Dear Ford: When you bring back the Ranger, don’t forget this Raptor version

Enlarge / The way the suspension and dampers work on these off-road trucks really is something else. (credit: Ford)

Trucks have been no more immune than cars when it comes to suffering from automotive bloat. The F-150 of today is a beast of a thing compared to the ones I rode around in at the turn of the century, and that's the smallest truck Ford will sell us here in the US. Life is better for the small truck fan living in Australia. For whatever the reason, the small truck never died out in the Antipodes, and Ford's Asia Pacific region will still sell you Ranger, albeit one that's still bigger than any Ranger we remember.

While I'm not the biggest truck afficionado, I bring this up because Ford does in fact plan to bring the Ranger back to these shores (along with cult favorite Bronco), and when it does, it needs to make sure that includes the Ranger Raptor. The truck people reading this will probably not require any further explanation. For everyone else, imagine a Focus RS, but it's a truck, and it's for driving in the desert. That's certainly my take-home from the video teaser that Ford just put out:

The Ranger Raptor is due out next year—if you live down under. The US won't get any Rangers at all until 2019, so we've got no idea whether this spicy version will ever be seen with the steering wheel on the left. Somehow I imagine Ford's going to get a few phone calls today saying it needs to do just that.