Ford Ranger five-star a ute benchmark

The positive result finally gives ute buyers a genuinely safe choice as well as verifying the excellent work done by the Ranger development team of engineers and designers at Ford Australia.

It also means that every other ute maker must be aiming for a five-star NCAP result in their future development work, regardless of the target buyers or price point.

The Ranger gets its five-star mark in the latest Euro NCAP testing and leads a field that includes the Audi Q3, BMW 1 Series, Chevrolet (Holden) Captiva, Hyundai Veloster, Mercedes-Benz ML, Opel Astra and Zafira, and the all-new Toyota Yaris - all models either on sale in Australia or coming soon.

Apart from its overall five-star score, the Ranger also gets a best-yet score - 81 per cent - in the Euro NCAP testing for pedestrian safety among utes.

"The Ford Ranger is undoubtedly raising the bar of safety in the category of pick-up trucks, which had until now not proven to be the safest," says the secretary general of Euro NCAP, Michiel van Ratingen.

The Ranger has just hit showrooms and is also sold as the Mazda-cloned BT50, with both brands reporting very strong early sales. Mazda is also confident of a companion five-star score.

"I would be very surprised if the BT50 is not five stars," says Doug Dickson, managing director of Mazda Australia.

The five-star result for the Ranger comes after a massive development program by Ford.

“On the all new Ranger we did more crash simulations than any of our prior programs to ensure all parts of the vehicle’s safety performance were optimised,” says Adam Frost, who is chief engineer for digital innovation at Ford Asia-Pacific and Africa.

“This was backed up by a comprehensive physical crash test program.  The end result is a world class outcome we are all very proud of.”

Not surprisingly, Ford Australia intends to make plenty of noise about the Ranger's result.

"This is a very important announcement for our customers," says Bob Graziano, president of Ford Australia.

"We set out to establish many new benchmarks and we are hugely proud of the results we have achieved."