The message was clear during the global media reveal of the new Ford Ranger: ‘We have gone to great lengths to survey our customers, to find out exactly what they wanted in the next-generation Ranger.’
Team member after team member echoed this sentiment on the livestream. Garnering the opinions of existing and potential customers from most of the world’s leading markets has been a years-long effort by Ford, and key to the success of the next-gen Ranger project. Focus groups were held, to discuss not only possible upgrades, but to also touch, feel, manipulate and handle the components, features and tech that engineers were considering for the line-up.
And that’s reassuring, because too many times I’ve climbed into a brand-new vehicle and wondered if the design engineers really thought about what Jill and Joe Public out there want in a car, or if they even drive cars themselves. Some things might look good, and probably feel nice too, but in reality they just don’t perform the function for which they were created. And something that might’ve only been slightly annoying when you first sat in the car becomes mind-numbingly frustrating after several months of use.
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