LISTEN: War between Toyota Hilux and Ford Ranger gets X-rated

The bakkie war in South Africa is a real thing. The developments in the Toyota Hilux and Ford Ranger stables last week have proven this once more.

Less than 48 hours after Ford announced the arrival of the Ranger Wildtrak X, Toyota followed with the Hilux Raider X.

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In this week’s edition of the Pitstop podcast, The Citizen Motoring‘s Mark Jones and Jaco van der Merwe discuss the relevance of the new “X-rated” models.

Although the new models are not direct rivals, they have very specific roles to fulfil in their respective line-ups.

Where the Ford Ranger Wildtrak X is positioned at the sharp end of the stick, the Toyota Hilux Raider X is a more affordable option.

The Wildtrak X, that was offered on the previous generation Ford Ranger in Australia, is an off-road focused bakkie. It is kind of a junior version of the Raptor, the figurehead of the Ranger family.

The Wildtrak X benefits from various enhancements from the standard Wildtrak on which it is based. It doesn’t get the Fox Sports dampers from the Raptor, but still highly-capable Bilstein dampers.

Like in the case of the Raptor, the Wildtrak X also doesn’t have a direct rival in the Toyota Hilux stable.

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Toyota Hilux takes on Ranger XLT

In turn, the Toyota Hilux Raider X is based on the Raider. Being only offered in 2.4-litre guise, the Raider X takes on the Ford Ranger XLT 2.0-litre single turbo. The major difference being the Raider X is offered with manual transmission and the XLT single turbo not.

Incidentally, Isuzu was the one to use the letter X in its D-Max model designations before Toyota and Ford. Isuzu has been the third member of South Africa’s top bakkie table for a while now.

Isuzu offered an X-Rider on the previous generation D-Max range. And despite this designation falling by the wayside when the seventh generation D-Max was launched last year, it is likely to return in future.

ALSO READ: Ford Ranger destroys Toyota Hilux Legend, closes in on GR-S