If an auto manufacturer wanted to fool the public, it could claim that it had “redesigned” its pickup truck every year, and hope that we didn’t notice the crossed fingers behind the back. But Ford really has redesigned its midsized Ranger pickup for 2024, with a new grille and wraparound front end, plus neat little styled creases in both sides, just to interrupt the sheet metal on the four doors.

The new Ranger comes only in a four door version, ad you can call it the SuperCrew if you choose. It has a wider bed, although it is not longer, which means some buyers who would like to haul skis or longer cargo are out of luck.

My wife, Joan, and I spent most of one day on a circular trip from Duluth up to Virginia, on the Iron Range, where I could pretend I was trying to pose the all-new Velocity Blue Metallic Ranger in contrast with the wonderfully aging old downtown area. (Actually, I was parked outside Canelake’s Candy Kitchen, where we could pounce on replenishing our supply of dark chocolate Hot Air in the best candy-making shop in creation.

We then resumed our trip by heading for Ely, which is always a treat. It was late in the afternoon, and many of the shops were closed downtown, but after hitting a couple of outfitters, we stopped at the Chocolate Moose, which has long been one of our favorite places to go for comfort food to gourmet stuff. We found that the place has decided to do month-long themes, and this month is South American, with specialties that attracted us. I got some sort of curry wrap with deep-fried Yucca strips that were pretending to be French fries, hold the French.

After we satisfied our appetites, we got split up walking around the Ely streets. As I walked past the closed surplus store, I heard the alluring sounds of some sort of exotic music. I hurried ahead and found a very neat little open meeting area, with a tiny stage, and a signboard that explained it was “Tiki Tuesday,” with a free concert by Karen Peters on a Swedish Nyckharpe. It was an hour-long, one-person instrumental show on a device that was supposedly primitive, but sounded heavenly as she put her bow to the thing and elicited fantastic sounds.

Then we hopped back into our Ranger ride, and headed on through Ely to Hwy. 1, which took us south to the Hwy. 2 cutoff to Two Harbors, and down the North Shore to home.

The Ranger handled the highway driving beautifully, tracing the rolling but entertaining hills and curves through the pines and past the lakes — ever vigilant for deer or possibly a wolf, which didn’t happen.
In Ford’s redesign of the Ranger, the focus was on upgrading the interior, which now is loaded with refined features. I was disappointed that the Ranger Lariat, which had plenty of power from the 270-horsepower EcoBoost 4-cylinder engine, and smooth transitions from the 10-speed automatic, did not have shift paddles on the steering wheel, and it didn’t have a sunroof, which would have been nice features additions.

At a sticker price of $56,016, the Ranger is taking a large chunk of your family budget, and adding a couple such features wouldn’t be out of place. It comes standard with all sorts of safety stuff, rear cross-traffic alert, and the parking notifications front and rear. It also had one setting that I later was able to counter with the vehicle settings on the big instrument panel screen. That didn’t help us the first day.

The Ranger was delivered to our driveway, and the driver headed back to Chicago with the vehicle we had been driving. The stunning blue color was appealing from the start. We were heading downtown, so I told Joan to put her booklets in the Ranger and though she took the keys with her, all four doors were unlocked. 

She set the stuff — including the key fob — on the front passenger seat and came back inside. When we went out to leave, we were surprised to find the passenger door was locked. Surprise turned to alarm as we found that all four doors were locked, and had locked themselves almost as if by spite because we left the key inside.

Now, I’ve had test cars that would not let you lock the doors if the key was inside, but this was the first that locked the keys inside by itself! 

I called the press fleet manager, and he called Ford, but all the code numbers we tried wouldn’t work. Finally, I simply called Triple-A. A fantastic service, which has helped us out before with various problems through the years of living in a rural area, with different cars every week, they assigned a regional service call and within a half-hour, he had arrived, popped the door open, and I grabbed the key fob.

Later I changed every setting on the vehicle’s door-locking procedures, and we never had that problem again.

Oh, and by the way, if you’re making a trip to Ely, this weekend is the annual Blueberry Festival, and next month the Chocolate Moose specialty is Thai food. No word on who is performing on what at Tiki Tuesday.