Ford NZ selling 100 Rangers a day

Rush is on for utes ahead of Clean Car fines in 2022

Ford New Zealand is taking 100 orders per day for the Ranger ute, as it embarks on what managing director Simon Rutherford calls a “tricky” last half of 2021.

There’s a rush for popular diesel utes, to avoid government Clean Car emissions fines expected to come into effect in January 2022.

“We’ve been struggling to catch up with demand on Ranger all year,” says Rutherford. “We have plenty of stock arriving right now.

“But there is massive demand and while we’ve got plenty arriving, we’re also getting a huge number of orders. We’re taking about 100 per day at the moment.”

Rutherford says the company has been working closely with dealers to manage customer expectations for all its models. “There’s a trickiness in looking after our customers up to December 31 this year.

“We have to watch out for a couple of things. For a customer that wants to order a Ranger and it’s going to incur a fee next year, we need to give them an indication of what that would be and work to the current timeline — which we think is December 31, but may get extended if it doesn’t get made into law.

“But it can work the other way around, where a vehicle might get a rebate next year. In either situation, we have a conversation with the customer and make sure they have the choice [when to register the vehicle].

“We are only allocating a vehicle to a dealer when they provide a signed vehicle offer and sale agreement (VOSA). We’re telling dealers which vehicles are not going to get delivered this year, and that’s Mustang and Focus ST right now.

“On Ranger or Everest, where we have good supply, there’s a first-come, first-served policy”.