Ford has announced that it will close the doors of its St. Paul, Minnesota plant — which makes the Ford Ranger — at the end of 2009, extending the plant’s life by one year. However, the closure also means the end of the Ford Ranger pickup truck at the end of the 2009.
The Ranger, in its current design, has been around for nearly 15 years, making it well past its sell-by date. The St. Paul plant was originally slated to close at the end of 2008, but Ford extended the plant’s life for unknown reasons. Earlier reports indicated that the Ranger could continue to be built in Thailand but high tariffs between the United States and Thailand would likely mitigate any profit.
Ford sold merely 92,000 Rangers in ’06, a 24 percent drop from the previous year. It’s possible that Ford could entirely abandon the segment, much like it did when it killed off the Freestar minivan recently.
Ranger sales in June were down 8.4 percent over the year before; just 7,372 of the compact pickups were sold that month. This isn’t terribly out of line with Ford’s overall sales for the month, which were down over nine percent last month. Mazda ’s B-Series truck, virtually identical to the Ranger, sold just 263 units in June, down 28.3% over the previous year.
