There’s something strange about this Ford Ranger truck. Normally, you wouldn’t see this small workhorse converted for racing, but they love the Ranger in Thailand and it’s often involved in motorsport. However, it’s not even a real ranger, since the chassis is from an old Nissan sedan and the 1,200 hp engine is from Toyota. No, not the 2JZ.
As we mentioned in that story about the Mazda CX-5 pickup, the Ford Ranger is a kind of hero vehicle in the Thai scene because it’s made locally. This thing has been dressed up to look like a 2nd-gen model that entered the American market in 2019 but actually dates back to 2011.
Anyway, this isn’t an actual truck; it’s a drift car with Ranger body panels. Like that fake R35 GT-R drift car, it’s based on the Nissan Cefiro. This model is the go-to for drift builds in Thailand. They used a 4-door sedan from the mid-1990s which originally came with an RB20 engine.
Obviously, heavy modifications were made to the chassis
The Cefiro is a unibody car, so it’s surprising they were able to convert this into a pickup. All the structural rigidity must come from the roll cage, which makes you wonder why the Nissan parts were needed in the first place. Maybe it’s for the suspension, though we can’t imagine bolting a Toyota engine into this Frankenstein monster was easy.
That’s right, while the badges on the side say “2.2-liter 6-speed” like a normal Ford Ranger, this has a 1200 horsepower Toyota racing engine with forged internals. Instead of a 2JZ like you might see in America, the Thai team worked with a Toyota UZ, the legendary 32-valve quad-camshaft 4.0-liter V8. It would have powered something like a Crown or a Lexus LS in the 1990s but now boasts twin turbochargers and about 4 times the original output.
Say what you will about CB Media, that he talks too loud or that the content is superficial. But not everybody has access to Thailand’s unique motorsport events. Plus, Chad Burdette (that’s his real name) is a world-class car photographer. And yeah, this video is being used to promote a new 360-degree camera which a lot of channels are talking about today.
