Incredibly Rare Ford SkyRanger Surfaces on Craigslist
Perhaps the rarest special edition Ford truck ever built, the SkyRanger, also happens to be the weirdest one in existence!
Ford has made some pretty wild and wacky truck concepts over the years. From the Bigfoot Cruiser to the NASCAR edition F-150, there are plenty of bestriped and bespoked special editions to choose from. But when you’re talking about the downright weird, nothing tops the Ford SkyRanger. It’s hard to say who originally came up with the idea for a convertible/targa version of the Ford Ranger in the first place. But suffice to say, somebody with a little more sanity killed the SkyRanger before it could get off the ground.
Thus, you might be looking at the rarest special edition Ford truck ever built. Actual production numbers vary based on who you ask, but most peg it between 14 and 19. Which is why we were a little bit surprised to see an incredibly nice example of one pop up on Craigslist, of all places. This super clean example has only 7,500 original miles, and appears to have spent its life stored in a garage under cover.
Each of those handful of SkyRanger examples started life as four-wheel drive, extended cab pickups with 4.0-liter V6 power. The actual history of what happened next is hotly contested. Most believe that Ford commissioned American Sunroof Company (ASC) to do the conversion. This involved hacking the top off and adding that weird targa-like structure. Throw on a body kit and some ’90s-tastic stripes, and you’ve got a pretty wild looking ride.
However, someone by the name of Marc R. Perry has also claimed that his father and Bob Kaiser developed the SkyRanger at Professional Auto Crafters. Perry says that the truck was built in limited numbers to pitch the idea of a conversion package to Ford. When Ford rejected the proposal, the company promptly folded.
The exact history of the SkyRanger may be difficult to pin down, but there’s no denying that it’s one of the wackiest, wildest things we’ve ever seen. And most definitely one of the rarest. But does that make it a collector’s item, or just a strange footnote in the history of special edition trucks? Right now, it appears to be the latter!
