At the recent local debut of the brand-new Ford Ranger double-cab bakkie, we had a chance to have a chat with the man who signed off on the entire project.

British-born Ian Foston has quite the portfolio and title. According to his LinkedIn bio, he’s Global Chief Program Engineer, having overseen the development of the new Ranger, Everest, Raptor and Volkswagen Amarok.

MORE: Ford Ranger vs Volkswagen Amarok – What are the differences?

The Melbourne-based engineer is an off-road enthusiast, and proudly talks about his personal vehicles: a Ford Everest and a Ford Raptor, a near-perfect two-car garage if you’re an adventurous Blue Oval fanatic. During the launch of the brand-new Ranger, he jumped into the passenger seat of our test unit, having just stepped off a plane to attend the event in the Western Cape.

MORE: Ford Ranger (2022) Launch Review

On the development process of both the new Ranger and new Everest: “It was epic going out to customers and saying “what are the things we can approve on, what are the areas you want us to focus on?” Also, living with customers and finding out what are the things they want that they don’t know they want. We wanted to make the products more premium, more versatile and suitable for customers not only carrying stuff, but also the comfort of driving in different environments. For me, it was pushing the boundaries/segment frontiers of what a ute/bakkie is thought of both from a premium side and an off-road side.”

On the T6 platform enhancements: “Pretty much everything under the skin has been redeveloped, retooled and re-engineered. We went back to basics to achieve what we wanted with a ladder-frame chassis. We’ve really done lots of work on making the frame compliant, to give us that great offroad articulation, moving the wheels and shocks outboard to give us bigger bandwidth to do the suspension tuning for both on- and off-road, and to fit the bigger V6 engines (diesel for Ranger, petrol for Raptor).”

Foston’s favourite aspects of the new Ranger: “The architectural stuff, like giving people a bigger bandwidth of powertrains, giving them better off-road capability, I call this the bones of the vehicle. Other small things that are simple to execute, but make such big differences like the outboard cup holders which are there for people who want to carry more than one drink and are conveniently located in the airflow from the vents to keep your drinks cold. In the back, making the bed wide enough for a Euro pallet. I know it’s small, but it was something we know people who use this vehicle for work – it would mean a lot to them. “

On lifespan and future-proofing the Ranger in the age of electrification: “We want to make sure with this platform that we are going to sell a lot of trucks and make sure we are paying back the investment put into this platform. We’ll be looking at using this platform for as long as we can, but honestly, it’s very much a fluid environment, in the automotive industry. There’s lots of legislation coming for ICE, cyber security and safety. All we can do is try crystal ball gaze as best we can. We’ve said before that we’re protected for electrification, but we’re not going to talk specifically about how yet, so we’ll save that news for when we’ve got something to say. Electrification has been on our minds since we developed the platform.”

Want to buy a new or used Ford Ranger? Browse stock now.