Last month, Ford announced a factory-backed attack of the Saudi Arabia-based rally-raid endurance event with the help of British team M-Sport and South African-based NMW.

Since then, the Ranger has undergone a comprehensive test and development exercise in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Totalling 10,000 kilometres – or more than than two Dakar rallies – engineers have focused their attention on the Ranger T1+’s chassis, cooling and performance, and also its reliability.

As well as increasing the strength and rigidity of the vehicle’s foundations, it is now said to be more capable th🅠an ever thanks to the introduction of bespoke dampers developed by Reiger Suspension.

Having been successfully homologated, NWM founder Neil Woolridge has confirmed the up-dates are now being added ꦇto all future orders of the four-wheel-drive competition vehicle.

“We value the partnership with M-Sport and Ford Perform☂ance – and the opportunity it has created to accelerate the development of our T1+ Ranger in preparationꦛ for next year’s Dakar Rally,” reflected Woolridge. “This will allow us to showcase the performance and capabilities of our car on the international stage.”

“With M-Sport and NWM working together and completing around 10,000 kilometres of testing since last year in several locations and weather conditions, we have been able to fine-tune every part of the car, and the progress has been really s🔥atisfying. We look forward to seeing how the updated T1+ Ranger fares on the international rally raid scene.”

M-Sport’s Technical Director Chris Williams drilled further down into the revisions that have been made, with the new damper being joined by a different wishbone set-up for “improved motion ratio”. Having tested bo🍨th, he claims the Ranger benefits from “significant improvements in performance”.

He said: “One of the biggest challenges has been optimising the cooling packages on the ve𓆉hicle. We focussed on simplifying and improving efficiency of the coolers. Using CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics), we have studied the aerodynamics to understand the vehicle air flow and learn how best to extract heat at different speeds.

“To validate our changes, we have tested in Dubai, South A🎉frica and Morocco which all had ambient temperatures in excess of 40 degrees ♒Celsius.”

The real test of how the refreshed Ranger T1+ stacks up will come when it goes up against the clock, added Williams, given that the main development phase is now completed. Its first competitive outing will come at this month’s Baja España Aragón Rally in Spain followed by Morocco’s Ra💫lly du Maroc from October 4th-9th.