"Seems like everybody likes Ranchero!"

"RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht" (ramblininexile) 03/17/2015 at 11:29 • Filed to: None

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And if you don't you might be a filthy Commie. Just putting that out there.

CB > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 03/17/2015 at 11:36

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I like the Ranchero, even as a socialist.

KnowsAboutCars > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 03/17/2015 at 11:38

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I prefer the canuck version myself.

jariten1781 > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 03/17/2015 at 11:43

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As long as it's not a 60-66.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > jariten1781 03/17/2015 at 11:45

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jariten1781 > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 03/17/2015 at 11:53

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Everyone's allowed off years...or half decades.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > jariten1781 03/17/2015 at 11:55

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I have a '63, so I'm now plotting your death. Just FYI.

jariten1781 > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 03/17/2015 at 12:06

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Fair enough, I'll accept my fate without struggle if it is to be.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > jariten1781 03/17/2015 at 12:20

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JR1 > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 03/18/2015 at 10:46

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I always found it funny the Ranchero went from full sized in 58/59 to compact with your model year. I wonder if the top brass where afraid it would hurt truck sales?

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > JR1 03/18/2015 at 10:57

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I think it was just that much easier to develop for a new generation, and it was a way to jump into an untapped market. The midsize Ford platforms were going through a change of architecture, one which IIRC didn't include a two-door wagon to steal parts from *at all*, so a new Fairlane-based Ranchero would have been a lot of engineering. On the other hand, the Falcon was modular, and pretty much the cheapest thing to build and alter that Ford had made in decades - with a two door wagon already on the slate. Combine that with nobody else in the ultra-cheap mini-truck segment other than VW (soon to get bumped out) and Chevy with the Greenbriar, and it was money in the bank.

However, you're also on top of one point, which is that the larger Rancheros were actually rated higher by a few pounds load than the F100s were at the time. Combine that fact with the coming swap of the full-sizers to unibody ('61-'63, went over like a lead balloon), and they certainly couldn't have afforded having the Ranchero be any nicer than the "real" truck. Actually, in a lot of respects, the immediate successor to this generation of Ranchero just in having a more car-like body is the '61 F100... sort of.

When the Falcon platform started to flake out in market share, they swapped the Ranchero back to a Fairlane base, because by that time the Fairlane was more or less just a bigger Falcon and modular in many of the same ways. From there, to the Torino, and it wasn't until the 70s the Ranchero was back on a frame.

JR1 > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 03/18/2015 at 11:23

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I was not aware of the wagon dilemma. But it makes sense Ford wanted to occupy a share in a market place that was only owned by VW and Chevy. But my conspiracy theory self still thinks the Ranchero may have been a bigger threat to the Ford truck. The fact that it was rated higher in load would be a big problem I am sure.

The new F100 was unibody so it makes sense it was a successor to the Ranchero of the late 50's.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > JR1 03/18/2015 at 11:39

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The Falcon Ranchero's differences from the two-door wagon are:
A bed fill panel and its support beam
A filler for the tailgate and a set of bed trim
Different B-pillar stampings
A different top roof cap
A bed divider sheet (three-piece for strength) and window with seal

By my estimate, that's fewer than 25 pieces of sheet metal, most of them quite simple and very small. The rest is in pieces that aren't there and some minor interior trim (i.e. cardboard and vinyl). Cost to develop from the two-door wagon was as close to nil as you can possibly imagine. In contrast, the Courier sedan delivery the older Ranchero was based on had even a different *chassis*. Building a Ranchero on a shortened frame for a Fairlane wagon for the new generation, with shorter driveshaft, wholly different body stampings interior and out, completely different roof structure (not just a cap), different sills, different floorpan... just not really practical, unless some major sales could recover it, and judging from the fact that the Falcon Ranchero "only" sold ~20k a year, even as the cheapest pickup in America, that would have been hard. It's very possible the development costs on the Falcon model, on the other hand, were made back in the first several thousand units at most.

JR1 > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 03/18/2015 at 11:44

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What was the payload on these little Falcon pickups anyway?

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > JR1 03/18/2015 at 11:47

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They were billed at 800lb. The wagon, oddly enough, was billed at 1000lb, along with the sedan delivery. So they didn't lose that much from the frame models, but they played it safer with the pickup than the wagon, presumably due to worries about the lack of rear roof making it less strong. So, nominally a 1/4 ton pickup (500lb weight class) but not terrible for actual load.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > JR1 03/18/2015 at 11:48

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I've spent a lot of time educating myself, in case you can't tell.

JR1 > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 03/18/2015 at 11:54

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Probably could not hold that Lincoln from Goldfinger though!

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > JR1 03/18/2015 at 11:57

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In a word, no. Not without the help of about eight hot air balloons.