Ford says an electric F-150 is not the only pickup trick it has up its sleeve: in the next few years, the automaker will roll out a compact truck sized and priced below the new Ranger.
The news comes from Jim Farley, Ford's president of global markets, who spoke recently at the Deutsche Bank Global Auto Industry Conference in Detroit.
Automotive News reports that while Ford declined to get more specific, the company said it would "have more details to share about new nameplates in the future."
Auto News said that, in summer 2018, unnamed sources indicated Ford would add a compact truck to its lineup by 2022, and that it would be a unibody vehicle based on the next-generation Focus compact car platform. We know the Focus is as good as dead in North America, but a small pickup fits well with Ford's new all-trucks-all-the-time approach to the market on this continent.
The new Focus rides on a new scalable platform designed to support a wide range of vehicle types, like VW's MQB architecture, which underpins vehicles from the compact Golf to the nearly full-size Atlas SUV. So while a compact car seems an odd starting point for a pickup, there's no reason why one couldn't share its underpinnings with the Focus.
In any event, there is a precedent at Ford for a car-based compact pickup: the company built and sold the Fiesta-based Courier in Brazil until 2013.
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