Our Ranger in the bush

PAVEMENT PRINCESS: CHOMPING AT THE BIT TO PLAY ON THE DIRT ROADS Wildtrak X will keep even farmers, speeding along rutted tracks, happy.

Last month I told you all about the on-road driving safety tech our long-term Ford Ranger Wildtrak X comes equipped with as standard, and how this helped us survive 3 000 kilometres of open-road driving in what can only be described as a war zone out there.

This month’s update is all about kicking back, having a beer, checking out some game and getting our Pavement Princess dirty.

A quick birthday celebration trip to Marloth Park gave us the perfect opportunity.

Marloth Park, for those who don’t get out of the city much, is a wildlife sanctuary on the southern boundary of the Kruger National Park. It is filled with your basic “McDonalds” of the wild, like kudu, zebra, giraffe, nyala, and impala, plus four of the big five, except for elephant.

Maybe more importantly for this update, it is also home to a lot of dirt roads that our Ranger Wildtrak X was chomping at the bit to play on.

Full disclaimer up front: I did not do any extreme off-roading this Ranger Wildtrak X was made for.

The main reason being that a wildlife sanctuary/game park will never provide the type of test required for this, and it hurts my soul to go scratching body panels and banging running boards on a vehicle which costs more than R1 million and will probably never be found climbing up the side of a mountain.

Should you feel differently and want to go where I didn’t want to and mix it up with the professionals who remember to play Buffalo even when they are at the breakfast table with their family, then you will be happy to know this bakkie offers the serious off-roader everything they could want.

If you look at the Ranger Wildtrak X, you can see how beefy it looks – and even more so when you park next to the likes of an Isuzu (my neighbour has one).

And this is not an optical illusion, this bakkie has a 30mm wider stance that provides an even more stable footprint off-road over a normal Wildtrak, while the ground clearance has risen by 26mm, which will help you clear most obstacles you would expect to find out in the bush or on a 4x4 trail.

Making sure you can stay out in the bush and not have to worry about punctures being too much of an issue, the Ford engineers fitted new-design 17-inch alloys wrapped in 265/70 R17 General Grabber AT3 all-terrain tyres with bold white lettering to the Ranger Wildtrak X that look the part as much as they are functional.

Taking this surefooted feeling even further, this bakkie comes standard with specially tuned Bilstein Position-Sensitive Dampers which not only make the tar road racers happy, but I am sure will also please those farmers who measure a bakkie’s value by how fast they can get from farm to farm on rutted dirt roads.

Since I am not a farmer, nor a professional off-roader, I do appreciate that the Wildtrak X offers seven driving modes from Normal, Eco, Tow/Haul, Slippery, Mud/Ruts, Sand and Rock Crawl to do the hard work of figuring out what one should be doing when faced with whatever the bush or a 4x4 trail can throw at you.

Talking of which, this bakkie offers a thing called trail turn assist.

What this feature allows you to do is negotiate tight bends on narrow tracks, that are normally found on the side of that mountain I was avoiding by applying the brake on the inside rear wheel which reduces the turning radius by up to 25%.

It’s designed to be used on loose surfaces at speeds under 19km/h and can be activated when the bakkie is engaged in 4H or 4L and the rear differential is unlocked.

In non-technical terms, what trail control allows is the bakkie to pivot slightly around the rear wheel that is being braked.

Trail control also helps to maintain constant low speed while driving off-road. You simply select a speed below 32km/h and the bakkie will manage its acceleration and braking, while the driver concentrates on steering through difficult terrain.

Perhaps I should go tackle a serious 4x4 track and see what happens? Watch this space…

For next month’s update, Motoring editor Jaco van der Merwe is planning to sort out his garden – he has been promising his wife he would do so since last year, and this involves moving rocks, aloes and refuse. That means our Ranger Wildtrak X will do duty as a workhorse.