While it’s been confirmed Ford will finally make an all-new Ranger for the American market, we’ve yet to see what the U.S.-spec version of the truck will look like. We know it’s not the same as the one the rest of the world gets, but now we have what may be our first clue.
These pictures come from someone at a shop who told us they’d been molding and painting the new Ranger’s grille bezels, and the images seem pretty legitimate; it would take a lot of work for a pretty dubious reward to try and physically fake something like this and these don’t appear to be any sort of Photoshop fakery.
While this alleged new Ranger bezel appears to keep the same general design as the global Ranger, there are some significant differences.
While both grilles have the same essential elongated hexagonal shape, the new Ranger grille seems to add some tiny lower sides to become more of an elongated octagon, and the bezel is much thinner overall.
We don’t see any interior pieces, so it’s not clear if the current Ranger’s floating central grille bar will be maintained, but the lack of a more pronounced upper-middle bezel section or a lower bezel-joined horizontal bar suggest that a new design may be coming.
Also, this bezel does not continue into a central metallic bumper section as the old one does.
It’s not a lot to go on, but it’s something, and it seems to suggest that at least some of the fundamental design inspiration for the new Ranger will be pulled from the global Ranger’s design.
Maybe we’ll get to see more early painted-plastic parts coming soon to give us a better idea? We’ll keep our collective eyeballs peeled.