Yahoo Autos Ford Performance Ranger T1+ all dressed up for next month's Dakar Rally
In June, Ford Performance announced it would contest the Dakar Rally for the first time, debuting the chosen ride as a camouflaged shorty Ford Ranger T1+ for the top class. The truck's based on the previous-gen Ranger, powered by a twin-turbocharged 3.5-liter EcoBoost V6, developed with longtime World Rally Championship partner M-Sport and South African rally maestros Neil Woolridge Motorsport (NWM). The former team hasn't only prepped the Ford's rally cars, including the current Puma HybridRally1, it builds the engines for the Ford Mustang GT3 car. NWM has been building T1+ class Rangers for four years, for a variety of series including the South African Rally-Raid Championship. Here's our first look at the uncamouflaged Ranger T1+ that's going up against multiple race winners in Dakar who will be driving marques like Mini, Audi, Prodrive, and Toyota.
We don't have many specs on the truck yet. We do know there's a Reiger suspension between body and wheels that M-Sport technical director Chris Williams described as "a new damper and wishbone setup resulting in an improved motion ratio and making full use of Reiger's latest damper technology, designed specifically for rally raid." The new dampers and a huge focus on cooling have been part of more than 6,000 miles of development testing from South Africa to the Middle East. And that doesn't include the two Rally Raid races the three partners also used for development testing, Spain's Baja Aragon and Morocco's Rally du Maroc.
