford’s new system.

This is a truck we’d love to spend more time with to determine whether its compromises inside are worth the extra towing help. We would love to test out its trailering tech in a less controlled environment, as we only got a short demo on a mostly level lot during this drive. Will this keep us from sweating bullets every time we make a wrong turn into a tight lot with a trailer? It definitely looks promising.

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