The 40-MPG Ford Truck That Nobody Wanted
In the mid-1980s, Ford built a Ranger that seemed perfectly timed for a fuel-conscious America.
It was small, rugged, and powered by a Mitsubishi turbo diesel engine that promised incredible highway fuel economy. Nearly 40 miles per gallon in a pickup truck sounded like the future — especially after the oil shocks had forced Detroit to rethink everything it knew about power.
But the Ford Ranger Turbo Diesel was not a normal American truck.
It started with glow plugs, rattled like industrial equipment, made just 86 horsepower, and carried a price premium that only made sense if fuel stayed expensive. For a small group of high-mileage drivers, it was a brilliant tool. For most buyers walking into Ford dealerships, it was slow, noisy, complicated, and hard to justify.
Then gasoline prices fell.
The V6 Ranger arrived. Dealers stopped ordering the diesel. Mechanics struggled with Japanese injection pumps and cracked aluminum cylinder heads. What looked like the future of efficient American pickups quickly became an option code Ford quietly buried.
This is the story of the Ford Ranger Turbo Diesel — the 40-MPG truck America rejected, and the strange moment when Dearborn and Tokyo almost changed what a pickup could be.
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