What’s the Best American Midsize Truck? Ford Ranger FX4 vs GMC Canyon All Terrain

With Ford reintroducing the iconic Ranger midsize truck to its lineup, American truck buyers once again have a legitimate decision to make when it comes to choosing the truck that’s right for their needs. As you will see in this video, the head to head comparison between the Ranger and Chevy’s Canyon is actually fairly close in almost every facet, meaning that, as is typical for many new vehicle buyers, this one is likely to come down to brand loyalty.

The Ranger, being the new kid on the block, has a lot to prove, but it’s clear that Ford did their homework, giving the Blue Oval Brigade quite a bit of truck for the money and matching up well with the Canyon, which has been on the market for quite some time now. Of course, it’s been proven over and over that if a model doesn’t pull its weight, it can and will be cut, so clearly the Canyon is doing just fine, though the Ranger could make quite a dent in the Chevy’s sales numbers.

I’m not usually one to call out the creators of the content we share, but I can’t help but feel the bearded fellow handling this comparison was trying his best to sort of lean in favor of the Ranger. Little clues, like making quite a fuss over .7 of ground clearance, saying the Ranger “Handily wins” with 8.9 inches vs the Canyon’s 8.2 inches. When you’re talking about an unbiased comparison, a difference of less than 3/4 of an inch isn’t exactly what I call “Winning handily”.  Then when he compares the trucks’ exhaust notes, he revs the Ranger’s engine 5 times to what sounds like near-redline RPM, then turns around and gives the Canyon two short revs to what sounds like the middle of the RPM range.

Then, when comparing the trucks power and acceleration, he relies on his “SOTP Dyno” to declare “The Ranger takes the power”, when there is no head-to-head acceleration test and the Canyon actually makes more than 30 more horsepower. I’m not saying the Ranger still wouldn’t be the quicker of the 2 trucks, but if you’re going to declare one of them quicker than the other, use actual numbers and not the seat of your pants dyno.

I’ll be honest, I stopped watching the video at that point because I felt I wasn’t really watching an unbiased comparison, but hopefully anybody out there who is interested in these two trucks has the common sense to check out several sources for info, or just goes and actually test drives both rides themselves before making a decision.