As most 4WD fanatics know already. Ford's Ranger is the new kid on the block, while Mitsubishi's Triton has been around for ages and has been constantly evolved and upgraded.
Sad but true: Ford somehow managed to book us a rear-wheel-drive truck to go up against Mitsubishi's rally/rally-raid proven four-wheel drive.
Talk about bringing a knife to a gunfight.
Short of renaming the magazine 'NZ4WD…And Occasionally Not', what are we to do, how do we arrive at something close to a head-tohead comparison? It's radical we know, but we went for the RWD Ranger XLT vs the 4WD Triton and had a ball.
Our frantically pulledtogether reasoning is based around price, and the knowledge that high-riding RWD derivatives of Ranger, D-Max and HiLux have been popular among those who like the look of a 4WD version but don't always need that extra diff and transfer case and all that stuff for their day-to-day town or city driving.
Dynamically, this can make sense, and RWD versions of these utes are usually fractionally more fuel efficient.
The driving dynamics, of course, are way different. Freed of
